Committees lay groundwork for CEIU convention

Delegates to CEIU’s September convention will chart the union’s future for the coming three years, and resolution committees are working hard to ensure the convention runs smoothly and effectively.

Earlier this year, locals submitted convention resolutions on a wide variety of topics. The resolutions fall into four broad categories:

• By-laws (the CEIU Constitution)
• Finance
• PSAC (resolutions for referral to the 2009 PSAC convention)
• Policies and General

Committees are struck for each of these categories and are responsible for carrying out a careful review of all resolutions submitted. The overall goal of the committee is to organize the resolutions so that the convention can deal with them effectively. To do this, the committees follow a number of steps.

An initial step is to determine if some resolutions are dealing, in most respects, with the same issues. If there are such resolutions, the committee may decide to formulate a “composite resolution” that will allow convention delegates to deal with the issues in a single package. This prevents the convention from becoming bogged down with a number of separate but similar resolutions.

Committees also prepare recommendations on each resolution after carefully discussing and commenting on its merits. The committee will either propose that the convention adopt a resolution (a recommendation of “concurrence”) or reject it (a recommendation of “non-concurrence”). Convention delegates have the power to overturn the recommendation of a committee on a given resolution, so there is no sense in which a committee ‘dictates’ which resolutions will be adopted. Their role is to help sort out the issues contained in a resolution so that delegates can debate them in an informed manner.

The convention committees responsible for resolutions dealing with By-laws and Policies and General met recently in Ottawa, with the Finance and PSAC committees scheduled to meet in the near future. The work of these committees is critical to the success of a convention but because it is carried out in the background its value is rarely recognized. “Good committee work makes for good conventions, and I want to thank the committee members and CEIU staff who are working so hard to make our convention in September a success.” said National President Jeannette Meunier-McKay.

The CEIU Triennial Convention will be held September 12-16 in Gatineau, Quebec.