Tonights branch meeting

Geordie told us that in the previous quarter the union assisted it's members at the port in claiming over £64,000 in damages. This quarter it was over £41,000! Another good reason to be a member!

The bit you've all been waiting for is Phil put to the branch the pay deal that he will be putting to the company. He will be asking for 5% on all rates (overtime and basic etc) plus a lump sum to cover the two days unpaid leave that we all lost and something towards our Christmas bonus. He added that the rpi is currently at -1.4% so that would mean to us a real improvement of 6.4%. He feels that the company will be pushing for a pay freeze. He is asking for this because volumes over the quay didn't drop as presumed and as we all know in the past few months we've all been busy.
Phil did comment that he knows in the past we've all had our squabbles but we now need to draw a line under this and all stand together strong and united.

I've been asked over the past few days about why we don't have a ballot on the LMS system. I brought up this point at the meeting and was told that the union has rules that we have to abide by and we are only allowed to hold two types of ballot, one being the type that we normally hold which is supervised and held in the union office. The other is a postal ballot, this is normally used if we vote for industrial action after the manned ballot goes this way. It was also mentioned that with the union office now at the Trinity car park 95% of the workforce has no real excuse for not going 1 minute out of their way to vote.

I'd just like to say that I personally though tit was more than disappointing that out of nearly 2000 members that only a handful attended the meeting especially after all the moans I hear on a daily basis about "Just get us our money back!"