Mandating Meeting

We held the Mandating Meeting yesterday at Leicester Pensions Centre.

It may seem a strange choice of venue but the other sites were unavailable because of the works at Wellington Street or the knock on effects of those works.

We discussed the major issues that would be discussed at DWP Group and National conferences, which were the relaunch of the DWP Group campaign and the talks about a merger with the Unite union.

We felt that due to the attacks on pay, conditions, pensions, staffing, etc. that we should support a relaunch of the campaign on all of these issues and seek to apply maximum pressure on our employer in conjunction with other public sector trade unions if possible.  The initial headline issue would probably be pay.

The view of the mandating meeting was that we should continue to hold talks with Unite as a merger would provide greater financial stability, more union staffing support, a more direct route to co-ordinate activities with other public sector workers and a greater say at the TUC through an even larger trade union.  There are dangers that we could lose our identity and focus and our new structures would not be so engaged with our members or as democratic.  As any new rule book would have to go to a special delegate conference for debate the mandating meeting felt that this was a safeguard that would allow us to stop the process if we felt it was not in the interests of the members.  If the conference votes for merger the issue would then be put to all members before we went ahead as a final safeguard.

We also congratulated the members of PCS Left Unity who had been elected in the DWP Group and National elections and supported the election of Left Unity candidates at conference and at the upcoming DWP East Midlands Regional Committee AGM.

We also reported on the talks on merger with our sister branch in pensions.  When they become part of CMG with the people in our branch who currently work on benefit delivery it makes sense to merge the branches.  A circular will go out to all members in both branches shortly.