GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

Dave, they are the points I want to make. I am sure there are other things.

There is TUC inertia, but, I tell you what, the tanker is turning. They are coming

round. They are now talking about the £10 an hour campaign which they sort of

poo pooed when I moved it. They poo pooed the zero hour contracts thing

when I moved it, but now they are coming round and talking about it. I think we

have got to keep that on the boil. We have got to keep things moving. It is for

unions like the GFTU, like the progressive unions within the TUC to push that

message forward and make sure we get an answer from the TUC that we can

deliver.

DAVE WARD: Chris, what is the pitch predominantly to young workers? How do you

change? I have got a lot of hopes for the app that we are developing and other

unions are probably looking at this as well, I am sure. We have actually got

young people developing it for us. That is the first thing. I am in Ronnie’s

camp. I have never been one for all the rules and bureaucracy of the union. I

am quite well known in our union for being a General Secretary. I do not think I

have ever really read the rule book of the union, because I do not think trade

unionism is about a set of rules that stop us doing things. It is about having

ways of working that make things happen and that we do things and I am a

really strong believer at the moment that we have to change some of our

approaches within the trade union movement. For example, we have got real

high hopes, and I do not want to go into too much on some of this, because

some of it is for the greater good, but we want to develop it initially, we are

going to offer it free to our own members and it will be a communications tool.

We do loads of videos, we do livestreaming a lot in the CWU. It is not unusual

in the CWU now for our comms team to come into my office and just actually

stop me working and saying, “We are going live to the members” and, honestly,

we do it like that sometimes. If there is something to talk about, we just talk

about it. We are starting to get into this way of working that rather than talk to a

meeting, let the members hear us talking and young people were driving that

sort of thinking in our union. I think it starts to be very challenging to the way

that we have worked in the past, although I think we are a good union in the

workplace, because that is the structure that we have. So I think you have got

207