EC Meeting July 2022

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Staff training.

Various training offers have been taken up within the hotel and GFTU.

Coaching support has been organising for our Head of Finance.

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Re-publication.

10.1 I am pleased to say Routledge have decided to re publish Dr Alic Procheska’s book on the history of the GFTU up to 1980. I think this is well times. 10.2 Royalties will go to the Educational Trust, there will be a discount on sales for GFTU affiliates and I have done a new introduction to the book.

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A New Deal for Workers.

Taking the campaigning forwards.

June 18 th was a great start. It represented a very important moment in my view in turning the tide. We have to tip the balance back in favour of workers. Unions are central to this and their high profile in defending pay and jobs will be critical. The importance of our economics work is that it enables us to think more about not just responses to the scale of the crisis, but alternative economic strategies. We have done the right thing on this. Also, in bringing new workers into the movement, we have the best young members development weekend in the movement. We should continue our history work because the new generations need to be inspired by the great role our predecessors had in creating rights and democracy and improvements to society and the economy. There is still a job to be done in bringing more unions into the wider family. There are many good unions not in the TUC or GFTU and the GFTU Is ideally placed to help develop these and create greater solidarity between workers’ organisations. Our work on linking with the community has been pioneering and now should be consolidated by a major national conference to launch our book. Winning pay rises does not cause inflation and also does not stop the causes of inflation so we have to equip ourselves with new policies to transform the economy. We should declare the neoliberal period over and recognise as our forebears in the post War period did, that public ownership and planning, the very things that got us through the pandemic, national collective bargaining, solidarity between workplace and community, investment of the wealth of the country in the country and the prevention of the flight of capital, are essential components going forward. We should consider producing a background paper for unions on why pay rises do not cause inflation, the argument that they do has been prevalent for 50 years and needs to be effectively countered. The strength and weakness of trade unions is that they take a pragmatic approach. We deal with immediate problems and have a realistic approach. But this insufficient now. We now need to stand together more unitedly to oppose those policies that undermine us all. We need price controls, we need investment in the productive economy, we need a return of exchange controls on capital flows, we need a completely new approach to government financing and management of the national debt.

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