GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

GENERAL FEDERATION OF TRADE UNIONS

102nd GENERAL COUNCIL MEETING REPORT

held at:

Stratford Upon Avon, Warwickshire

on

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday 14 th , 15 th and 16 th May 2017

President: Ben Marshall

General Secretary: Doug Nicholls

-------------

Reported by Jane Norman, Verbatim Reporter JC Norman Transcription Ltd Tel: 01889 271 001 Email: jcnorman4@btinternet.com

Sunday 14 th May 2017

Chair’s Introduction and Apologies for absence

4

Welcome to Guests

4

Adoption of Standing Orders

5

Election of Tellers

5

President’s Address

6

Vote of thanks to the President

10

Affiliate report – CCISUA

15

Affiliate report – SWU

18

Motion 6 – Probation reform and public safety

26

Finances

28

The Educational Trust and the GFTU’s work on education

33

Motion 13 – Selective Education

57

Motion 3 – Representatives, Training

62

Quorn Grange Hotel - Report by General Manager

65

Liberating Arts Festival – Report by Festival Producer

68

Closing remarks and arrangements

71

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Monday 15 th May 2017

EC composition and equalities seats

72

Co-operation and Services Paper

74

Launch of New Legal Services

83

Motion 4 – Promoting efficiencies and greater inter-union co-operation

86

Affiliate report – POA

88

Motion 2 – Sharing the ‘gig’ economy with all

91

Leeds Beckett University

100

The British Economy – Larry Elliott

110

Announcement of new Executive Committee and thanks to outgoing members

133

International work

135

Affiliate report – Nautilus International

137

Kurdistan

145

Motion 10 – Music Co-operatives

157

Motion 7 – Attacks on pay

162

Motion 8 – US Campaign for living wage, $15 per hour

164

Motion 9 – Performers and mental health

170

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Tuesday 16 th May 2017

New affiliate – AUE

176

Motion 1 – 1% for Art

180

GFTU activities

182

Motion 5 – Domestic violence victims in the Family Court system 187

Emergency motion re General Election

190

Motion 12 – London Underground dispute and cuts to

Transport for London’s operating grant

202

Motion 11 – Public ownership of Britain’s railways

203

Wendy Cumming – Gibraltar General Clerical Association

207

Investment and new build proposal

211

Incoming President’s address

223

Vote of thanks

228

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SUNDAY 14 th MAY 2017

The Meeting assembled at 2.00 pm

CHAIR’S INTRODUCTION AND APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon, brothers and sisters. My name is Ben Marshall.

I am President of the GFTU. On my right geographically is John Smith who is

the Vice President and on my left is Doug Nicholls, the General Secretary of

the GFTU. You are very welcome to the GFTU’s Biennial General Council

Meeting, as it is called, in effect our biennial conference. You are very

welcome indeed and we hope that you enjoy what I think should be an

extremely stimulating conference.

The first item on the agenda is apologies. Doug.

THE GENERAL SECRETARY: From some guests that we planned to have, we have

Stefan Dickers, our archivist from Bishopsgate Institute, he cannot make it.

John Hendy QC is doing the last collective redundancy case for the last pit in

Britain, Kellingley, on Monday. Professor Sian Moore from our trust and Cilla

Ross from the Co-operative College. Glyn Travers from the POA will be joining

us later. Members of the Executive who are joining us later are Robert Mooney

and joining us from the Executive tomorrow are Roy Rickhuss, Manuel Cortes

and Theresa Easton. Apologies for the whole BGCM from Nick McCarthy of

PCS. The apologies for the Executive are significant in that the rules say that

they have to be accepted as apologies in order to continue on the next EC, so I

take it that those are accepted. (Accepted)

THE PRESIDENT: I would like before we go on to welcome some people to the

conference. You are going to meet an awful lot of people over the next couple

of days and there will be opportunities for you to meet them in a more informal

sense at the dinner and so on and so forth, but there are just one or two people

I would like particularly to welcome. I would like to welcome Jane Norman who

is taking our verbatim minutes. Once again, welcome Jane. We have two of

our new members of staff here. Perhaps you could wave when I read out your

names. Education officer John Callow. You are very welcome, John.

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Education administrator Shazia Begum sitting next to John. You are very

welcome.

The event is being photographed by John Harris of Report who I am sure that

most of you know very well.

The first formal item of business after the apologies is the adoption of standing

orders. General Secretary?

ADOPTION OF STANDING ORDERS

THE GENERAL SECRETARY: Thanks. The Standing Orders are on page 5. It is a

good set of Standing Orders. They are there to help us have a very relaxed,

friendly and democratic gathering and they always work well. No. 4 always

amuses me. It says: “In the case of a disorder arising, the President shall

have the power to adjourn the meeting to a time he/she shall fix”, so beware!

