Divisional Council meeting number 18

Wednesday 30th November I attended Divisional Council meeting number 18 at the USDAW Redditch office. 

Apologies were received from:

Jenny Chilton - Illness

Minutes from the previous DC meeting

We then read the minutes from the previous DC meeting. These were accepted. 

Minutes of the recent EC meeting

We received the EC Minutes from Maureen and Andrea.

The small claims limit in the court system is to be increased from £1,000 to £5,000 this would stop the USDAW solicitor's from being able to claim back there costs from the other side in most of the USDAW cases they deal with.

BHS petition fully backed by USDAW and the petition was handed into the Arcadia group recently.

The Midlands division has raised over £50,000 towards the 2016 USDAW MENCAP appeal.
This is a great achievement by the Midlands Division.

Minutes from other Divisional Councils

We took a look at the minutes from other Divisional Councils. These were accepted. 

Central office circulars and press releases

We looked through a selection of circulars from central office and a selection of press releases. These were accepted. 

Federation reports

East Midlands

No report

West Midlands

No report

Divisional officers report
We received the Deputy Divisional officers report from Gareth Davies.

Membership total  - 436,511 nationally and 56,396 divisional. 

We received the Divisional officers report from Gavin Dadley.

(1) Divisional Conference Saturday 19th November - Sunday 20th November - 

Our guest speaker - Jack Dromey MP gave a very good speech and took lots of questions and answered every one. He was well received and possibly the best speaker I've seen at one of our Conferences. 

The work shops ran by the Midlands Equalities group was very good. 

A raffle that was organised by the Divisional Council with many great prizes did really well. 

We raised £419 which has been sent to MENCAP.

I send a big thank you to everyone who supplied a raffle prize and to everyone who brought raffle tickets. This is an amazing amount to raise.

The conference went well and all workshops were well organised.

(2) Divisional Conference 11th and 12th March 2016.
the planned theme is Politics.

The Divisional officers report was read and all points noted/endorsed.

TUC Young Workers Conference

There is one place available.

Nomination - Matthew Wright
Reserve - Russell Jones

Co-op National Committee Election.
Only one nomination was received so Kevin Lowe is elected to the Co-op National Committee.

USDAW National Organising Awards 2016

After the Midlands Divisional award winners were revealed at the Midlands Divisional Conference I can now reveal the award winners.

1) Individual Organising Award - Julie Haycraft.
2) Individual Recruitment Award - Gareth Coates.
3) Team Recruitment and Organising Award - Phillip Turner & Andy Shepherd.
4) The Campaigns Award - Simon Willmott.
5) Health and Safety Rep Award - Jon Mcewan.
6) Union Learning Rep Award - Anita Adamczyk.
7) The Equalities Award - Joan Samuels.
8) Most Promising New Activist Award - Russell Jones.
9) Outstanding Achievement Award - Mark Halfpenny.

I send my congratulations to every category winner and I wish you all the best of luck and again well done to everyone who was nominated.

Any Other Business

We then moved on to any other business.

The next USDAW Midlands Divisional Council Meeting will be on Wednesday 25th January 2017. 

  The meeting was then closed