Collective organising is our goal as a union, but to do so we also need people to keep the union itself running. To do so effectively we have a few committees and workgroups.
Committees and workgroups differ in how they operate and what is expected of their members. A committee is a group of people that works on a task or towards a shared goal for a fixed term. Committee members agree to spend the necessary time to achieve this goal.
There are also plenty of tasks that don’t require the full attention of a committee, but could still benefit from skilled volunteers. For these kinds of tasks we’ve decided to form workgroups: groups of people that share a skill or passion that we can easily reach out to for help. Members of these workgroups are not required to put in any time if they don’t want to, but if they accept a project then we do expect them to deliver on that.
Our committees
Oversight committee / Raad van Toezicht
As the board is tasked with running the union and the general assembly is only held a few times a year, there need to be people who hold the board accountable in between these meetings. This is the task of the oversight committee. Furthermore, they serve as a pool of legal and regulatory knowledge to the board and GA. The oversight committee consists of both LSU members and people from outside the union, and its members are people with experience in law, union administration and with relevant societal experience.
Financial audit committee / kascontrolecommissie (KasCo)
Our bylaws (and Dutch law) requires our finances to be independently audited, and the responsibility to do so falls on the Financial audit committee. This committee consists of people with prior experience in financial administration, such as former treasurers for other organisations.
Action committee
This committee organises the smaller actions we participate in and explores what larger actions we’d like to organize or support. For larger actions a dedicated committee may be formed in cooperation with the board.
Recruitment committee (WelCom)
To be an effective union we need as many members as we can get, and reaching out to potential members takes a lot of work. Sign up for this committee if you’d like to help shape the recruitment campaign for LSU and help us grow!
Communication committee (CoCo)
If you don’t have an online presence, then do you really exist? A website and social media presence are key to promoting LSU and the Communication Committee are the people tasked with this responsibility.
Our workgroups
Photography workgroup
Photography is as much an art as it is a skill, and because we want the best possible photos of our actions, we pool our photo talent in this workgroup.
Design workgroup
The design workgroup is where we keep our most creative members, they help design our posters and flyers and sometimes even come up with beautiful cartoons relating to our actions.
Language workgroup
The language workgroup volunteers to check the grammar in our communications and helps translate them between English and Dutch.