We have never had to invoke that one and I am sure we never will, so we are

relaxed, we are friendly, the Standing Orders are there to help. In addition to

those on page 5, there are just a couple of things on the order paper. We have

had an emergency motion on the General Election from the TSSA. That has

just been circulated, I think. The Executive supports the motion and agrees

that it constitutes an emergency under rule in that the deadline for motions was

before the election was announced, so this has come in as an emergency and

our intention is to take that on Tuesday as item 34, so we will put that in on

Tuesday.

You have seen the paper on equalities and the composition of the EC seats and

we intend to take that on Monday first thing, because that will affect the

incoming EC. I think they are the only changes that I have been notified of, so

with that I move the Standing Orders and the order of business. (Agreed)

ELECTION OF TELLERS

THE PRESIDENT: We need to elect two tellers. This is one of the least onerous

tasks in the trade union movement, by the way. I cannot remember, having

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been at this conference since 2003, us ever having an actual vote.

Nevertheless, we do need to appoint two tellers.

THE GENERAL SECRETARY: We have had two willing volunteers. We have had

brother Neil Crew from AEGIS and sister Yvonne Pattison from NAPO.

THE PRESIDENT: Is that agreed? (Agreed)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: This is where I take over, my only bit of formal business, I

think. It is a great pleasure now to ask our President to address the BCGM. It

has been an incredible two years. There has been a lot of activity, we are

going to hear all about that and Ben has been at the forefront of all of it and it

has been a pleasure to work with him, so, Ben, please, I invite you to address

conference. (Applause)

PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, John. Brothers and sisters, those of you who know

me know that I have never written a speech in my life. I usually go to the

rostrum thinking, “I wonder what I am going to say now”, but because there is

this tradition of the thing being printed out, I have actually had to write a speech

for the first time in my life, so here you go. I am now going to have to read a

speech.

It has been a genuine honour, and mostly very interesting and sometimes

thoroughly stressful, to have been the GFTU’s President for the past two years.

I have had a very long and, in some ways, very fortunate career in the trade

union movement. I became active in the then Post Office Engineering Union

(now the Communication Workers Union) in the early 1970s and became an

official of my current union in 1984, having not entirely successfully led the

campaign in the early 1980s to prevent BT from being privatised.

I am retiring from my day job at the end of this month, so presiding over this

conference will be one of my last acts before I step down and taking on what

looks like becoming a fulltime job as a trustee of the BT Pension Scheme.

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This is a great swan song for me. I had absolutely no idea that this would be

where my career would end in the trade union movement and I cannot think of

a better way to end it. Having been on the GFTU EC since 2003, I can

genuinely say that my association with this organisation has been one of the

most enjoyable, worthwhile aspects of my time in the movement and in those

14 years I have seen some extraordinary changes in the GFTU, changes

hugely for the better.

The last four or five years in particular have seen some quite extraordinary

changes in the GFTU:

The new education programme is a remarkable testament to this change and I

do urge you both to study the new programme, it is in your pack, and to canvas

it in your unions.

Our move lock, stock and barrel to Quorn near Leicester and the major plans

we have to expand and increase our investment on that side are also

extraordinary. Our new partnerships with an impressively wide range of

impressive academic institutions developed over the last couple of years. We

have largely stabilised the GFTU’s finances and the investment in Quorn will

largely end our dependence on the casino economy, as Doug Nicholls calls it,

quite rightly, and we have seen a range of very significant innovations over the

last couple of years with, just as some of the highlights, the Summits at Stone

in Staffordshire, our work with the arts community, our work with various trade

union specialists (finance officers, education officers and so on), our

development of a range of shared services programmes, our work with the

youth festivals and so on. It is a very long, very impressive list and it is fully set

out in the pack that you have.

I think we have stabilised the GFTU’s pension scheme. I have at times felt as if

the GFTU is an extremely complex pension scheme with a small trade union

body peripherally attached to it. I believe, I certainly hope, that that is no longer

the case, as I think a great deal of concerted work has gone into stabilising that

scheme.

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At the BGCM two years ago, I suggested that we should seek to grow the

GFTU’s affiliation base by ten unions. That was a bit tongue in cheek. I never

genuinely thought we could manage that, but I was determined that we should

seek to recruit new unions as I was painfully aware that we had been pretty

unsuccessful in recruiting new organisations hitherto, so I am really delighted to

be able to say that over the last two years we have recruited not five new

unions, as we say in the report, but in fact six. So a huge specific welcome to

Nautilus, the Artists’ Union England, the Scottish Artists’ Union, the Prison

Officers Association, the Social Workers Union and in the last couple of weeks

the Writers Guild of Great Britain. It is an extraordinary level of growth in two

years.

