Voting restrictions for IfA Council members

[kevin wooldridge]

Reviewing the whole IfA/RAO salaries discussion I wonder if one of the easiest protocols that the IfA could instigate would be to disallow Council members who work for or represent RAOs, from voting on issues pertaining to RAOs.

This would surely go someway to restoring confidence in the impartiality of IfA Council decisions and hopefully avoid future clashes of the type outlined in Gerry Wait's letter.

[Unitof1]

Getting rid of raos would go the whole way though.

[YellowPete]

to be hoinest it probably needs transparancy and the necessity of a facility to state conflicts of interest rather than telling people what their conflicts should be

if you tell them they may find it worth subverting in ways outside of the council, thus undermining the council, but what if the council was in conflict, does the council abstain ould be as good a question as any?

do the sub committes curtail central committee decisions, or does no one watch the watchmen?


it wuz them officer, they said they weoz guna do sumat, but ah dino wot;

:face-huh:

[oldgirl]

That doesn't seem reasonable to me. Surely, if anything, it should be the opposite? That's sort of like saying that if you're a member of the IfA, then you shouldn't be able to vote on what IfA does because you might have a vested interest......

Council members are not there because they're RO staff members or not, they're there because the membership elected them. If you feel that they're not representing the membership, challenge them on it. And/or don't vote for them next time!

[BAJR Host]

That doesn't seem reasonable to me. Surely, if anything, it should be the opposite? That's sort of like saying that if you're a member of the IfA, then you shouldn't be able to vote on what IfA does because you might have a vested interest......

Council members are not there because they're RO staff members or not, they're there because the membership elected them. If you feel that they're not representing the membership, challenge them on it. And/or don't vote for them next time!

have to agree.

[oldgirl]

Reluctantly? }

[Oxbeast]

I tend to agree Clare.

Disallowing everyone who works for an RO from voting on policy which affects ROs would make them powerless. All the standards and guidance affects them; and it is unlikely that companies would be keen to follow voluntary guidance that they didn;t have any say on.

[BAJR Host]

The concept however should be remembered that it is not the ROs that run the IfA but the individual members.

[kevin wooldridge]

Oxbeast has in contradiction rather neatly summarised the dilemma that I am having with RAOs. Within the constitution of the IfA, RAOs are powerless!!

How come then that suddenly they seem to be in a position (as described by Gerry Wait)to threaten the IfA. Either they are powerless or they are not. All the standards and guidance apply to individuals within companies and not the companies themself.

If companies do not like the RAO scheme and the IfA individual member system nobody forces them to remain members.

I would welcome a debate on changing the role of RAOs within the IfA, but surely that debate should be had at an Extraordinary General Meeting with all members invited and through proposals submitted to and voted on. Not through issuing threats at IfA council meetings.

[kevin wooldridge]

I take Clare's point that Council members are there because members elected them and therefore they should be given full range to discuss issues that are raised through Council. Bearing that in mind, I would like to slightly modify my original question.

Could I now suggest that there should be some IfA matters that require the discretion of Council to deal with and some matters should only be settled through the AGM and/or EGM. The AGM/EGM business should include all matters associated with the rules and codes of the IfA and all matters applying to the RAO scheme including pay minima and benchmarking/levelling timetables.