MOTIONS AND AMENDMENTS: BIENNIAL CONFERENCE
BOURNEMOUTH 2008
Building the Union
1. Restructuring of Community
Conference considers that following the restructuring of the union its aims are clear, including the unambiguous aim to present ourselves as an organising union. To ensure the Organising Department achieves that aim Conference calls on the National Executive Council to see that the Department has the resources and ability to fulfil it. Conference calls for a massive investment to be made in the enlistment of the large team of organisers needed to build on the knowledge gained from recruiting within the betting industry.
Ladbrokes 08
2. Community Services Delivery
Conference calls on the National Executive Council to investigate the real need for devolving the responsibilities and service delivery within Community. Conference recognises that Community shops would address the needs of our members and would be a very important means of recruitment and retention and that this would be a real challenge to the administrative and educational resources of our union in providing effective representation and utilising and building upon the progress that has been made by other organisations.
Conference calls on the National Executive Council to consider introducing a pilot scheme to assess and analyse such a project to determine if resources could be better utilised away from centralised administration and re-invested back into the community
Notts & Derby Community
Employment Pay Pensions
3. Manufacturing and Globalisation
Conference is profoundly concerned at the decline of manufacturing industry in Britain. If manufacturing keeps moving abroad to countries where workers toil in sweat shops with no possibilities of joining a trade union and use children for labour, Britain will never see manufacturing industry return.
Conference calls on the Government to look very seriously at the plight of all manufacturing jobs and take action before what was once a thriving industrial country becomes one big warehouse and to take action to have bigger businesses invest in textiles and other manufacturing industries.
Remploy Pinxton
4. Energy Policy
This Conference welcomes the lead shown on climate change by steel company Corus and urges the Community National Executive Council to further press the Government in its quest to develop a robust integrated energy policy with emphasis on options like developing underground coal gasification technology.
Teesside MM Branch
5. Gambling Act 2005
Conference believes that as it warned in 2006, the Gambling Act, 2005, contrary to its avowed aims to control gambling, has in fact opened a Pandora’s Box of social destruction the like of which we have rarely encountered. The idea that the people of this country ever wanted a number of supercasinos or even more casinos than were already established, was never credible and has since proved to be so, since the idea has subsequently been disparaged and hopefully will quietly disappear.
Conference urges the National Executive Council to enquire into the promoters of the initiative within the Government, and their motives. Instead of actually curbing, restricting and controlling gambling, especially by the under 18s, it has produced, via Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBTs), ever younger customers in betting shops with those underage causing a massive nuisance to betting shop staff through their aggressive behaviour, threats, and actual violence. Additionally, betting shops are now able to stay open much longer, involving unsocial, hours including the winter with no thought, or extra remuneration, for staff – just for the potential profits from FOBTs.
Problem gambling has hit pandemic proportions with as many as five million people personally affected, not forgetting the associated effects on their immediate family and friends. The financial welfare of this country has been put at risk as well as the personal welfare of tens of thousands of betting shop workers, Conference therefore calls on the Labour Government to hold a review of the effects that the Bill has had on problem gambling, staff welfare, and underage gamblers, and that those who are personally affected, namely staff and customers, have a voice in controlling gambling which must not be left to vested bookmaking interests.
Coral 08
6. Shift Working and Occupational Pensions
Conference views the raising from 2010 of the minimum age for pensionable retirement from fifty to fifty-five with deep concern in an attempt to address some of the funding problems that occupational pension schemes are facing. Conference notes that there are many reasons why black holes in pension schemes have developed, notably years of underfunding schemes and poor administration as well as an increase in longevity. Medical evidence tells us that shift workers are more likely to suffer medical problems and have shorter life spans than people who work more regular hours and that they have problems with diet and sleeping. Conference notes that employees in many other EU states are allowed to retire early if they have worked shifts for thirty years or more. Conference urges the National Executive Council to back the call for shift work to cease at the age of fifty so that when retirement comes they may enjoy the rest of their lives with a reasonable pension.
Conference also calls on the National Executive Council to press for employees in the steel industry and other industries making heavy physical demands and involving long hours, teamworking and sometimes hazardous work to be exempt from this new provision if that is their wish. People who leave such industries with a pension could take up a part time position with shorter hours and less physical demands.
