This meeting took place on Thursday last week, and was your committee's monthly opportunity to represent the Co-op's membership in this area.
Before the meeting proper, there was a discussion of the 2007 action plan with April Armstrong, Senior Co-operative Affairs Officer for the Central & Eastern region of the Co-op Group. It has been decided that events should address one of the five Social Goals chosen for 2007:
- Climate Change
- Social Inclusion
- Crime
- Food Integrity
- Modern Co-operation
In addition, there will be a larger proportion of events that are planned and organised centrally (as the Fairtrade at Christmas event was). While I am pleased that central planning of some events will prevent duplication of effort by different Co-op officers, I think that we should be determined to ensure that more local events, such as the Co-op's presence at Strawberry Fair, will not get squeezed out.
The first item on the agenda of the real meeting was the trading performance of the Co-op's businesses in the Cambridge and East Anglia area. Currently, food sales are doing OK generally, with a range that is improving in quality all the time. There were no new major issues this month with any of the other businesses in our patch: Pharmacy, Funeralcare, Travelcare, or Shoefayre. The Bank, Farmcare and CIS are managed centrally, so we don't get to view any performance figures for these businesses.
We received reports on several recent membership events, including an educational conference, the
winter fair and the highly successful
Fairtrade at Christmas event. Ranjit (our Co-operative Affairs Officer) was congratulated for his delivery of these projects.
Each year, a decision is made by each Area Committee about the support that the Co-op will give to local Co-op Guilds and other Co-operative auxilliary organisations. We were pleased to continue the support of the Cambridge branch of the
Co-operative Womens Guild, as well as the
Woodcraft Folk groups in our area.
I raised the point that other Area Committees in our region have had to resort to Co-options to make up their numbers - i.e. there were unfilled vacancies at the last set of elections. Fortunately, we in Cambridge and East Anglia are not currently in that position, as Maggie Bending stepped in to fill the gap left by Gill Miller when she left in the Autumn - but we did not have a competitive election as we had only four candidates for four positions. In order to ensure that we attain something approaching meaningful democracy in the Co-op, competitive elections are vital. The Area Committee, in the next meeting or so, will discuss possible ways to ensure a good number of candidates at future elections. My idea is for a mentoring system, where those people who request a candidates information pack are given the phone number of a current committee member who can answer queries, and guide them through the application process.
We then worked our way through the constitutional review document, detailing respoenses to the Regional Board where there was general agreement about the points raised. This is a little too involved to go into in much depth here, and in any case this process may need to be restarted in light of the
possible merger between the Co-op Group and United.
Bob Burlton, Co-op Group Chairman, has had a pleasant day or so stacking shelves and packing bags in the Pershore Co-op in Worcestershire. While this has no doubt been done with an eye to a bit of free publicity, the general principle of management experiencing the day-to-day work of the Society is sound - it can aid management perspective and understanding of shopfloor issues, as well as encouraging a bit of good old-fashioned solidarity with other employees.
