PDA Union making "strong" progress

"The PDA has continued to grow in membership and in influence in the pharmacy profession. At the end of March membership stood at nearly 15,000, up considerably from the previous year" he said.

The rate of progress is best demonstrated by the willingness of union members that have put themselves forward for election to the Membership Groups at the recent by-elections in April.

"Last year I reported that we needed to get more members involved in the Membership Groups as too much work was falling on the shoulders of too few people." Mr Murphy told the meeting but he was "delighted that the recent byelection has resulted in filling vacancies to near capacity of eligible Membership Group representatives."

The General Secretary further reported that PDA has taken on over 1500 union related cases during the period between April 2009 and March 2010 (approx. 30 per week). Nineteen of these cases have made a claim in an employment tribunal, of which seven have settled, two have withdrawn and the rest are still in progress.

The union has also acted as representative in nine cases for members negotiating compromise agreements.

Communications Officer

Graeme Stafford was elected to the Executive Committee unopposed as Communications Officer and has been charged with ensuring that systems and processes exist to gather the 'grass root' views and opinions of ordinary members.

Student/Preregistration membership.

The Assistant General Secretary (Strategy) reported that discussions were ongoing with the British Pharmaceutical Students Association (BPSA) to seek to create the student membership group of the PDA Union. To-date these have led to a position where the BPSA constitution has now been changed so as to facilitate joint membership of both the BPSA and the PDA Union.

He felt that "this initiative will deliver significant union and other benefits to pharmacy students. It will also have the effect of significantly increasing the membership numbers."

Membership Groups

Locum Group

• Bob Gartside - Chairman
• Catherine Armstrong - Secretary
• Lindsey Gilpin - Executive Rep.
• Stephen John Hadley
• Richard Evans
• Naina Chotai
• Andrew Jukes
• Keith Davis
• David Tyas
• Oluwaseyi Fasogbon

Community Employee

• Richard Flynn - Chairman & Executive Rep.
• Anthony Sutton
• Barry Allison
• Sushil Sharma
• Jyoti Sood
• Ihad Kamal
• Randeep Tak

Hospital

• John Farwell - Chairman & Executive Rep.
• Joanne Harding
• Asta Prajaparti
• Jamie Richardson
• Brian MacKenna

Primary Care

• Kate Hingston
• Stephen Inns - Temporary Executive Rep.
• David Akroyd
• Stephen Riley

Student/Pre-reg

• Matthew Crum - Executive Rep.
• Abbas Kanani
• James Milner