Skinningrove FD 02
Amendment by Aldwarke 1 Accepted
7. State Pension
Conference acknowledges the successful campaign and well-deserved victory in the European Court leading to the restoration of ninety per cent of expected company pensions but warns that Community must not rest on its laurels just yet. There still remain thousands of workers from the KFAT who never had the chance to join any schemes in hosiery and knitwear and boot and shoe industries which provided safeguards against penury in retirement.
These retired workers were victims of “hire and fire” policies which were the norm for these industries during the 1950s - 1990s. Thousands of workers, a large proportion of whom are women, are seeking to exist on basic state pension of £87 per week and despite regular marches, rallies and lobbies of Parliament they are totally ignored by the Government and its ministers.
This disgusting state of affairs must be tackled, if necessary through direct action. Conference calls on the National Executive Council to give retired members the necessary backing so that poverty in old age will become a thing of the past.
Region 6 Free Members
Communications
Public Policy
8. Industrial Relations Legislation
Conference notes that nearly all of the restrictive legislative provisions of the Thatcher and Major governments remain force, reducing the scope for trade unions to take lawful industrial action and to decide who should and should not be members of their organisations and frustrating their capacity to carry out democratic decisions of their members.
Conference urges the National Executive Council to campaign within the TUC for British working people to be able to practise the same rights in employment as in France, Germany, Italy and other European Union Countries.
Clydesdale Q & T
9. The Labour Government
Conference believes that the Labour Government has, in trying to claim the ‘middle ground’ in politics, sold out its birthright – its socialist principles. Conference therefore believes that the Government should repeal all of the previous Tory Government’s anti-union legislation and introduce current EU positive union directives so that unions can better fight for the improvement of the work and lives of their membership.
Ladbrokes 08
10. Equality of Access to Public Services
Conference calls on the National Executive Council to press for the fair provision of public services across the United Kingdom by removing inequalities, in particular the postcode lottery, and allowing equal access to NHS dentists and other services.
Port Talbot Middle Management
11. Local Broadcasting Services
Conference calls on the National Executive Council to add the support of Community to other trade unions, such as BECTU and the National Union of Journalists, as well as members of Parliament, members of the Scottish Parliament, Members of the House of Keys and other interested parties in their campaign to save local and regional news broadcasts on Independent Television.
NLBD Carlisle
12. Maximum Speed Zones
Conference is convinced that the introduction of 20 mph maximum speed zones outside all of our schools would help dramatically to reduce the number of accidents and incidents that currently plague our school children and their parents/carers. Conference calls for the introduction of such speed zones outside every school.
Brintons Finishing No 6
13. School Buses
Conference calls on the National Executive Council to press all councils to adopt the American model of having all school buses painted yellow. That would help in the protection of our school children going to and from school.
Brintons Finishing No 6
International
14. Child Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Women and Children
Conference is deeply concerned about the substantial escalation in child trafficking and the sexual exploitation of women and girls, some as young as 12, and boys. It has been estimated that over 6,000 women and girls have arrived in the United Kingdom in the past five years to find the promises of a “better life” are in fact a life of being used as sex slaves and prostitutes and sold on time and time again.
The vulnerability of children makes them prime targets for traffickers and the United Nations estimates that half of all victims of trafficking are children. Conference calls upon the National Executive Council to offer their full support to, and to join, other organisations in highlighting this scandalous violation of the human dignity and human rights of the most vulnerable members of our society.
Border 01
15. Removal of British Troops from Iraq
Conference notes that the British government has assisted the United States with troops etc, to invade Iraq and that by the end of 2007 174 British soldiers had been killed in Iraq. These soldiers came from communities which Community represents and the war is the 21st century equivalent of Vietnam.
Conference calls on the National Executive Council to press the Government to remove British troops from Iraq. Conference takes the view that this war is not about anything else but oil and notes that the American government and its people fear the rising cost of oil.
Bridons
16. Colombia
This Conference supports the rights of trade unionists in Colombia to carry out their legitimate duties free from intimidation and persecution. Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist: at least 72 trade unionists were killed in 2006 and many more were threatened and intimidated, usually while carrying out their legitimate union activities. Conference calls on the authorities in Colombia to ensure and guarantee the rights of trade unionists to assembly and association and to freedom of expression and for these rights to be protected in law and in practice.
West Coast Community.
Equality and Fairness
17. Community’s Equalities Agenda
Conference welcomes the union’s evolving equality agenda, and the new and very diverse members who have become increasingly active and are assisting in building a strong foundation for the future. Conference believes that equalities should be one of the union’s key priorities in the strategy for growth, and that equalities issues should be placed high on the agenda in workplace negotiations.
