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Minutes of the North West Region amicus-lgbt Committee held on Saturday 18th August 2007 at 6.30pm in the Lesbian & Gay Foundation's Meeting Rooms, Manchester
1.Attendees
Mick Stott, Mark Burns, Andrew Wheatley, Anna Booth, Mark Shickell, Graham Cain
2.Apologies
Peter Jewell, Peter Cookson, Sarah Holden, all 3 other equality committee members.
3.Introduction
Mick opened the meeting at 18:30 and welcomed all the members present.
4.Minutes of the May 2006 Meeting
The minutes were agreed as a correct record.
5.Matters Arising
Mick reported back that he had had a response from the NEC regarding our motion on training facilities, to say that it had been noted, and when Unite looks into its training facilities, may be considered.
6.Reports From Delegates:
i.NW Regional Council :
Mick reported that there had been little "equalities" business discussed at the last RC meeting.
At our last meeting we agreed to submit an amended version of the Equalities Committee Standing orders to the RC. Mick attended the disability committee meeting in June and they agreed with our amendments with a couple of further minor amendments. The RC's response was that they would be waiting for ALL the equalities committee's responses before discussing the standing orders. As two of the committees have never met it seems unlikely that this will be discussed in the near future.
ii.NW TUC LGBT Forum
No Report - The forum had not met since our last meeting.
iii.National amicus-lgbt Committee
Andrew reported that they had done a workshop on the planned Single Equalities legislation and the response to the consultation.
The Head of Equalities reported that there would be training of equality reps starting with members of the young members' network. This would include a conference for all equality reps. The scheme would then be rolled out to other equalities structures. It was hoped to obtain similar legal rights for these types of rep that are currently enjoyed by learning reps.
She further reported that there were about 350 members on the LGBT mailing list which consists of the old Lagim list and other addresses collected by the Equalities department. Mick commented that this number was no more than were on the list he passed over 12 months ago.
With regard to the November LGBT course, of which nothing had yet been heard, the view was expressed that committee members ought not to attend except as guest speakers (i.e. Adam and/or Ann as Chair and Deputy respectively). This is in order to allow others to go as there are only 16 places.
Finally the committee discussed international work and would be concentrating on advocacy for LGBT people in Jamaica, Zimbabwe and Poland (the whole of eastern Europe is a problem but we needed to start somewhere).
The committee's next meeting is in 2008.
iv.Other Reports
None
7.Education and Training for members
There is to be a national training event for LGBT members who are interested in becoming reps in the workplace and want to find out more about the law and issues which affect LGBT people in the workplace. It is on 2nd - 4th November at Quorn Grange. We hope to encourage new activists to attend.
At a regional level it is planned to be running a new activists day/weekend in the autumn, inviting people that are new to the LGBT network, especially those we have met at the North West Pride events. The proposed date for this is 20th/21st October, depending on whether it is one or two days and subject to approval.
8.Updates On Regional Activities
Manchester Pride
Manchester Pride had approached Amicus with a sponsorship offer. The regional council management committee agreed to officially sponsor Manchester Pride, to the sum of £5000 + VAT.
This would mean a high profile for the Unite logo at the event. We will be the official T-shirt sponsor, so will have our logo on the back of the t-shirts which are worn by staff and volunteers throughout the festival. We will also have our logo on the guide maps, posters, at the entrance and exit points and on the main stage scrims. We have a stall in the lifestyle expo as part of the deal and have the right to have staff wandering through the site leafleting etc.
For the event, we have a team of volunteers, including staff and officers who will be helping out on the stall and with the other promotional activity we have planned, which is to do a survey regarding LGBT membership and knowledge of trade unions. Our volunteers will be approaching people to collect the data and point them towards the stall if they are interested. A rota is being put together for staff members, volunteers and committee members who wish to help during the two/three days. We plan to keep the stall open later than usual this year and already have volunteers for this.
