What/who is Council?

After a few years on Council, one of the things that has become apparent to me is that much of our membership doesn't understand Council. I mean, they have a vague understanding that it is the board of Equity, and yes, they see the election notices every three years and many of them even vote, but we still remain a bit of a mysterious black box. So, I thought I'd start off with an introduction to Council itself.

Equity is owned by its members, around 5800 of them, scattered from coast to coast. Because Equity was set up in the first place was to provide services and benefits to those members, the choice of benefits and services that Equity provides, and the allocation of resources among them, is rightly determined by those members.

This is wonderful in theory, but putting it into practice is not easy. First off, you can't gather 5000+ people in one place every month or so to vote on things. And if we tried to poll the entire membership each month on all the various things that need deciding, well, you can imagine what a boondoggle that would be.

So, through the Constitution, the membership has created a board and authorised it to govern the organisation on behalf of the full membership. That's Council. It's much easier to get 22 people together each month. Having a board is how most sizable organisations operate. However, where Equity differs from most is the way in which that board functions.

More soon...