Nomination request to Welsh districts

I am standing for re-election to the National Executive Committee to represent Wales. Below is my nomination request sent to all NEU districts yesterday. If you are a member in Wales, please ask your district to hold a nomination meeting and consider nominating me again. It has been my utter privilege to represent Wales and there is still so much work which I am ready and very willing to do.

Dear NEU Secretaries, Thank you for the support you have given me over the last 2 ½ years and I do hope you will again consider nominating me as one of your candidates for Wales. I hope you will agree that I have worked very hard as one of the three executive members for Wales over the last 2 ½ years and as well as representing Wales at every NEC meeting I have endeavoured to be very inclusive in ensuring that all secretaries and members have been kept updated with news from the executive. I have been instrumental in improving communications between executive members and the NEU Cymru office by requesting and attending weekly updates with our Wales secretary and feeding back to secretaries and reps where appropriate. On becoming an executive member, the strategy committee I chose to sit on is Union Strength whose remit is to provide oversight of the recruitment and retention, organising, union learning strategies and work to build district, branch and sector organisation. I am also the elected vice chair of the Wales committee whose remit is to consider the implementation of the Union’s strategic plan in the area of Wales and provide advice on relevant policy issues in Wales to the five Strategy committees.I have tried hard to improve communications and support between secretaries and reps, setting up a new what’s app group for secretaries and holding regular catch up sessions for us all to compare case work and feel less isolated especially during the coronavirus crisis. Recently. I organised and held a training session with one of the Wales organisers to ensure that all secretaries are able to access the membership system, download up to date reports and create a bulk email to ensure all members are reached. I try hard to attend district meetings that I am invited to and I am always happy to give an executive update. I regularly update my blog after executive meetings and with all the campaigns and events I have been involved with – here is my blog in case you haven’t had the time or opportunity to look at it before now and I ask that you share this with members too https://walesnationalexecutive.news.blog/I have been at the forefront of campaigning in Wales during my time so far on the executive, I was present at the launch of our school cuts Cymru campaign as well as participating in both the Senedd and Westminster briefings speaking to MS’s and MPs about the funding situation for Education in Wales. I also did a press release and a radio interview about school funding in the Vale of Glamorgan which is still funded at the lowest rate in Wales. I have been involved with giving evidence to the IWPRB when taking decisions on teacher pay increases annually. I have represented NEU Cymru in many activist meetings such as with Peoples assembly and People before profit, especially during the last year in discussions about coronavirus and the effects on Education. I organised a well-attended super Saturday event in the Vale of Glamorgan during the general election period in December 2019 and I have assisted secretaries and members in disputes with their school or local authority on restructures and/or redundancies, attending to support members on picket lines and in meetings or demos whenever I am able to.During the coronavirus crisis I have been very involved with health and safety issues, setting up a health and safety reps group for Wales and concentrating on recruiting new health and safety reps both in my district and across Wales. I have also attended many national health and safety forums to ensure that I am as up to date as possible at this crucial time.I believe that we need to work collaboratively both with NEU colleagues and with colleagues from other Educational unions both within our own districts, across Wales and also across England as there is a wealth of knowledge to be shared. I consider myself extremely lucky to have shared platforms with amazing activists from trade unions such as Mark Serwotka (general secretary of PCS union), Shavannah Taj (general secretary of Wales TUC) and other activists such as Laura Pidcock (past Labour MP) over the last few years. I believe that in order to raise the profile of Welsh issues across the whole union, executive members must attend national events as well as Welsh events, such as District Secretaries Briefings and National Conferences and I have always committed myself to that. I have attended and spoken at many conferences such as conference Cymru, National NEU conference, TUC conference, Wales TUC, Women of the Isles, Women’s conference and World congress to name but a few. Whether I am speaking locally, nationally or internationally, I always seek to represent Wales to the best of my ability.During my time on the executive I have expanded my international solidarity work by taking part in a second delegation to Palestine and organising and taking part in a Wales NEU trip to Calais to volunteer in the Care4Calais warehouse for a weekend. I have also been part of an IS committee that organised a successful online event about the work Care4Calais does and I was the regional contact for the music for Cuba campaign during when we collected many instruments across Wales which were sent to Cuba during our 2019 National conference in Liverpool. I was lucky enough to attend the world congress in Bangkok and to liaise with international trade unionists, we all fight the same fights whatever country we live in and we have much to learn from each other.I am a practicing teacher with eighteen years classroom experience in Secondary Education in Wales. This allows me to empathise with members as I have and do face many of the same issues that our members face on a daily basis. In my role as district secretary, I have dealt with a wide range of issues including representing members at meetings about absence, grievance and whistleblowing allegations as well as negotiating for their rights in schools where redundancies are being threatened. I have gained a breadth of knowledge and I have taken that knowledge and enthusiasm into my role on the executive where I have done much work to improve things within the way our union operates in Wales. I consider myself to be a very strong trade unionist in the truest sense of the word which means “maintaining or improving the conditions of their members’ employment” and I work tirelessly for the rights of members both in the Vale of Glamorgan and across Wales. I hope to be re-elected to one of the national executive positions and continue to fight for the rights of all Welsh union members. I do hope you will consider supporting my nomination.Kind RegardsMairead Canavan