Meridian
18. Employment of Blind and Visually Impaired People
Conference welcomes and supports the RNIB campaign to increase by six per cent the number of blind and visually impaired people in employment. Conference recognises that, whereas the Labour Government has delivered on civil rights legislation for disabled people, there is still discrimination by employers in recruitment of disabled people which has to be addressed. Conference therefore also congratulates our disabled members in local authority, voluntary and Remploy disability factories for the campaigns to protect jobs in the recent past.
Community fully embraces the need for disabled people to have full access to the education system, and a level playing field in relation to all employment, but the union also recognises the reality that supported factories can provide meaningful and worthwhile employment long into the future for those who need them. Conference commits the union to defending our member’s jobs whilst campaigning for an increase in the number of jobs available within all aspects of the "workstep" programme to meet the Government’s aspirations in the welfare to work agenda.
NLBD Glasgow
19. Employment Rights for Agency Workers
For many years in the steel industry and other industries we have seen the numbers of people who come into our industries as agency workers increase and the numbers of brothers and sisters who were employed on a full-time basis fall. Conference welcomes the agency employees who have joined Community, but sees the reduction of full-time regular employment as an attack on current employment rights which enables employers to avoid compliance with redundancy and disciplinary and grievance procedures. It is also associated frequently with high accident rates and inadequate pensions arrangements.
Conference calls on the National Executive Council to campaign to end these unjust and immoral weaknesses in the law which result in the exploitation of young men and women and to extend to agency workers the same employment rights as other working people have.
Aldwarke 1
20. Rights for Temporary Workers
Conference calls on the National Executive Council to campaign for any job currently filled or held by non-permanent staff to be made available on a permanent basis after a working period no longer than twelve months. Conference calls on the NEC to press for working people not offered permanent positions after six months to be automatically entitled to a compensatory or redundancy package operating on a sliding scale in terms of length of service.
Matthey Royston Works
21. Migrant Workers
Conference notes that the media constantly provide reports about a huge influx of migrant workers into the UK and seem to focus on the problems facing UK citizens, in particular job losses, low wages, and reduced benefits. Conference is deeply concerned that many of our members may believe this.
Conference takes the view that the media seem to be intent on raising fear, intolerance, prejudice, and offence with their “jingoistic” stance and biased opinion and calls for a balanced view to prevail.
Migrant workers are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse and need all the help and support that our unions can offer. Conference calls on the National Executive Council to attract migrant workers into membership and to extend every assistance to them to ensure their health and wellbeing while they live in the UK.
Premier Trade Frames
22. Bullying and Harassment at the Workplace
The Conference deplores the bullying and harassment that takes place in the workplace and urges the National Executive Council to campaign through the TUC for zero tolerance.
Clydesdale Q & T
23. Rail Transport for Blind and Partially-Sighted People
In the interests of increasing the mobility and employment prospects of blind and partially sighted people Conference calls upon the National Executive Council to press the Minister of transport and all the rail companies to undertake to ensure that all open/close/toilet buttons are located in exactly the same position in every train. The buttons should be colour-coded for partially-sighted people.
NLBD Edinburgh
Education and Training
Safety and Health
24. Protection of Employees within the Betting Industry
This Conference recognises the enormous wealth being generated by the betting industry and the thousands of jobs it creates. Despite this however the betting industry has still to recognise its responsibility and implement clearly-defined measures of protection in regard to shop safety, security and welfare. Our members are being subjected on a daily basis to exposure in all of the above areas.
Conference calls upon our Union to organise an urgent meeting with Community sponsored MPs in each respective parliament to brief them and mount a campaign on the following:
- The setting of minimum standards, which ensure every employee, is working in an environment free from physical or verbal abuse.
- The establishment of legislation in this regards maintaining a level of compliance upon the employer.
To seek Government endorsement for a strategy that reverses the displayed culture of “it’s your job, as long as the punter is passing over money, accept the abuse and get on with it”.
William Hill 01
25. Drug and Alcohol Misuse
Conference applauds the work carried out by the link counsellors in Corus Strip Products and the commitment of the National Executive Council in supporting the project financially and morally. Conference urges the NEC to support similar initiatives in the other regions in the same fashion, taking account of the work done in CSP. Conference believes that Community should give a lead to the trade union movement as a whole by extending the same level of support it gives to members and their communities wherever they are in the light of the ever-increasing evidence of alcohol and substance misuse.
LLanwern Staff and Administration