It was a strange day, the first day at Congress after lunch usually considers rules and internal issues which is what happened today, also the CEC has the right to produce special reports. One of its papers this year, was called, “GMB Taskforce for Positive Change Final Progress Report to Annual Congress 2023”. The Task Force was set up after the Monaghan Inquiry which found the GMB to be institutionally sexist. The Inquiry had been set up after sexual harassment complaints were made against the then incumbent General Secretary, Tim Roache.
As one might guess from the title, the report proposed winding-up the task force. Despite being only able to report completion of 11/27 recommendations with five yet to be started.
The rest of this article, below/overleaf looks at the arguments for and against winding up the task force, and reports on the debate to backtrack on Monaghan’s recommendation 3. …