GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

your comments and thank you, President, for the opportunity to make a

comment and to ask a question.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Chris. We will take another question.

BRO COLIN KIRKHAM: Col Kirkham, GMB, a member of the Exec at GFTU. A

couple of points, questions, whichever way you want to look at it really. The

first one, the app that you described, are there any problems with GDPR with

that? Are we good with that? Has it been done before, because I am not so

sure? I am really interested in that idea. My second one, I support everything

that you have just said and the way you delivered it, to me, as a longstanding

trade unionist it is very simple, very simple what you have just described. How

has it not been done and why is it not done through all the affiliation fees that

we stump up to the TUC to organising a better way that we get our act

together?

BRO RONNIE DRAPER (Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union): I think some of

mine are not just questions, but observations, just a few things. I want to start

with the question of action. It has been discussed amongst unions for years. I

remember the prison officers asking about the feasibility of a general strike and

getting a response from one person, from one union that said, “We can’t try,

because we’ve tried it once and it failed”. That was in 1926, the person’s

mother and father were not even born then. It seemed a crazy response. We

can sit on either side of the fence on whether we should do. I totally agree that

coordinated action is the way that we should do it, whatever we call it as a title.

There is not a workplace in this country where you do not have a problem,

whether it is pensions, salaries, precarious work, hours, sexual abuse,

harassment, all types. Every single workplace will have a problem and if we

can call action, we ballot for action all the time, we can set the date, not

somebody else setting the date for us. If we coordinate that date together, as

many unions as we can, I do believe we can deliver and I do take on board

what the comrade at the back said about there is only a relatively small

percentage in the trade union movement.

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