In terms of literature, we have the new LGBT network leaflets and stickers as well as a regional leaflet which explains some of the new laws and why people should be in a union. There will also be other union information and literature.
There will be the usual merchandise available, (mints, pens, key rings, bags, balloons etc) which we plan to pre-pack into bags to give away along with membership forms and information.
This is an experiment for the union. We have only ever had bad experiences sponsoring Pride (London) and it is really hoped that we will raise the profile of the new union amongst the LGBT community and will show that sponsorship is worthwhile for the exposure it brings us as, sending the message that we do take equality seriously as a union.
9.Report from Sarah Holden on a variety of issues
a)Regional Equalities Strategy / Campaign Plan
A meeting with some LGBT committee members earlier this month discussed and set a way forward for us as a committee and a region in terms of our equality work. While it is recognised that things have not always been perfect, now that we are a new union it is time to look forward to where we can go and what we can achieve, and not back to what has gone before.
We set a number of campaign priorities for the coming year. b)Organising / Building our Activist Network It was agreed that we need to concentrate on building our numbers and refreshing ourselves through bringing in new members to the LGBT network. We discussed a number of ways of doing this, realising that simply advertising meetings and the network will not draw in the people we need. While we should continue to promote and advertise ourselves whenever we can, we need to give people something to get involved in and to actually go and search out those who may be interested. We discussed doing presentations and targeted promotion to target industries, such as airlines, banking etc where we know there are LGBT members. While we recognise this is unlikely to pick up members in more traditional manufacturing workplaces, it is a starting point. We also talked about setting up Equality / LGBT groups in larger companies. We also recognised that the new Equalities Reps project will identify new activists who should then be invited to become involved on our equalities networks. c)Global Solidarity This is something which forms part of the national Equalities strategy and which we are keen to progress as an LGBT network in the North West. In too many countries LGBT people are being killed, imprisoned or live in daily fear of persecution. We particularly want to focus on Jamaica, Zimbabwe and Poland for this work, but recognise that there are far more places where it is still unsafe to be LGBT and 'out'. d)Campaign Events We decided to set a number of events which we can run campaigns around to raise our profile and get new activists involved with. We have set these for the coming year and hope to use them to deliver some of the above objectives, raising our profile, bringing new people on board and campaigning on global issues. The events are spread throughout the year, will be planned by the Regional Equality officer and the committee and are as follows:
i.August 2007 Manchester Pride 2007
(Sponsoring - Details earlier in report)
ii.1st December 2007 World Aids Day
While not specifically an LGBT issue, it is still a fact that 1 in 10 of us will develop HIV, it still is a stigma attached to the LGBT community and it is a global issue, in terms of response, access to treatment etc. This is also the date of our next committee meeting when it is planned to finish early and attend the vigil in Sackville Park.
iii.February 2008: LGBT History Month
We can do a variety of things around this, for example, targeting workplaces to get information out, looking at how far we have come and how much we still need to do in terms of Equality at work (legal equality vs. our working experience)
iv.May 17th 2008: IDAHO (International Day against Homophobia)
We can link up with other regional events or do our own, but this will fit in with both our experiences of Homophobia in the UK, at work etc but also internationally and as such will fit in with our global solidarity work.
v.August 2008: Manchester Pride 2008
It is hoped that we will sponsor again next year and make our presence bigger and better than ever before, with a parade entry that we encourage and mobilise our members to come along to. This will be in the context of a fully integrated new union as the transition period will be coming to an end by then.
10.Agree Any Issues that We Wish To Refer Back To The National Committee, Regional Council Or NEC
Nothing specific other than to thank RC for financial support given to Manchester Pride.
11.Dates of Future Meetings:
01.12.2007 - World AIDS day, followed by attendance at candlelit vigil in Sackville Park.
15.03.2008 - get ready to start it all again with Forum in April
28.06.2008 - additional meeting suggested in case forums in 2008 are delayed
12.Any Other Business
With no other business the meeting closed at 8.55pm
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