GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

partnership, we try to have strategic partnerships and relationships, but we will

take industrial action, if required. I am actually going back tomorrow to

Scotland. We have got an industrial action ballot that means we are going to

be taking industrial action, so it will occur from time to time, but it is quite rare

for our union to be engaged in that. This is the future for us on collective

bargaining. This is the future for our union anyway. I know it is not as easy for

all the other unions. We sat down with Shell for a year negotiating a collective

bargaining agreement. At the moment they represent 49 nationalities

worldwide in their fleet of hundreds of thousands. They have agreements with

the ITF (the International Transport Federation), the ILO. The papers are like

that . They bring them into the room, they are up here . They have got CBAs

with 49 countries. They do 49 sets of negotiations. We had the first set for the UK on January the 1 st , they are still negotiating well into February before we

can settle on anything with every country. So what have we done? We got rid

of all that and we are now the recognised union for all 49 countries. We will do

one set of negotiations and we will be the lead on that day for all the other

signatories, which are the other 49 countries. So for the first time a collective

bargaining agreement has been signed to cover 49 countries and that is what

we will do on an annual basis and that is the future for us, that is where it will

go.

BP have been on. They want the same agreements. Qatar which is part of the

Shell movement have been on. A whole raft of companies are interested in

that sort of collective bargaining agreement, that sort of relationship to exist.

Those are the sort of areas that we are moving into.

The same as everyone else I will finish off before I conclude on the young.

Obviously young members are paramount to us. We are trying to bring them

into the union to make sure that they can take the union forward when it needs

to really kick on in the next 10 or 15 years, which it will. They will be in the right

place to do that, but it is also important to bring those members through. We

are quite fortunate in that we get access to every nautical college in the UK and

Ireland, southern Ireland, Cork, and we get a chance to meet those 16 to 18

year olds within the first week of them starting their employment and we sign

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