The Labour thing again & conference

[POSTMAN]

Q How many of 'the majority' of the 200,000 or so CWU members go there...

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[Talell]

and how many of the 62,218,761 people who live in the uk goto westminster to make decisions on law etc?

if you don't like something, try and influence your branch to take the same policy and vote accordingly at conference etc, or stand for a branch position and directly change it that way

it's all well and good standing on the outside shouting in, but it doesn't always work. sometimes you need to get involved to have the necessary influence to make the correct changes, this not only applies to the union, but to the labour party as well

[TrueBlueTerrier]

I think there is meant to be vote for all Political Fund levy members every 10 years. Again IIRC there should be a vote in 2015 perhaps its time to start a campaign.

[POSTMAN]

Whoooooosh.

[fishtank]

The union's version of democracy has not moved on and is no longer fit for purpose in my opinion.
Many Branch officials cling to power using a combination of power bases,non-communication and apathy.
This seems to be filtering all the way down to local level in a lot of cases
Increasing the time span between elections only makes this worse.

Too many of the same old faces rock up at Annual Conference with nothing to add but a deep self interest in maintaining the status quo.
I don't think the "Supreme Body" of the union truly reflects the thoughts and aspirations of the ordinary member any more.
I think the most blatant example of that was the appearance of Moya Greene this year.
How many ordinary grass roots members wanted to see her there?

For Billy to basically state that he knows the views of the majority over the issue of Labour Affiliation shows either utter contempt or a lack of understanding at best for true democracy despite his well publicised protestations to the contrary.
He might be right,the membership may want to stay with Labour but the opinions of a couple of hundred delegates means the square root of f**k all in democratic terms,especially since some of them can barely remember what working for a living was really like.

[Martin Walsh]

I think fish is right in many ways around conference , the tricky bit is what would replace it and how would your change things.

What Billy fails to say is that he who controls standing orders stops a debate on breaking the link. There were several motions on breaking the link with the Labour party at this years conference only one got heard as standing orders place them behind the The support of the Labour Party.

In terms of what should happen is that Branch's should have mandate meetings and membership meetings and some do but many dont and the few who do get less than 50 people turning up for meetings as some members are not interested and some live to far away from the site of the meeting.

Now don't get me wrong there are a number of pro Labour supporters in the CWU who all get up to oppose those who want to either split from the Labour party or suspend funds from the Labour party.

Now in terms of the Politcal fund you do get a vote on this but not all of this money goes to the Labour party. Remembet the law says your cannot use any money from the general fund which is basically your subs to campaign on polically grounds such as against post office closures , privitisation , against racial groups , against competition , against the regulator and against policy including anti trade union laws. That is why the polically fund is vital and should be supported.

I personally wanted to see the removal of Balls and Millibands for what they said about the strikes by public sector unions and I want to see real changes to polices which mean that there is a new divide between Labour and the Tories. if this cannot be done then I think we should stop funds as our support cannot be unconditional.

However how can we change the union well the motion which was accepted by the postal conference is a good start Motion 61 is a real opportunity to restructure the CWU from Branch's and reconnect with the members in certain places but it is a two way street no union can reconnect if the members do not want to attend meetings etc.

[Talell]

conference is a necessary evil, it's too important to get rid of all together, even if there were a lot of policy forums

the legitimacy of conference, as the sovereign body of the union, is only upheld if branches listen to the members, and if the members make sure the branch listens to them (through a healthy churn in the makeup of branch committees, and communicating with the branch in the first place). as dingo says, it is a two way street, you cannot reasonably expect a branch to goto every office to talk to the members about what policies they should adopt, even if they did this you may end up with policies that conflict with each other.

that is why attending your branches agm (section if IR related) is so important. it is your chance to tell them what they should be doing, what they should be pursuing, otherwise they think the status quo is alright. I agree that sometimes it is difficult to attend for various reasons, plus you do it out of your own pocket, which really puts those who stay a certain distance away from attending. In that case I believe that branches should fund one person from each office to attend the agm, so atleast you have decent diversity in geography, and is something I will be pursuing with my branch in the future.

the drawback of democracy, for better or for worse, is politics, which conference itself is mired in. For example, say dingo puts forward a motion in the name of the london divisional committee, every branch in london WILL vote in favor of that motion most of the time. why? you don't vote against your own if the motion isn't controversial, it keeps you sweet with all those involved. Why? It gives you greater influence, since you voted for them, they are more likely to vote for you.

Should it be like this? no. but there is basically nothing you can do without getting rid of the democracy which makes our union so great.