I think the GFTU can now genuinely claim to be the home for specialist trade

unions and what seems very clear to me is that they are joining us partly out of

solidarity, but also very much for what we can do for these unions. The

movement is a collective and there are very few better examples of that than

the GFTU. We are able to do things for our partners which they may not be

able to do for themselves and that is the point of us and I think we have made

some really significant steps in that direction in the last few years.

I think it is important to recognise that we have made these significant strides

against a very difficult background. I became a fulltime official in 1981, a hell of

a long time ago, and that means that I have been a trade union bureaucrat, and

I hope also very much an activist, at a time of continuous pressure on the

movement. That said, we have achieved some extraordinary things as a

movement in that time: The minimum wage - still too low, but still a massive

achievement; securing new recognition deals all over the UK’s employment

landscape, including some significant deals that my own union has been

responsible for. Some of my colleagues who have been working with me in

that regard are here today; securing real improvements; for example, for the

rights of gay, BME, disabled, women and LBGT+ workers; huge strides in

terms of equal pay as between men and women, something I am inordinately

proud of in relation to my day job, by the way.

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Not to mention the work that unions do day in/day out in terms of bargaining,

dealing with individual cases, recruiting new workers, including increasingly

workers in the so-called ‘gig’ economy. I prefer to refer to outright exploitation.

‘gig’ economy sounds almost cheerful when, frankly, it is anything but; Saving

jobs. Look at what, for example, Community has done in the steel industry, but

that is just one (important) example amongst many.

For those who say the movement is in decline, I say the evidence is only too

clear that it is not. It might get a very bad press from organisations with an axe

to grind, but day in/day out we achieve a great deal for our members. Being a

union activist can be difficult, it can be stressful, it can be very challenging, but

it is incredibly rewarding. I think I have got the best job in the world and I

suspect that most of you think the same. I think we need to be much more

optimistic as a movement and I think that we achieve day in/day out in a way

that gives us every right to be optimistic, but we could do with a much better

economic and political environment.

This is the fifth richest country in the world. It is absurd that we have a

collapsing health service, decimated local government, actually worse than

decimated. “Decimation” implies a 10% reduction, but what is happening to

local government services is far worse than that. Education cuts so savage that some schools are unlikely to survive. Food banks. Food banks in the 5 th

richest country in the world. A more than doubling of rough sleepers in four

years. House prices and rents now so high that in many parts of the country

we are now embarking on, arguably, the most severe housing crisis since

Cathy Come Home in the 1960s. Cuts to benefits so drastic that they are

killing people. A criminal justice system so beleaguered that justice itself is

clearly impossible for many. In every sense, by the way. It is our people,

working people, who are often the victims of crime. A world where war is

horrifyingly endemic. My earliest political activism included protesting against

the Vietnam War. The world situation now is far worse than it was then. How is

that even possible?

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But I think it is really important to recognise that all of this is happening at a time

when in the UK, for some, people have never had it so good. This is an

extremely wealthy country. What we have seen, for sadly most of my adult life,

is an appalling reversal of the strides towards equality this country made

between 1945 and 1979. That clearly means that what is happening now is

absolutely not in some way pre-ordained by the invisible hand of market forces.

It is the result of the deliberate policy choices that can genuinely be described

as pulling up the ladder behind them by powerful interests in our society, aided

and abetted by a media that has a massive stake in this selfish process.

Those choices have to be changed and they can be by the simple act of electing a Labour government on 8 th June. I believe we must do whatever we

can to bring that about. Now is absolutely not the time for us to fall out

amongst ourselves. I have always believed in the basic tenet of the trade

union movement – have your rows in private, establish the way forward and

then support it. It is this collective will and collective action that makes us

strong. That is what we need to do over the next few weeks.

There are many people I should thank for their contribution to the GFTU over

the past few years and, in particular, over the four years I have been Vice

President and then President. The current GFTU staff are magnificent. Fellow

members of the GFTU EC have been massively supportive and sometimes

downright brave. The decision to invest in Quorn, to embark on some of the

changes we have made over the last few years have basically involved betting

the farm. I think we have pulled it off, but it has sometimes been touch and go.

I would like in particular to thank John Fray for handing over a going concern

when he stepped down as President two years ago, John Smith for his huge

support for the GFTU over the last two years as Vice President and he will be a

great President and Doug particularly. He has been a real rock through

sometimes some very difficult times. Thank you. (Applause)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I now call on the General Secretary to give the vote of

thanks.

VOTE OF THANKS TO THE PRESIDENT

10

THE GENERAL SECRETARY: Thank you very much indeed, Ben, a lifetime’s

experience and commitment to others in the trade union movement, what move

could you want and what a privilege to have Ben give us that address at the

GFTU. Thanks ever so much, Ben. We discovered recently that Ben did a

degree in archaeology as an MA later in life or someone told us that he did, so

Oshor and I were trying to work out some jokes about skeletons in the

cupboard and old fossils and mummies’ boys and all the rest of it (laughter) ,

but I thought I had better steer clear of a bit of that.

A big part of Ben’s life has been to understand the complex world of pensions

and to represent his members on a whole variety of pension schemes,

including the biggest in Europe and one of the smallest in Europe, our own,

and we like to think that we have contributed to his education in pensions over

the last four years, because it has been really quite complicated in the GFTU

scheme as one of our sections going into section 75 and we had to have all

sorts of meetings with the Pension Protection Fund and so on to pass the

scheme on in good health. So that is a major contribution and Ben continues

that, because he will be a trustee of the BT scheme going forward and, of

course, we are not letting him off that lightly as well, because that lifetime’s

experience in pensions will be evident at the Advanced Pensions Training Day

that the GFTU is organising in June, which Ben, alongside our pensions

lawyer, Ivan, will be delivering, so make sure you get your applications in there.

That was demanded by affiliates. We put it on, so make sure you are there to

get some of perhaps Ben’s last very work, but we do invite Presidents back to

the subsequent conferences, so we look forward to seeing you in two years’

time, Ben, but Ben also goes every year to the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival. I

think he has been there for 35 years, so we might be able to see him there.

Ronnie assures me that Ben’s tent is as big as a small council housing estate,

so we can perhaps share some of the space with him.

So a massive thank you from us, Ben. No employer would have an easy time

with you against them, but every trade unionist would have a good time with

you on their side. We are grateful for all of your work on behalf of the GFTU.

Thanks, mate. (Applause)

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THE VICE PRESIDENT: To second the vote of thanks please welcome Oshor

Williams from the PFA.

BRO OSHOR WILLIAMS (PFA): Brothers and sisters, it was a great privilege for me

to be asked to second the vote of thanks to Ben. I knew that Ben was moving

into that kind of formal arena of writing speeches and delivering them in that

dignified manner, because I saw him produce his new suit for today’s event,

which suggested that this was a special occasion and it is.

It was really only when I agreed to second the vote of thanks to Ben that it

dawned on me how long I have known him. I have known him for, more or less

to the day, eight years when I joined the Executive Committee in 2009 and that

is hard for me to believe. Whilst I am able to endorse ringingly the words of our

General Secretary in respect of the tremendous work undertaken by Ben on

behalf of the Federation, I felt I wanted to offer a deeper insight into Ben

Marshall the man, which was quite difficult really! (Laughter) It is very easy for

me to say he is an absolutely top guy in terms of the work that we undertake on

the committee and any downtime that we have, he is a man that can converse

on a wide range of subjects. Everybody within the Executive Committee would

agree on that.

But, as Doug said, we were looking for that little gem, that story, that quirky

kind of fact or factoid that was going to define Ben in a way that we had never

seen him before. Ben has spent a lifetime working in telecommunications and

advancing digital technology. I decided that the obvious place to look would be

the internet, just Google a name in and people’s life stories pop up before you.

Ben, I think, two years ago emphasised that new digital media advances were

transforming the way that we live and the way that we are going to live, so I

though the irony would be fantastic, it would not be wasted on Ben. So I

Googled in the name, looking for the hidden gem. The first two pages of

articles brought up a range of people, sports people, a footballer who plays for

Wolverhampton Wanderers. That was no good to me. Ben Marshall,

Wolverhampton Wanderers, all these stats and I thought, although I have

admired your energy and verve and the speed with which you can dash from

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one meeting to another, the velocity is absolutely impressive, I did not think that

your skills ran to combining your duties within Prospect and within the GFTU

with fulltime professional football, so I put that to one side.

So I decided to refine my search and came up with a really interesting Ben

Marshall and I thought this might be the secret life of Ben Marshall. He is

actually the author of the Official History of the Who. (Laughter) Now, come

on, that would be one to bring to the table. I thought that was absolutely

amazing, I can just imagine Ben chronicling their rise from the heady days of

My Generation with his kind of drive towards new blood and youth within the

movement through to the classic single Won’t Get Fooled Again which, with

Ben’s sense of irony, would have been a coded reference to the legacy of New

Labour. (Laughter) But, alas, a photo of this particular Ben Marshall confirmed

that it was just another dead end.

I thought with my faith in technology I am going to have one last go and I

opened up a link and I thought that this is the Ben Marshall that I have been

looking for, this is the side that is little known within the Executive and this is

what it said: “Ben Marshall has taken heroin, lost his job, encouraged his

girlfriend to audition for work in an LA strip club and sold his reputation to the

Sunday Mirror for £5,000”, an appallingly low sum, I thought. (Laughter) “He

will not stop, he says, until he does something which will put him in jail. This he

sees as inevitable. Marshall, if not a man on the edge, is a man verging on a

serious loss of control”. I thought that is him, that is the man I know!

(Laughter) But unfortunately, again, further investigation revealed that it was

actually the then Editor of Loaded Magazine which, for those who do not know,

is a lads’ mag for airheads. So that was the end of that.

In truth, I did not need technology, despite its uses, despite its advantages. I

did not need technology to know about Ben, Ben the man. I can tell you about

him in my dealings with him as a member of the EC. It is all out there for us to

witness in the day to day work he undertakes for Prospect and within the

Executive Committee over the last two years as President, whether chairing EC

meetings or facilitating group workshops, as he did at the Progressive Summit

13

at Yarnfield. Ben always ensures that everyone has a voice. That is important.

He ensures that all opinions are valued. That is vital. He encourages

everyone to contribute, providing a safe space for debate and discussion, even

through the most contentious of issues, and there have been many. Ben can

condense lengthy dialogue into key points without losing either context or

content and this itself is a great skill. Forensic in his scrutiny of figures and

accounts, he has been a valued member and Chair of the Finance and General

Purposes Committee as well as a trustee on the pension scheme and, of

course, he has already alluded to the difficulties in navigating and stabilising

the GFTU pension scheme.

Socially Ben, as I have said, is one of those people who can converse on

virtually any subject. A few years ago at the GFTU annual dinner my wife and I

had a few beers with Ben and then found ourselves sat next to him. I think it

was probably about four years ago at the meal. Conversation flowed, we had a

fantastic night, it was great. The following morning my wife said, “Ben, he is

really interesting and knowledgeable” and that would have been a compliment

if I had not realised that she wanted to add the words “compared to you”.

(Laughter)

But coming back to my original internet search theme and that was a little bit of

construct you might not have realised. There were a number of articles

featuring Ben, but they did not feature Ben, they featured Ben talking about

issues, describing issues, raising important issues concerning the trade union

movement, concerning his own trade union, the merger with BECTU.

Obviously, we know about his history in terms of the privatisation of what was

the Post Office, Royal Mail, movement of BT. So there were all these things out

there. He is not the sort that sits on Twitter putting out tweets “Chilling at home

watching Game of Thrones”. It is always about the issues. It is always about

the things that mean so much to him.

Ben, probably the last compliment I could pay you is that you have an

incredible ability to adhere to schedules and you are renowned for brining

meetings in on time, so on Tuesday just bear that in mind. Within the trade

14

union movement that is a highly valued skill. I would like to second the votes of

thanks to the President and thank him personally for his work, his humour, his

fraternal friendship throughout our time at the EC. Thank you. (Applause)

THE GENERAL SECRETARY: We have just got a little gift we would like to give Ben

for all his hard work. That is with the appreciation of the Executive and all the

unions. Thank you. (Applause)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all very much indeed. The reason you will not find

anything about me on the web is because I understand the web quite well!

(Laughter) Just bear in mind, especially if you have got children, everything

you do on the web is indelible, it is like getting a tattoo, only even harder to

remove. Anyway, thank you, that was very generous and there is more than

enough of that, so let us move on with the agenda.

The next item on the agenda are affiliates reports. This is an opportunity that

we give to some of our affiliates, but also to all of you to know about some of

the often inordinately interesting work that many of the quite often quite

specialist little known but really very significantly important organisations that

affiliate to the GFTU actually do in their day jobs and I think we have a number

of people who are going to speak in this section, starting with CCISUA who will

explain who they are, but when I tell you that the United Nations is quite a well-

known organisation and that they represent the people who work for it, that

gives you an interesting insight into just how wide the GFTU can reach. So a

warm welcome to the BGCM to Asha Roop Kaur Dhillon of CCISUA.

AFFILIATE REPORT – CCISUA

SIS ASHA DHILLON (CCISUA): Thank you. I have to say it is a great privilege to be

here, to be representing CCISUA. I am really honoured that I have been

selected by CCISUA to be representing them at this gathering.

As I was listening to the speeches I was just thinking maybe I should say how it

came about becoming a representative of CCISUA. I was working in a small

little country called Malaysia in the UNHCR office and I worked as a protection

officer working on issues and the reason why I got interested in labour unions,

15

staff representation was because of certain events that unfolded that exposed

certain flaws and weaknesses in the oversight and accountability mechanisms

of the UN system and I thought, “I want to do something and make change, I

suppose I should get into this area”. So I ran a campaign and this whole

process took me to Geneva and I was elected the first Vice Chair of the staff

council of Geneva and then I learned about various UN trade unions and

organisations such as CCISUA, FICSA and all that, so here I am. I am here to

introduce to you what CCISUA means. It is a committee of international staff

unions and associations of the United Nations system, so it is an international

federation comprised of UN staff, staff unions and associations committed to

provide equitable and effective representation of staff at all levels. Therefore,

CCISUA primarily represents members’ interests in interagency bodies that

make decisions and recommendations on conditions of service. We are one of

three staff federations serving unions and staff associations. The others are

FICSA and UNICEF.

What we do, we promote the common interest of international civil servants of

all categories whose staff unions and associations are members of CCISUA.

We are about 40,000 members. About 17 UN agencies are members of

CICCISUA because we are located all over the world. We were founded in

1982. What we also do is to promote staff unions and associations and other

staff representative bodies of the system to advise advisory and decision

making bodies with a united voice and particularly participate in various

activities and with our interlocutors, namely the ICSC which is the International

Civil Service Commission.

So generally we look into staff welfare, staff conditions in the deep field in

various locations, because we have a common ground among all the UN

agencies. We are rather unique because UN staff do not have a single

employer, they are employed by the 193 member states. Because they work

for an international agency, they are not protected by any national labour

legislation or international conventions. Although freedom of association is

written into the UN staff regulations, national unions are not recognised and

terms and conditions are negotiated directly with representatives of the

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member states. The first collective agreement that was recognised by the UN

system was signed with a CCISUA affiliate who is the ILO Staff Union. That

allows for staff representative bodies to be established at each UN organisation

or mission and for those bodies to represent the interests of the staff which is in

our UN staff rules. Therefore, each UN mission or organisation then

establishes its own union or staff association and these are affiliated with either

CCISUA, FICSA or UNICEF.

The UN staff face many of the same issues as workers in national economies

and CCISUA affiliates represent both blue collar staff, such as security guards,

as well as white collar UN civil servants. CCISUA affiliates do not represent

the UN peacekeepers who are made up of military and police personnel

contributed by member states, they are answerable to their own member

states. There are a number of industrial relation issues that are peculiar to

working within the UN system. The most important of that is perhaps the fact

that UN staff are not protected by labour legislation, which means all

conditions, as I said, need to be negotiated directly and also of great concern

are the dangers to staff working in conflict and other non-secure locations.

Many UN staff, as you probably have heard, are killed in the line of duty.

Another area of concern is the prevalence of short term contracts in the UN

system. There is a lack of job security and long term career development and

the right of redress that the UN staff have is to a body called the United Nations

Dispute Tribunal and the Appeals Tribunal.

Therefore, at CCISUA we service a platform of a collective bargaining

mechanism in the International Civil Service Commission, the ICSC, our main

interlocutor. What currently we continue to grapple with right now is the

continuous erosion of staff entitlements, be it the general service category or

the international professional staff. On the basis of pressure of various

member states right now, the biggest challenge that we have is that the ICSC,

due to pressure from member states, have actually deduced a 7.5% pay cut of

all UN professional staff salaries in Geneva and there has been a lot of

pressure and a lot of discussions among all the UN staff federations and unions

in Geneva and we are losing an entitlement. Slowly by slowly we seem to see

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an erosion of our staff entitlements, either in a duty station in Geneva or in field

duty stations and things like that. So we see that and we find that some of

these member states have deviated from what they had initially agreed to in

terms of conditions, in terms of service of the international civil servant, so staff

unions are, therefore, concerned that all these cuts in income on this scale and

the reduction in rights to various entitlements such as family leave, right to

education, in terms of education grants, allowances to staff who have families

when staff are posted to a deep field location and staff sometimes need to have

their families close by in safe duty location so that they can be able to visit

them over four weeks of working in a tough duty location.

So these are some of the areas that CCISUA work for and I think that is about

it. I think I will stop here. If there are any other questions please throw it up for

a discussion. (Applause)

THE PRESIDENT: Can I also ask John McGowan from the Social Workers Union to

say a bit about another incredibly interesting organisation.

AFFILIATE REPORT – SWU

BRO JOHN McGOWAN (SWU): Brothers and sisters, I am delighted to be up here.

As you can see, our name is on the board, so it is great to be part of the GFTU.

What I am planning to do is I am planning to tell you a bit about what we do as

social workers, why we set up the union in 2011 and also why we feel that the

membership of the GFTU is really important for our organisation. Before I start,

you see my name there, John McGowan, General Secretary. It is a part time

post. I am also part time for the Open University. I am the programme tutor in

Scotland for the social work degree. That is why I have got a Powerpoint. It is

what I do every day! (Laughter) I have been in the post now for eight months.

I can think eight months ago I used to have hair and I was not grey and I was

about a stone lighter, so the eight months has taken its toll on me, but it is a job

I really enjoy and I have to say that because our President is here as well.

(Laughter)

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Last night I was watching Dr Who on TV and I have got an 11 year old boy and

I said to my boy, “Look, I’m coming to Stratford, have you got any good jokes

about Shakespeare?” He said, “Dad, I’ve got a good one for you”, so if you all

promise to laugh at his joke, it is coming up next. Shakespeare walks into a

bar and the bartender says, “You can’t drink here, you’re barred!” (Groaning)

If that is okay I will share that with him when I phone him tonight and say you

all laughed at the joke. (Laughter) Hopefully that is okay.

I will just take you through the journey of social work. Social work is an

academic and a practice based discipline, so our roots are really if you think of

the dimension of psychology, sociology, social science and political science, so

we have a clear academic framework, but also we work with the most

vulnerable group of individuals that you can imagine, so we have got a lot of

skills in relation to interviewing and report writing and court working and we are

working from children to adults, so the whole scope of, I suppose, the most

damaged individuals in society is part of our work basis.

Our principle then, we engage with people and structures to address life

challenges and we try to enhance wellbeing. That is rooted in our profession.

What we do. Social work promotes social change and empowerment of

people, family and communities. The main line I tell my students is that social

work is about promoting change, making that small difference in somebody’s

life or a family’s life, that is what we strive for.

A practising professional with a degree in social work is called a social worker,

but ironically that title was not protected until 2005. Prior to then anyone could

call themselves a social worker and, indeed, I have been in the back of many

taxis prior to 2005 where the taxi driver seemed to be a social worker, but since

2005 if anybody calls themselves a social worker they are in deep trouble

unless you have got that qualification.

Who are we then? The Social Workers Union is a trade union. It is dedicated

to social work professionals. Unlike other trade unions who represent social

workers and this is not about competition, because we welcome anyone who

joins a trade union, but I would argue that I suppose part of our remit is that we

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are always able to represent social workers, because everyone involved with

our organisation needs to be a qualified social worker and registered as a

social worker and that goes for myself, members of the exec, all our trade

union officers, we are all qualified social workers and we all understand the

code of conduct and also what it means to be a social worker. Our unique

selling point since 2011, I would argue, I suppose we all know how difficult it

can be for a social worker, we all work under tremendous pressure. We

understand that pressure from the Social Workers Union perspective, because

we have all been there and actually I still practise in child protection for my

licence, so I understand how difficult it is working with vulnerable people.

Therefore, we are able to use the specialist knowledge and we advocate on

behalf of social workers, both individually on a one-to-one basis through

representation, but collectively as we are growing in strength in the union, we

are trying to do that as a collective group of our organisation, so that is a bit

about who we are.

The next thing is why did we set up the Social Workers Union? Prior to 2011

we all belonged to what is called the British Association of Social Workers, that

is our professional body, but there was a growing concern that our professional

body, we had advice and representation prior to 2011, but we were not always

recognised by local authorities and other organisations, so we put it to the AGM

about setting up a union in 2011, so since then it has been a great learning

curve, but, I suppose crucially, all our members in the British Association, the

professional body, that is something they wanted, so the establishment of the

Social Workers Union now means that our members, our professional

organisation, can also belong to the union and that is a choice. They have got

to pay up and join the union or if they want they can just remain with the

professional organisation.

Our membership at the moment in the UK, there are over 100,000 social

workers in the UK, we set up in 2011 and in 2017 our last stats were 12,000

paid members, so that has been a great learning curve for us as a union. In

the last eight months our membership has increased by 3,000. I suppose it is

hard being a brand new union, but the message is getting out to new social

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workers that they have the choice to join the Social Workers Union. I think that

is great. I think you would all agree from a brand new union in 2011 to having

that membership base, it has been a massive learning curve.

