Call for Special General Meeting on Legal Services

Finsbury Park branch passed the following resolution at its Annual General Meeting, requesting an RMT Special General Meeting about legal services, and has submitted it to the Regional Council for support. For the union to call such an SGM, other branches also need to support it. Stratford no.1 branch has already voted to do so. The Regional Council Executive endorsed this resolution on behalf of the Regional Council at its meeting on 9 February 2010.

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That the AGM of Finsbury Park Branch calls on a Special General Meeting of the national union be called to discuss a root and branch evaluation of the legal service currently provided and for this meeting to take resolutions from branches on how to improve the service that our members currently receive. We believe that there is a preponderance of our current solicitors to advise national officers not to run cases on a financial basis rather than on merits and this is evidenced by a number of cases in our own branch that have been declined and after appeal go on to secure significant settlements. We cite the case of Bro Vuoto as one but there are many many more and this is our experience and we believe that of many branches around the country. To this end we call on this motion to be circulated nationally for support within provisions of the rule book and we ask that the national union provides our branch with statistics of those cases where legal support has been requested and the percentage that are supported and declined and what types of cases these are (e.g. unfair dismissal, race discrimination etc).