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WOMEN MEMBERS' SELF ORGANISED GROUP HELLO FROM MAGGIE… Hi to all women members out there, my name is Maggie Pilmore and I am the Women’s Officer for the Notts County Unison Branch. I have been a Unison steward since 1990 and have been a Senior Steward from 1999/2000. I have been involved in past Local Government Reviews, regrading claims, and disciplinary meetings. I am now doing Job Evaluation full time and approximately 2 days a week on the Data Moderating Panel. My post as Women’s Officer is to look at any issues that affect all women whether they are in full time work or part time workers. One of my main concerns is the lack of crèche facilities or childcare vouchers for women who work for Nottinghamshire County Council. Women are the predominate workforce in Nottinghamshire County Council, and something should be in place now to assist their work/life balance situation. I look forward to meeting old and new members of the Women's Self Organised Group. Please contact me at the Branch Office on 0115 981 0405 if you have any ideas we could put on the agenda for our meetings. Maggie Pilmore, Branch Women’s Officer SUPPORT LOCKED-OUT WOMEN'S SHELTER WORKERS Locked-out workers at a women's shelter in Ontario, Canada, are asking for our help. They are members of our sister union CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees), so it's especially important that each of us help out by sending a message of support. Details can be found at: http://cupe.ca/action/yellowbrickhouse MEETINGS 2004 All meetings run from 12.30 pm to 2 pm and are held in the Staff Lounge at County Hall. 11th May 21st September 14th December If this time and venue is unsuitable, please contact Maggie with alternative suggestions. NATIONAL WOMEN'S CONFERENCE This year’s Women’s Conference was held in Harrogate from 5th to 7th February. Our branch delegates were Maggie Pilmore (Women’s Officer), Jenny Hogg, Ingrid Brown Wallace and myself (Jane Gannon). On the afternoon of the 5th, delegates were invited to attend seminars that discussed issues particularly relevant to women. These were:
Conference proper began on Friday morning with a Welcome to Conference speech by Jan Shortt, Chair of the National Women’s Committee. Jan said that it had been a year of hard work and change for the National Women’s Committee. This was followed with an address by Dave Anderson, President of UNISON. Dave paid tribute to women trade unionists of the past and present, referring to Ellen Wilkinson and her involvement in the Jarrow March. Dave moved on to talk about issues of today which are important to the trade union movement, warning of infiltration by the BNP; the need to end discrimination against women in branches; the future of the trade union movement. The Annual Report was then presented to Conference. The East Midlands Region had submitted a list of questions in advance to the National Women’s Committee, about the annual report, and had received incomplete answers. These were now challenged at the rostrum and the response from the National Women’s Committee on the day, was in my opinion, dismissive and very disappointing. The answers tended to be “don’t know” and the timescale for information was always “shortly”. We then proceeded to the main debates of Conference - the motions. The motions discussed in the morning were Women at Work and Women at Home. Issues included Work-Life Balance, Women and Equality in Pension Provision; Domestic Violence and Legal Aid and an emergency motion following the Angela Cannings trial and Unexplained Infant Death. Jenny spoke to the motion “Women and Pensions”, submitted by the East Midlands Region, which expressed concern that women today are facing a considerable pensions gap: for every pound of income received by men in a pensioner couple, women receive less than 32 pence. Female single pensioners are one of the poorest groups of the older population and nearly a quarter live in poverty. The motion called for more information to be made available to women about pension provision and called upon the Government to restore the earnings link to the state pension. The afternoon session began with a guest speaker – Frances O’Grady, Deputy General Secretary of the T.U.C. Frances’ speech emphasised how the number of women in the trade union movement was increasing. Her main themes were equal pay, pension consequences, the gender pay gap and expensive childcare. Motions debated in the afternoon included Breast Cancer Awareness; the Hidden Homeless (Maggie and I worked together on the speech for this motion on Thursday evening and it was presented to Conference by a colleague from the East Midlands Region); Dying, Death and Bereavement. The final motion of the day was the one that caused most debate and led to a card vote at the end and this was on the Campaign to Legalise Prostitution. There were a lot of speakers for and against the motion, which was carried eventually after a very close vote. Saturday morning began with guest speaker Carol Brown who is a nursery nurse in Lincolnshire. Carol is a relatively new steward and spoke about recruitment and organisation within the union and gave the example of how she and her colleagues had campaigned during a dispute with their local authority. Through a lot of hard work and initiative, they won a very successful campaign and gained a lot of new members. The motions this morning were all to do with Women in UNISON: women’s organisation, discrimination of women within the union, representation on outside bodies and ten years of women in UNISON. Conference ended with a speech by UNISON’s General Secretary, Dave Prentis, who praised the role women play in the union. Dave Prentis said that although a lot had been achieved by women in UNISON over the past 10 years, there was still much to be done and he hoped that the next 10 years would be even more successful. Jane GannonSEMINAR ON WOMEN’S ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK I didn’t know anything about this subject but thought that it sounded interesting so I volunteered to attend on behalf of our delegation. It was a real eye opener! The Women’s Environmental Network (WEN) was set up in 1989. It campaigns and researches on environmental and health issues from a woman’s perspective, such as:
This last one particularly interested me when we were told of the amount of chemicals used in cosmetics and the amount of money spent to promote them, for example in 2001, £32 million was spent on advertising make up! The majority of modern cosmetics are complex mixtures of industrially produced synthetic chemicals. Some of the “nastiest” are Parabens, Phthalates and Triclosan which are found in toothpastes, shampoos, make up and deodorants amongst others. Although individual products contain very small amounts of chemicals, it is the combined and cumulative effect of applying these ingredients in every day products which gives WEN cause for concern. For example, some commonly used chemicals can cause allergic reactions or affect the immune or nervous systems. Using more expensive products doesn’t protect you either as they can still contain risky synthetic material. Interesting stuff! Jane Gannon If you would like to know more, you can contact WEN at PO Box 30626, London E1 1TZ or visit the Women's Environmental Network web site. BREAST CANCER ADVOCACY SEMINAR I attended this seminar, where the main speaker was Joanna Nunnery from the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Campaigns and Advocacy Network. Around 40,000 women and 300 men are diagnosed with breast cancer every year. The Advocacy’s aims are that everyone should have prompt access to the best and most appropriate treatment. There should be increased spending on research and a higher priority to causes and prevention. They have published a booklet called "The Best Treatment - guidelines for women with breast cancer". It covers every aspect of treatment and care - from diagnosis to surgery, and from radiotherapy to hormonal therapy. It gives professional guidelines and waiting time standards. UNISON’s role was also discussed and how we can support members by negotiating time off (treatment can trigger sickness absence) and return to work. Members can be affected by fatigue, nausea, depression and lack of self-esteem. There are also financial implications: not only things like loss of bonus payments, loss of pay, or decrease in pension, but also extra costs such as additional hospital travel and parking, and heating costs. The seminar heard that the Government proposes to amend the Disability Discrimination Act. If the Bill is passed, people with cancer will become legally classed as disabled, and will be guaranteed rights in areas like employment, access to buildings and services, health and social care and education. Jenny Hogg Breast Cancer Advocacy can be contacted on: 020 7557 6590 e-mail: [email protected] or visit their website: http://www.breakthrough.org.uk LINKS TO OTHER SITES The list below are links to web sites that might be of interest or relevance to members of the Women's Self Organised Group. If you are aware of others, please e-mail us with details. |