GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

Motion 7 was CARRIED unanimously

THE PRESIDENT: Motion 8, also in the name of the Bakers, Food and Allied

Workers Union.

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

BRO RONNIE DRAPER (Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union) moved the

following motion:

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That this conference congratulates those Cities and States in USA, who

have ratified a $15 per hour wage. We further salute the 100000’s of low paid

workers who have risked their liberty by taking strike action against serial pay

abusers like McDonalds etc. Their fight has been a fantastic example of what

can be achieved when workers stand together and has become a global

campaign against low pay in the fast food industry, which the BFAWU are

proud to support.

He said: Comrades, I was going to start off with “Friends, Romans,

Countrymen”, but somebody stole it yesterday, so I just ask you to listen to the

motion. I think normally when we come to conferences we come to ask

something, ask us to vote to do something in the future, whether that be

something we want internally within the GFTU, something we are looking for

through society or, indeed, something we are looking for Government to

change. This motion is different, because what it does, it asks you as trade

unionists to congratulate other trade unionists on the achievements that they

have had and the example, if you like, that they have set to all of us, because,

as my young comrade there just said, it is something we are all going to have

to pick the cudgel up in the future and do. Showing what can be achieved by

collective action, wherever that happens, people get victories and we are the

worst group of people for saying how great we are when we win something, we

are always looking at the failures that we have had in the past.

Let me say that these workers who formed this Fight for $15 in America were

not all young people, because the fast food industry in America works totally

different to what it does in Britain, so where now we go into a McDonalds or a

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