GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

they are juggling low pay and the demands, so again it is a good selling point

for us as a union to make sure people join us.

To be or not to be in a union, I suppose I could stand here and could argue all

day that social workers need to stand up for themselves, so we think about our

own training. We have trained as social workers so we need to stand up and

be counted and speak up for ourselves. I suppose we all realise that that is

fine, but we all work within a bubble, being accountable and also the whims of

employers, so it is quite difficult to stand up for yourself when you are faced

with heavy caseloads and responsibilities and legal responsibilities, so that is

my argument as to why social workers should join our union, because we are

there to protect them if things go wrong and also offer advice and guidance.

Unionisation has real benefits for members, as we all know. I suppose it is not

my intent to portray our union membership as a silver bullet for the social work

community and I certainly would not argue that by joining the Social Workers

Union we will resolve all the issues for our workers, but nevertheless I would

argue that both the immediate and long term support offered by the GFTU

represents for us a real investment in the future of social work and it is a great

tool in the resources which support our profession and union members. So

again it goes back to what I said at the start, I am really pleased that we belong

to the GFTU.

Why social workers join our union. Every year our advice and representation

service, looking at the stats last week, we have helped over 1,000 social

workers in a range of different situations from the small, easily resolved issues,

usually over a phone call, to more significant and prolonged conduct issues

and I say conduct issues, because every time there is a child death or an adult

death, unfortunately, that leads to a fatal death inquiry, so obviously we need to

be involved with that, so there are more significant issues for our members and

obviously the day to day demands of working with very difficult service users.

Here are some of the issues that we have helped members over recently –

grievance procedures, representation at internal hearings, investigations into

professional social work practice and allegations of misconduct. We have also

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