Policy

Motions for UNISON AGM 2025

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You can download the motions pack using the links below. Motions are in text form beflow.

Lambeth UNISON AGM 2025 – Motion booklet [PDF]Download
Lambeth UNISON AGM 2025 – Motion booklet [ as a Word document]Download

MOTIONS FOR 2025 AGM


Due to this being a rolling AGM, we will not amend the motions, but you can propose alternative motions on the same subjects if you want.

The deadline for alternative motions is Monday 20th January at 12noon

If something has happened after the original submission date of the motions that requires an Emergency Motion then the deadline for those is Friday 7 February at 12noon.

Please email all motions to the Branch Chair Gary Whiting GWhiting@lambeth.gov.uk

The UNISON AGM will be on Thursday 13th February. Details will be circulated soon.

MOTION ONE – A campaigning branch

UNISON is a democratic workplace organisation where workers organise together to fight for rights, better pay, and improved conditions. Our commitment is to workplace representation and democracy, ensuring we are the staff side voice in all matters with management and leadership.

The union is not just elected officers—it is every member working together. We need to overcome the idea that ‘the union’ is something separate that people just pay money to. The union is only strong when we are organised and able to act in coordination. Branch officers and stewards can lead, but it requires members to fight over issues like job cuts and workload.

Though many new members have joined, we lack enough stewards to cover all workplaces or departments. There has been a decline in engagement, limiting our ability to function effectively.

Our strategy is based on two key principles:

  • Base Organising: Developing a strong and functional union at workplace and branch level.
  • Strategic Organising: Building member participation to win specific material changes.

Base Organising
We will launch a quarterly newsletter about workplace developments, requiring members to share what is happening in their teams or departments.

We are also committed to:

  • A branch structure with regular, participative meetings that reflect geography and diversity.
  • Participation by all members regardless of sex, race, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, age or their working hours and their employer
  • Proportional representation among branch office holders and delegations.

Strategic Organising
We must start winning local disputes. Management only takes a union seriously with industrial strength, which requires collective actions, including strike action. The incoming branch leadership will work with members to identify teams where job cuts have increased workloads or strained relations with management.

We will use the UNISON Organising To Win framework, which has been tested in sectors like NHS and social care. This five-phase strategy includes escalating campaigns to force change. We will hold strategy discussions in each directorate and aim to organise in workplaces and schools for our members.

The AGM resolves

  1. For the incoming Branch Committee to focus on recruitment and training of stewards and workplace reps. To encourage more people to become active in the union in order to strengthen our organisation and ability to deliver results.
  2. For convenors and branch officers to host Organising To Win sessions in each directorate to identify teams in the council that we can organise collective action around.
  3. For UNISON to work with the wider community to launch a campaign to save our local public services from government cuts

Proposed: Simon Hannah

Seconder: Daniel Jeffery

MOTION TWO – Building a diverse leadership team

This motion is calling for this Unison branch to actively engage Black members to step into leadership roles in the branch. Our membership is predominately Black female. Black members have always been the central and leading force in our branch since the union’s formation.

National Black Members Conference 2007 noted:

Black members represent around 10% of all workers but are massively under-represented in trade union branches and in UNISON’s own structures. Black workers do face additional barriers when trying to get involved, with this having a disproportionate effect on Black women members.

In 2013 National Black Members Conference noted a concerned about the lack of visibility and representation of Black members at the National Delegate Conference and Service Group Conferences.

In 2022 at National Delegates conference a motion was passed on

National Executive Council and Rule Book Commitment to Fair Representation- Motion 9. It read as follows: Conference believes that the union has the most unrepresentative structure of senior lay leaders since the union was founded 29 years ago. It reflects the old established order of white privilege. It diminishes the role and value of Black members, and it ultimately weakens our union.

Our branch delegation supported this motion with qualification as we believe and act on representation.  We put words into action and elected our first female Black Branch secretary in 2022. But we need to do more. We need to take a more active approach in developing our next Black leadership in our  branch locally and nationally. It is not good enough to pass motions on fair representation, equality  and justice and the top table is still white.  

In 2022 Black workers in our branch were surveyed and 33% said that they would like to get involved in the branch. 50% said that they were unsure, 17% said No.

In 2024 The branch was instrumental in pursuing the Council to sign up to Unison Anti racism charter. Like we are holding the Council to account so should we hold the branch to account in implementing fair representation.

This AGM resolve

  1. Up scale branch’s campaign to recruit, train and support Black workers in leadership, and issue a report to members in 6 month.
  2. Implement a mentoring scheme for Black workers in the branch
  3. Campaign with the Black workers group and other SOG to support Black workers stepping into  leadership roles on the branch committee.
  4. Implement all Regional and National motions on fair representation in our branch.

Proposed: Jocelyn Cruywagen- Lambeth UNISON Black workers group convenor.

Seconder: Bashir Miah

MOTION THREE – Fighting climate change

  1. This branch notes that as global temperatures rise, the impacts on humans and ecosystems are also multiplying. Extreme weather events such as heatwaves, drought and flooding have the greatest impact in those regions and communities which have done least to contribute to the problem.
  2. We note that Donald Trump’s re-election is a dangerous development as he is a climate change denier who wants to increase fossil fuel burning just at the point when we need a just transition away from carbon energy.
  3. This branch notes that Labour is pursuing Carbon Capture and Storage as a way to fight climate change. This technology is largely untested and will cost over £21bn. Meanwhile Labour is slashed its green spending from £28bn a year to £15bn, including the for insulating 19m homes.
  4. London is the most congested city in the western world, our reliance on cars to get around is a big environmental and social problem.

