GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

manifesto would allow every single trade union to be able to play its no.1 issue

into a bigger agenda of, say, 10 points. You could talk about higher pay, a real

living wage, a different outcome for pensions that is not DC. I think we could

talk about the intensity of work, by the way. One of my things in this is I think

we should run a campaign in the trade union movement to slow down the

intensity of work and I think you will see workers flocking towards trade unions

if we were to start talking in those terms, like they talked about slowing down

the planet, like I hear people like Guy Standing talking about universal basic

income and he talks about slowing down the pace of life, that it would actually

be better for the economy, better for equality and it would deal with the

circumstances that we are facing, so why not have a bit of an agenda that says

in our new deal for workers we are going to slow down the intensity of work.

That would mean us saying something like this, and I want our union to do this,

by the way: “Yes, we know you have got technology, we know what it can do,

we know you can use it to control our working lives and keep making us work

harder and faster and cheaper, but, do you know what, we ain’t having it”. Is it

wrong for us to start making arguments that actually it ain’t good for the

economy, it ain’t good for productivity, because we have apparently got the

lowest productivity in your Europe out of the most developed countries in

Europe, so it is a busted system and actually if people were given more power

over their daily working life and not run by technology, I am not suggesting you

can get rid of it, but you can put limits to its use in support of workers and in

support of companies who might want to develop things in a different way. So

a manifesto is important, but it is important that we draw it together, all of us,

and that we all agree on what that is.

The fourth point is action. I say this from a point of view that I think about this

a lot. What could we do as a trade union movement to change things? I am

fed up seeing other groups, frankly, talking about that or doing things

sometimes, I am not fed up with seeing people do things, but I want us to be

part of that. I am fed up going to conferences or rallies where I am a trade

union leader and I am saying that we are going to change this, we are going to

change that, and I am not standing alongside all of the other trade union

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