GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

We all felt on our return that Greece is very much part way through a long and

rocky road with a long way yet to go to get anywhere near stable, let alone

back to where they were ten years ago, but with people like Costas who you

will read about in the report, Penny and Zoe working as hard as they do for the

people of Greece, be it through donations and charity work or identifying the

corruption within the EU and the IMF and solidarity from us over in the UK and

the help that we can give, it will happen sooner than it would without them.

Thank you. (Applause)

THE PRESIDENT: Are there any other comments on the report? (No response) It is

quite a significant aspect of our work. That takes us on to affiliates where it

would be great if we could hear from Nautilus about the work of Nautilus, one

of the most interesting unions in the United Kingdom and Holland and

Switzerland, which makes no sense at all really, because it is landlocked, but

there you go.

AFFILIATE REPORT – NAUTILUS INTERNATIONAL

BRO GARY ELLIOTT (Nautilus International): I will explain that in a minute. Good

afternoon, colleagues. Nautilus International is basically the British Merchant

Navy, as it was, where it commenced from. Some people know very, very little

about us, even though we have been in existence for over 160 years, formed in

1856 to look after retired seafarers, mainly to do with their welfare. They come

back from sea after many, many years and they require welfare, so very much

in the early years being a charity and a welfare organisation and then taking on

the trade union mantle as time dictated. So, as I say, 160 years, specialist

union, fitting quite nicely to the GFTU model, a lot of the discussions we have

been talking about – globalisation, internationalism, shared services,

federations. We are involved in all of this and I will just spend about five

minutes giving you a little bit of a view of what Nautilus is all about.

We have 22,000 members which predominantly would have been British

officers at sea. For the ones of you that have noticed, we are an island, there

has been talk about the EU etc., and the one thing that will always remain is

that 95% of trade that comes into the UK and out of the UK will come in or out

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