Although this is my first National Delegate Conference as a delegate (for Middlesbrough branch) I did attend Glasgow 2015 conference as a new rep visitor awaiting steward's training.
Being in a trade union is a privilege to hold dear and to encourage in others. Our voices and efforts are more important than ever in a country that has seen the worst wage growth since the 1780s!
I've not been a rep long, but that initial feeling of relief at my first branch meeting in Middlesbrough where reps from the college, the council, criminal justice agencies were all getting together to try and improve the lives of their co-workers was a revelation and has been a source of solace and strength ever since.
At NDC this feeling is amplified. I write this on Wednesday evening and am encouraged by the buoyant, engaged tone to the conference so far. It has also been incredibly moving hearing the brave accounts of the delegates at the podium turn their stories of hardship and injustice into motions that will seek to improve the working environments of people they may never meet yet, with our collective implementation, will positively impact upon their lives.
It's great to see democracy in action at conference and I'm proud to represent the 2,200 members when I lift the card, but it is a shared pride. I'm only sorry my work colleagues weren't there to see the debate on Motion 19, Tackling Stress. The speakers were excellent. Back at our workplace we are seven years into a pay freeze whilst picking up the workload of those who have left and not been replaced in the meantime. You're just expected to get on with it. Those delegates did a brilliant job in bringing home to us the untold burden and pain of austerity. A burden and pain that the wider public now seem to be realising was so unnecessary all along.
What has been the purpose of all the damaging cuts? At what point will we all see the benefits of the Treasury living within its means? When the deficit is reduced? Will it be then that we will be allowed the space to fulfil our individual and collective potential and share in the common fruits of our labour as we ought?
Of course it won't and as Unison members I'm sure we could see that austerity was a con trick all along.
It's been a great conference at Brighton this year. There is a definite sense and a feeling in the air that the tide is turning and it's not by chance alone. It's by all our efforts. I'm very much looking forward to hearing Jeremy Corbyn, a Unison member like us, speaking on Friday. We backed him two summers ago when he was a rank outsider on the Labour leader ticket and he has our backs now.
I will take all the positive messages I've heard from conference and its fringe meetings back to Middlesbrough and Durham and wish you all a safe journey home.
