A Branch Secretary's work....

...is never done. It's certainly true. No-one can ever quite quantify exactly what it is we're supposed to do, but I think I've finally found it. If it needs to be done, and we can't find  anyone else to do it, then its our job. Since I was elected in February, I've not looked back. I absolutely love this job, despite all its frustrations and don't know if I'll ever want to stop. However, I know of more than one person with a story to tell about burn out amongst branch secretaries, so I'm keen to not go the same way. I've been assured by domestic gold that she will help keep me in check - and shes done a good job so far.
It has been a steep learning curve - I imagine its the same for any branch sec -  but I've got my objectives for the year (some my own, some courtesy of UNISON's branch assessment) and am (slowly) working towards them. We're currently balloting on some amendments to local terms and conditions - not good ones - so a lot of my time lately has been devoted to that, as well as the redundancies I seem to have been consulting on almost constantly since I was elected. The Council issued an HR 1 for 200 redundancies and 100 vacant post deletions in Feb 2009, and we're no-where near that total.