Youth

By Sjaan Heemskerk, UNISON Essex, personal capacity

A lot of the UNISON Young Members conference in Swansea last weekend seemed to consist of a radical wave – the delegates – beating against immovable rocks – the right wing, and full-time organising officers. At least we should be grateful for the fact that this year only half of the motions were ruled out of order, whereas it had been three quarters last year!

There were around 120 delegates, plus a couple of dozen visitors, and I would guess that most of them were on the left, or at least critical of the positions taken by the union leadership and the leadership of the Labour Party. The left wing, organised around the youth section of Time for Real Change (TRC) was very prominent at the conference.

Among other things, the conference elects members to key positions – next year’s standing orders committee, and representative to various UNISON bodies: Labour Link, the LGBT+, Womens, Higher Education, Health and Local Government committees. Conference also elects reps to the TUC young workers’ conference and the TUC Young Workers’ Forum. TRC put forward supporters for all of these positions, and will also propose names for the election next year for the two young members representatives on the UNISON NEC.

Clean sweep for the left for TUC young workers’ conference

There was anger that after the balloting for these positions had already started, it became evident that all the election statements from the TRC candidates were printed wrongly, and the full-time staff refused to rerun the ballot, although some of the TRC statements were reprinted. None of the right-wing candidates had their statements garbled in the same way. Nevertheless, Time for Real Change is confident that out of six places in next year’s standing orders committee, we will win a minimum of two places, and possibly four.

After the conference it was confirmed that I was elected, along with another TRC nominee, Fenn Horan, as reps to the TUC Young Workers’ Forum. TRC also had a clean sweek of all twelve delegates to the TUC Young Workers’ Conference next year. We are waiting for other election results.

When it came to the conference itself, some resolutions were ruled out of order on mysterious ‘legal’ advice, and although delegates were baffled by this, as on all things, the say-so of the full-time officers organising the conference was final. My resolution at least was passed – it was urging that there should be free access in workplaces for women’s sanitary needs and that this should be treated like a health issue like any other.

Many other delegates spoke in the conference about the problems faced by young UNISON members, not least the low pay and understaffing in many public services, including the NHS. It is often young workers who have had to bear the brunt of the crisis in living standards of the past few years.

The fringe meeting organised by TRC youth was well attended. It was addressed by two NEC members, Andrea Egan and Libby Nolan, and current president, Steve North. There was anger when it was revealed that Andrea and Libby –  both of them former presidents – had been refused visitors’ credentials to the conference. Andrea will be the TRC candidate in the election for general secretary in 2025.

There were around fifty at the fringe meeting, which is a sizeable proportion of the conference as a whole. The Time for Real Change youth section has grown by leaps and bounds in the past year. We used to have six on our circulation list and now we have 54! Apart from Northern Ireland, every region is now represented in the TRC youth section.

Around a dozen of the new Left Horizons booklet, A Charter for Young Workers and Students, were distributed and they were very well received. The ideas and policies in the booklet are a perfect match for the day to day problems faced by young workers in UNISON, or any trade union.