This branch resolves

  • To re-affiliate to the Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group and to send delegates to its meetings.
  • To support the work of the Ecosocialist Action Network that was launched at the Ecosocialism Conference in December 2024
  • To continue its affiliation of Fare Free London and to promote its message that we want free public transport in London and better and more accessible transport for everyone.
  • To build for the mass protests in late 2025 around COP30 – the annual event tasked with stopping Global Warming that has so far failed to deliver.

Proposer: Simon Hannah

Seconder:

Lambeth UNISON AGM 2022: Motions booklet

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Here is the motions booklet for AGM 2022 [Word file]

motion-booklet-agm-2022-1Download

If you disagree with any of these and want to propose alternatives then you need draft an alternative motion and submit it to GWHITING@LAMBETH.GOV.UK by Friday 18th February. We have a rolling AGM this year in three parts so we are not doing amendments, if you want to amend a motion then you must make the changes you want to one of these proposed motions and submit it by Friday 18th February

Support the Pension strikes in France

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Motion agreed at our branch committee on 21 January 2020 

This branch notes:

The fourth national day of strikes and demonstrations across France on 9th January saw massive action against French president Emmanuel Macron’s attacks on pensions. According to union figures, 370,000 people marched in Paris—up by 20,000 from the last day of national action on 17 December. Elsewhere 120,000 took to the streets in Toulouse, 35,000 in the port city of Le Havre, 30,000 in Rouen, 27,000 in Lyon and 25,000 in Grenoble. In Marseille 220,000 people took part, an increase from the 150,000 on 5 and 10 December and 200,000 on 17 December.

Those marching across France included striking rail and public transport workers, refinery, hospital and civil service workers, dockers, teachers, firefighters, barristers, Yellow Vests and more.

Across the country about half of teachers were out on strike, 60 percent in Paris. Over two-thirds of train drivers and nearly 60 percent of train controllers struck according to management figures. Only a skeleton service—staffed by managers and a few scabs—ran on the Paris Metro. All eight oil refineries in France started a four-day strike from 12 noon on Tuesday 7th January. The CGT union reported that this halted the movement of fuel by tanker or pipeline completely.

The government still wants £10.2 billion cuts in pension spending and a system that will mean most people working longer and get less.

 

This branch believes:

  • The strikers are correct to reject Macron’s partial climb-down (which will still leave most people worse off)
  • There is a danger that the union leaders will allow the strikers to be isolated.
  • That in the UK it is our duty to show solidarity and to raise awareness of the strikes through our unions, despite the near total news blackout.


This branch supports:

  • The call for a general strike in France to secure full victory
  • ‘Twinning’ with our sister union in France to update our members on what is happening and to develop solidarity between French and British workers
  • A donation to the Strike fund of £50

Policy – save our Libraries

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This branch notes that:

  1. Two years ago the public accounts committee cautioned that local authorities would soon struggle to deliver statutory services or even stay afloat at all, it was a prescient warning. In the last Public spending round, the Tory government pushed through further cuts in the public sector of £6.1 billion. The overall budget of many authorities has already fallen by as much as a third and Local government grants in England are set to be cut by 56% in the next five years. Lambeth Council have announced that they want to make 1,000 staff redundant over the next two years. We now have to fight to defend the very existence of local government.
  2. In April 2015 the Council circulated a public consultation document (Culture 2020) which recommended cuts across Libraries and Parks. On Monday 12th October, contrary to the desires expressed in the consultation to keep libraries open, Lambeth Cabinet passed a report which will:
  • Hand over three of Lambeth’s Libraries to Greenwich Leisure Ltd (GLL) to turn into gyms. These are big public assets which are being given away to GLL on 25 year ‘peppercorn’ rents.
  • Sell off Waterloo Library and hand Upper Norwood Library to a trust to run the building with no staff
  • Cut another 25% of the staff.
  1. Unison and the Save Lambeth Libraries campaign have organised supporters to oppose the Council’s plans and have lobbied and demonstrated at levels unseen in recent years.
  2. The Friends of Lambeth Libraries have taken legal action to take the Council to court under Judicial Review on the basis of their failure to consult properly and their failure to provide their statutory obligations under the Public Library Act 1964.
  3. UNISON members in Libraries have taken one day unofficial strike action to defend their service and have balloted to take official industrial action from the New Year.

 

We believe that:

  1. The ideology of ‘Austerity’, which means the transfer of wealth from those in need to those with greed, is not inevitable but a political choice of the current Tory government. Residents in Lambeth have rejected the idea that the local Labour Council should pass the Tory cuts onto the people of Lambeth.
  2. We need to build the fight by communities and union members against the Council’s austerity cuts.
  3. Closing half the borough’s libraries is a short-sighted and irresponsible plan; public libraries are an essential part of a functioning literate nation.

We resolve to:

  • Support members in Libraries and Archives in any action they decide to take, including industrial action, to fight back against the Councils cuts/closure plans
  • Support legal action by the Friends of Lambeth Libraries over the Councils failure to consult appropriately and no longer provide its statutory duty to Lambeth citizens.
  • Encourage members to contact their local Councillor and local MPs
  • Encourage members to sign the petition at https://www.change.org/p/london-borough-of-lambeth-save-lambeth-libraries.
  • Raise within the union the call for London-wide and nation-wide action, including demonstrations, publicity and industrial action, to stop the massacre of national Library services currently underway.

Proposed: Tim O’Dell Seconded: Ruth Cashman

This motion was unanimously agreed by an aggregate vote of 110 votes for