Practical problems

The way Unison and I expect other trade unions are organised on the ground presents those of us on the front line with some difficulties and problems. I am using my Branch as an example to illustrate what the practical problems are.

Lambeth Unison has approximately 2300 members. Around 1900 are employed by Lambeth Council which means the majority of these people are 'serviced' by activists who are geographically based in the Borough. There are, however, 400 other members, perhaps more, who are either not in Lambeth and can be based anywhere in London. This of course presents us with a difficulty because when we have to represent one of these members the responsibility for that falls on the Branch Secretaries who are already doing a lot of case work within Lambeth (I currently have more than 35 cases as opposed to the average of 20 that a senior HR officer has..) this may not be a major issue if you simply look at the numbers but if you have to represent a member who is located miles away it means that you have to spend most of the day traveling there and back.

My major concern with this is that Branch Secs should not be dealing with huge amounts of casework and should instead be concentrating on organising and developing the branch that is of course what the rule book says we must be doing. So this is an anomaly that needs looking into and the national union should look at allocating members based on geographical proximity to branches.