Annual General Meeting, Thursday 21 March 2013, at The Railway Club, Grantham

2013 T&FS Conference Motions

1) This Conference instructs the TFSE to initiate a campaign amongst BT Retail based call-centre members to encourage them of the benefits of taking their full allocation of lunches and breaks and discouraging the working of extra unpaid hours to achieve targets and bonuses.

This conference agrees that such practices are not in the best interests of members long-term Health and Wellbeing and also skew the performance measures and targets set, thereby disadvantaging those not able to complete extra unpaid hours.

2) This Conference instructs the TFSE to address potentially discriminatory practices within the BT leave systems and processes that mean that part-time workers (predominantly women) are disadvantaged when Summer Leave is released. Specifically: -

- Releasing the leave early in the morning so that those who have to come in later in the day, due to childcare, miss out.
- A method to ensure that those not scheduled to work on the day of the Summer Leave release do not end up at the back of the queue.
- A process to ensure that part-time workers have a simple, quick and effective escalation process to resolve their leave issues should the above processes fail to be enacted.

3) Conference is concerned at the effect of the economic downturn on the pay of members working on contractual bonus schemes. Conference instructs the TFSE to ensure that sales targets are achievable and set up in such a way that enables members to receive a bonus payment of some level for each and every item sold.

4) Conference congratulates the T&FSE on the launch of the Closing The Loopholes agency pay campaign and instructs the T&FSE to continue to vigorously challenge both BT plc and Manpower (but also any other agencies working on BT contracts) on their use of Pay Between Assignment (PBA) contracts.

Conference notes that PBA agency contracts have been extensively deployed in BT Retail Consumer Sales and Operator Services units. In some BT sites this has led to a £400/month difference in pay between those agency workers on PBA contracts and those that received equal pay on the 1st of October 2011.

The T&FSE should continue to investigate all methods possible to address the loopholes within the Equal Treatment for Agency Workers, including campaigning within BT plc to get this major employer to stop using these contracts.

2013 General Conference Motions

1) This Conference instructs the NEC to initiate a campaign to highlight the disadvantages to individuals who either cannot afford or cannot get access to the internet via Broadband.

To address the digital divide, the CWU should pursue policies to be included in the forthcoming Labour Party manifesto that address both the Broadband ‘Not Spots’ in the UK, bandwidth restrictions and Broadband availability for people who are from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds.

2) This conference instructs the NEC to campaign against the cuts in the Legal Aid budget especially the cuts affecting victims of domestic violence, who now have to prove that their life has been threatened in order to get legal support for non-molestation orders, ‘Go’ orders and restraining orders.

3) Once again, this conference instructs the NEC to mount an awareness campaign on the issue of psychological and emotional domestic violence as per the terms of Composite Motion 15 which was accepted at Annual Conference 2012.

Motions to the 2013 AGM
1) The Branch agrees to the creation of separate & independent budgets in the areas of Equality, Training and Geographical areas (based on Leicester, Northampton, Nottingham & Peterborough). The Equality budget will be £5000.00 and shall be the responsibility of the Branch Equality Officer, who will liaise with all other Branch Officers over delegations to equality conferences and other events. The Training Budget will be £1000.00 and shall be the responsibility of the Branch Secretary. The Geographical Budgets will each be £1000.00 and shall be the responsibility of the geographically based assistant secretaries.

Proposed: Les Marriott
Seconded: Russ Payne

2) The Branch agrees to create a separate, dedicated, Equality budget. The Equality budget shall be the responsibility of the Branch Equality Officer (in conjunction with the Branch Women’s Officer where appropriate). The Branch Equality Officer’s remit will be to utilise this annual budget allocation to determine branch representation, and expenditure, for all CWU Equality Conferences , equality related meetings and events. The Branch Equality budget will initially be £5,000, but will be reviewed annually.”

Proposed: Julia Upton
Seconded:

3) Delegations to Annual Conference should as far as possible reflect the geographical, occupational, gender and ethnic composition of the East Midlands Branch. In addition to the Branch’s Conference delegation entitlement, the cost of two new trainee delegates / conference observers (who have not previously attended a CWU General / Industrial Conference as a delegate), will be met from branch funds.

Proposed: Martyn Sharp
Seconded:

4) The Branch agrees, commencing at the AGM in March 2013, the election of Branch Officers, Committee Members and Delegates will be carried out biennially.

Proposed: Les Marriott
Seconded: Russ Payne

5) The East Midlands Branch agrees to urgently commence discussions with all co-located and adjoining branches, in order to facilitate a branch merger(s), and/or a complete review of its branch boundaries. The branch agrees that the aim of these discussions is to have no cross-branch locations, within our branch geography, where membership demarcations are based solely on outdated (i.e. former BT Engineering, Clerical and Operator) constituency splits.

Proposed: Julia Upton
Seconded: