GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

The weekend is designed to introduce young trade unionists to the world

outside of the workplace to help them network with other people around their

same age just starting out on their journey within the movement, a chance to

debate, learn, grow in confidence, as we spoke about yesterday and, more

importantly, realise and understand not only that they are not alone, but there

are people in other workplaces, industries, sectors and even countries fighting

the same battles day to day as they are. There is also the opportunity to learn

from those people as well and work with them to win. We have had a number

of delegates in previous years that have left the weekend and gone on to grab

activism with both hands, going from members that have just seen a trade

union as workplace insurance, not really understood what it is for to leaving the

weekend and becoming members who want to be more involved in campaigns,

standing up and fighting back as part of a movement. This only benefits the

movement as a whole. It adds a layer of young activists determined and

inspired to keep it alive and relevant to the young working people of today.

This year we asked for critical feedback. We wanted to know what people really

thought, because you can come to a conference and say, “Yes, I learned a lot

and it was a really good weekend” and you sit there and you think, “But actually

I wanted to touch on this and I wanted to touch on that” and unless people tell

us we cannot change things and improve things, but the one common theme

throughout all of the feedback whether written or verbal over the weekend was

the disappointment of the low attendance for such a brilliant weekend and this

is where I come to back to the 20 in attendance this year. We do not have an

upper age limit on the youth festival. We do this purposely, as we recognise

that different unions have different specifications of what young is, but if each

affiliate sent just two delegates to the weekend, which, incidentally, does not

cost you anything, the GFTU covers the travel, it covers people’s food, it covers

them stopping at Quorn, we would have a minimum of 50 young people there

and this would develop the weekend into one that would include effective

breakout sessions for each topic, the ability to hold a number of workshops, it

gives diversity to those workshops and have more debate in sessions adding to

the experience and the education of the weekend.

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