From Michael Carley*

From Michael’s blog here.

We at Campaign for UCU Democracy think Michael’s proposals below stand as a very helpful template for National Executive Committee (NEC) members of UCU seeking to bring about increased transparency over decisions taken in UCU’s national and cross-sector committees:

UCU has a new factionette, committed to democracy and transparency, to go with the other factions committed to democracy and transparency.* In the interests of making something happen, here are some amendments to the standing orders of UCU’s NEC, which any NEC member could move if they really wanted to make certain things happen. To spare NEC members any effort, I present them in a form suitable for submission as is, with an amendment followed by a rationale. These amendments, if adopted, would implement the changes which UCU Commons claim to wish to make to the operation of NEC.

In the spirit of the zeroth law, the first amendment is:

Add before paragraph 1: “0. For the avoidance of doubt, these standing orders shall apply to the National Executive Committee and to all of its subcommittees.”

Rationale To remove any ambiguity about the scope of the standing orders and to ensure that any measures proposed apply to all committees, in the interests of good governance and transparency.

The effect of adding this clause would be to immediately apply such measures as publication of minutes, and of voting records, to all subcommittees of NEC, including HEC and FEC, and the cross-sector committees.

The next amendment would be a simple change to deadlines for motions and amendments.

Amend Standing Order 3.4. Remove “the day that is seven calendar days before the meeting”; replace with “the day that is fourteen calendar days before the meeting”. Remove “the day that is two calendar days before the meeting”; replace with “the day that is seven calendar days before the meeting”.

Rationale To extend the period for scrutiny of motions and amendments.

This would implement proposal two of the UCU Commons Proposals For UCU Accountability.

In order to record the votes cast by NEC members, another simple amendment will do the job.

Add to Standing Order 7.1 “The votes cast by each member of the committee shall be recorded and reported against the name of the member in the minutes of the meeting.”

Rationale To implement the recording and reporting of the result of votes in the committee(s) and of the voting record of members.

This would implement proposal three of the Proposals For UCU Accountability, the second of UCU Commons’ “values”, and the second of the proposals put to NEC candidates by the Campaign For UCU Democracy.

The publication of papers, motions and amendments is a little bit more complicated, but here’s my worked attempt.

Add “3.7 It shall not be in order to publish or distribute outside the NEC any paper, motion, or other document marked Confidential. Any document or part of a document not marked Confidential shall be published with the agenda and minutes of the meeting, subject to any embargo which may be applied under Standing Order 3.6.”

Add “3.8 Documents may be marked Confidential by decision of the committee at the meeting where the document is tabled. It shall be in order to mark part or parts of a document Confidential. It shall be in order for the Chair to mark documents Confidential before a meeting of the committee, subject to ratification by a decision of the committee.”

Add “3.9 It shall be in order for any document tabled to contain a recommendation that the document or specified part(s) of the document be marked Confidential. Such a recommendation shall be understood to be subject to Appendix A 1.5.”

Rationale To implement the publication of as much as possible of the material considered by NEC and its subcommittees, with protection for confidentiality where necessary.

This is a tricky one because there are good reasons for keeping certain things confidential. For example, NEC may consider a report from the union’s staff which states the union’s strength or weakness in certain areas: this should not be widely distributed. There may be times when only a final decision should be reported, and not the alternatives which were considered, since that might give away more information than we would wish. The amendments are structured in such a way that, first, a requirement to keep confidential papers confidential is introduced; next, the presumption of openness is applied (anything not Confidential is to be published); then, control of confidentiality is placed in the hands of members of the (sub) committees, where it belongs; the Chair is given discretion to protect certain information in advance of a meeting, in case it should need to be kept confidential; finally, a mechanism for proposing confidentiality is included. This would cover proposal one of Proposals for UCU accountability and transparency.

On the publication of minutes, a standing order already covers this, so a simple motion to NEC along these lines is all that is required.

“NEC notes Standing Order 3.6, which requires the publication of draft minutes of meetings two weeks after the meeting.

“NEC instructs the General Secretary to ensure that this Standing Order is adhered to and that any minutes not yet published be made available to UCU members immediately.”

This might seem a bit abrupt, but it respects the formalities: in rule (28.1), the General Secretary is responsible for “duties allocated by the National Executive Committee”. NEC implements a decision about the operation of the union by allocating the corresponding duty to the General Secretary.

I will not claim that these proposals are perfect, or that they would meet every demand made by reasonable people. I do not claim that all of them are necessarily good ideas. On the other hand, I am not on the NEC, and it has taken me less than an hour to write this post. There are NEC members who claim to want to make these changes. They have taken no visible steps to do so. If they want to do so, here is a starting point.

*Michael is not a member of any UCU faction, nor a member of Campaign for UCU Democracy.

*Editor’s comment: we at Campaign for UCU Democracy do not consider ourselves a faction or mini-faction, but rather a campaign group made up of UCU members with shared ideas about UCU democracy, transparency, governance and membership engagement. Our group welcomes UCU members of any stripe to join us.