I will maybe share with you some of the demands on our members. I suppose

it is the legal necessity. Social workers work within a legal framework and I

suppose we have all read the headlines in the Daily Mail and other newspapers

about the constant barrage of criticism towards our profession. It is always

blaming a social worker, so that is really difficult when you work in that bubble,

because it is not our way to tell you all the good news. I could stand here all

day and tell you about the amount of children I have saved from hardcore

abuse, but at the end of the day the media focus on the negative. I think that is

hard for our profession. It is hard for our profession, because if anything goes

wrong it is scrutinised in a heavier way by the media, so our members need

protecting from that. They also need protecting from the sort of bureaucracy

and I think we are all part of that, that at the end of the day it is a difficult

framework to work in.

I suppose for me as the General Secretary the question of who protects the

protectors, that is often side-lined, because our development in the profession

means that often that is overlooked to say, “Who is looking after you as a social

worker?” so I am pleased that that message is getting through to our

membership base.

The need for a trade union. Research was done in 2005 and I have put that

up, because there has probably been more modern research, but, bizarrely,

that still stands the case for social work, that Asquith Clark and Waterhouse

argued that it is internationally recognised that social workers are often low

paid, indeed in respect of our qualification, bearing in mind that some of our

social workers have been through five years of university, they are relatively

low paid. We can work very long hours, we work with heavy, complex

caseloads and we have to juggle with the demands of our managers, the

clients and also the professional body and maintain that professional

registration. That is quite interesting. Our members are still finding that, that

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they are juggling low pay and the demands, so again it is a good selling point

for us as a union to make sure people join us.

To be or not to be in a union, I suppose I could stand here and could argue all

day that social workers need to stand up for themselves, so we think about our

own training. We have trained as social workers so we need to stand up and

be counted and speak up for ourselves. I suppose we all realise that that is

fine, but we all work within a bubble, being accountable and also the whims of

employers, so it is quite difficult to stand up for yourself when you are faced

with heavy caseloads and responsibilities and legal responsibilities, so that is

my argument as to why social workers should join our union, because we are

there to protect them if things go wrong and also offer advice and guidance.

Unionisation has real benefits for members, as we all know. I suppose it is not

my intent to portray our union membership as a silver bullet for the social work

community and I certainly would not argue that by joining the Social Workers

Union we will resolve all the issues for our workers, but nevertheless I would

argue that both the immediate and long term support offered by the GFTU

represents for us a real investment in the future of social work and it is a great

tool in the resources which support our profession and union members. So

again it goes back to what I said at the start, I am really pleased that we belong

to the GFTU.

Why social workers join our union. Every year our advice and representation

service, looking at the stats last week, we have helped over 1,000 social

workers in a range of different situations from the small, easily resolved issues,

usually over a phone call, to more significant and prolonged conduct issues

and I say conduct issues, because every time there is a child death or an adult

death, unfortunately, that leads to a fatal death inquiry, so obviously we need to

be involved with that, so there are more significant issues for our members and

obviously the day to day demands of working with very difficult service users.

Here are some of the issues that we have helped members over recently –

grievance procedures, representation at internal hearings, investigations into

professional social work practice and allegations of misconduct. We have also

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helped social workers with issues around discrimination in employment and

their access to training. We have also helped social workers and the trainee

social workers and we have represented them in conduct hearings.

So that is a flavour of what we do in the Social Workers Union. Why social

workers need to join us. We have put that there. Recently I have been active

and I have organised a march along with my BASW colleagues, so we

marched from Birmingham to Liverpool. I think it was about 106 miles we

walked over seven days, but we organised it with a number of social workers

and service users, so it was a great opportunity to pay attention to Boot Out

Austerity. There is a website called Boot Out Austerity. We are trying to get

this movement on social injustice and for me that was a great opportunity to

meet our service users and visit food banks and speak to politicians, so it was

something I was very pleased to be involved with.

I just want to conclude now by really highlighting why I feel as General

Secretary the need for our union to be a member of the GFTU and I think we all

recognise those facts. I was just typing this morning thinking, “What is it about

the GFTU?” Of course, that list could go on, but I have got the

Education For Action. Our members benefit from the extensive training

courses offered by the GFTU. A sense of belonging. I think it was Doug who

highlighted that earlier, that I suppose in this room I am amongst likeminded

unions and that sense of sharing and together we can be stronger. The GFTU

is suited to our union size. We are still small enough that I think our voice is

heard within the GFTU, so that is very important to us. We have certainly

benefitted from the GFTU knowledge base and I have received ongoing advice

from the GFTU General Secretary and also the staff, so I have been thankful

for that. We have got access to the full training courses, day schools, even the

hotel if we want that. We have got study seminars, we have got ongoing

general secretary workshops which will be useful for myself, because, as I say,

I have only been in the job for eight months. Again, the GFTU campaigns for

and supports everyone in this organisation and overall the GFTU services the

needs of our union, because we are a specialist union and we have always

found the GFTU approachable, so thank you for that. (Applause)

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