Rules Revision Conference
The 2008 Rules Revision Conference took place on Sunday 8 and Monday 9 June 2008.
As usual there was a variety of proposals to change, delete or add rules. The mover of a proposal is allowed to speak for not more than three minutes then the proposal may be seconded formally or by a speaker making a seconding speech. A debate follows, however if no one seconds the motion, it "falls", i.e. it no debate takes place and the motion can not be voted on. After debate the mover has the right of reply, to answer any points raised in the debate. A vote takes place usually by a show of hands, but under certain circumstances (generally where the hand vote appears to be very close) a card vote is taken, this takes in to account the actual membership of each branch delegation voting.
Highlights
- The first proposal attempted to add "Lifelong Learning Officer" to the list of officers a branch is obliged to have. It was not carried.
- A proposal by the National Executive Council to remove the award of a "Union Gold Badge" to a member in recognition of their contribution to the union was not carried.
- Another contentious proposal to prevent portability members from standing for Union office was not carried.
- Currently Annual Conference takes place over six days (two for General Conference and four days for the Postal and the Telecoms and Financial Services Conferences). A proposal was carried to reduce Annual Conference to five days, with just three days for the Postal and Telecom and Financial Services Conferences.
- There was also a proposal to change the number of delegates each branch can send to conference. Delegations for all branches are calculated on a sliding scale, but the proposition wanted to give Postal and Operator and Ancillary Constituency Branches more delegates and Clerical, Engineering and PTS branches fewer delegates per membership block. It was not carried.
- A proposal to change the way the Youth Advisory Committee is elected was not carried. The existing rules guarantee that candidates from Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and England will be on the committee. The proposal sought to change this so that the candidate from each region with the most number of votes would be elected, with the remaining candidates with the most votes elected in descending order of votes until 12 lay members have been elected. Despite the democratic nature of the proposed change, it could have meant some areas would be without representatives on the committee.
- The NEC proposed two motions aimed at reducing specific provision for BT Fleet at Conference. One motion was to remove the time slot for BT Fleet motions from the Telecoms and Financial Services Conference, the other was to stop branches with BT Fleet members submitting an additional motion on a matter pertaining to them. Needless to say, conference was not going to let the NEC disenfranchise any of the members and the proposals were not carried.
