GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

across areas of education, benevolent support, contractual advice,

representation, wellbeing and medical support, the organisation whose

committed and dedicated staff I see out in the field on a daily basis trying to

address the needs of its current and former members, the trade union which

has over the years negotiated strong collective bargaining agreements,

together with representation at all stakeholder levels protecting the rights,

status and conditions of its members and yet out there in the public domain we

seem to have lost the narrative with internal dispute and disagreement entering

the public forum which is never a good place to settle affairs, particularly when

the right wing press get a hold of it.

This just goes to show that when you think everything is okay, it is probably

not and you have to keep on top of changes in your industry, changes in the

environment, changes in the public perception based not only on what you do,

but what you fail to do. We boast 100% membership, but we cannot and do

not take this for granted. We have the most diverse membership in global

football, but we also have probably some of the greatest disparity between the

highest and the lowest paid members. Over the last few months of the season

the association has had to provide substantial loans to players at clubs unable

to pay their staff and facing the realistic threat of administration. That has been

reported rather less than some of the other issues that have covered the back

pages surrounding the PFA, but, as you can see, our industry and our union

still face some serious challenges and in order to address these it is apparent

that we need to change, adapt and modernise to meet them effectively. Ask

yourselves: “Are we in a similar situation ourselves?” We are talking about

attracting young people into the movement. We know that we are

haemorrhaging membership on a regular basis. Is it because out there they

just do not get it, they just do not understand how good we are or do we need

to look at ourselves first and effect some change within ourselves to be able to

attract that new vibrant membership? They are all out there. We are talking

about attracting young members. The definition of a young member within the

TUC is 25. The average age of all of our current members is probably about

24/25. The average age at which our members retire on average is 27 and

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