GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

WENDY CUMMING: It is a bit difficult. In the more blue collar areas we have got

quite a few. I would say about 10%, bus drivers and cleaners in the more blue

collar areas, so, yes, we do have quite a few.

BRO MANUEL CORTES (TSSA): The agreement which she described was signed

between the two main Spanish unions which is the Confederación Sindical de

Comisiones Obreras and the Unión General de Trabajadores which represent

the overwhelming majority of Spanish workers together with the three unions in

Gibraltar and that is just to protect workers going forward and to ensure that the

economy does not collapse.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, let’s move on. I hope that delegates have had the

opportunity to read the three page paper in your pack. I am going to ask Doug

to introduce the proposals in relation to the development of the site at Quorn.

INVESTMENT AND NEW BUILD PROPOSAL

THE GENERAL SECRETARY: We have got a very strong and well established

democracy in the GFTU and it basically means that the BGCM is the sovereign

body and between meetings of the BGCM the GFTU is the Executive

Committee, so for the last four years between BGCMs the Executive has had

the responsibility of looking at our future and our finances. I have only had one

seriously stressful day in working for the GFTU and that was the day I had to

sign the £1.6 million cheque for Quorn. I am not too bad at spending my own

money, but I think there is a great responsibility when we spend the money of

the movement in such numbers and I always keep in mind that the money that

the GFTU has stashed away in our investments is not the product of the banks

and the interest that we have received, but in origin the assets of the GFTU

were created by largely manual industrial workers in the first part of the last

century when they clubbed together to create a strike fund and a fund to

ensure that when workers were locked out, when they were made unemployed,

when they were victimised, that there was a pot of money in the GFTU that

they could draw on to keep their body and soul together. We found last year

some of the big ledgers, huge ledgers of where the GFTU had given donations

largely to workers in some of the worst sweat shops and most brutal industrial

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