GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

producers, we bargain with the record industry, we bargain with theatre

producers for sectors of what are independent contractors. We have to duck

and dive a bit around competition law, but we have managed that and we do

that as well. So do our colleagues in Equity, I see Teresa has just arrived from

the Artist Union, they have to do the same thing and a big sector of BECTU’s

workers, so the knowledge is within our industry. We need to tap into the

industries that have always worked like this.

As part of my duties as President of the International Federation of Musicians I

represented the three international entertainment sectors – Musicians, the

Actors and the union which represents the technicians, BECTU, at a meeting at

the ILO in Geneva just two years ago when they looked at nonstandard forms

of employment and they brought some guidelines and if you look at the ILO

website there is a lot of advice of how to actually look at the workers in that

area and this branched out into contract workers for health services, contract

workers in education, all the different forms of education and many more. We

have had things that creep along like the Uber drivers and Deliveroo and all the

rest. This work is carrying on.

There is a lot of hostility. It was quite interesting the way that the ILO worked in

this particular thing. We had a big group of union representatives and I was

one of them, we had a big group from employers who were fairly robust and

then we had the representatives of Governments, I think there were about 40

different Governments from different countries involved, and we had a lot of

support from the diplomats. The actual employers were very difficult. I

remember they had a New Zealand president of their particular sector who was

very hostile and he had a Latin American colleague who was particularly

hostile, so we stood our ground and worked at this. Things take years with the

ILO, but the work is going on. We need to support it, we need to raise the

profile of it and we can cope with this economy, but we have to be confident

and robust. I second. (Applause)

SIS CHRISTINE BOND (BECTU): I was just at a conference on new working

patterns and one of the things there was some research being done around the

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