Nottingham Meeting Update

A packed meeting in Nottingham on February 1st heard Unite Joint General Secretary speak on the current issues facing the union including the policies that are winning support from Unite members, the new democratic structure agreed by the Unite NEC last week and the attacks on himself and the union by newspapers such as the Times.

He outlined the policies Unite is fighting for including defending jobs inmanufacturing, finance, the car and steel industries and explained the current situation in the engineering construction industry where members have protesting against some sub-contractors refusuals to offer employment to UK skilled workers. He also talked about the need to get Unite activists to become involved politically and stand as MP's to reflect the real issues working people faced.

In outlining Unite policies he demanded more support from the Government to protect employment and jobs and outlined the steps the Unite NEC had taken in recent weeks. These included the 10 point economic plan presented to the Goverment much of which was being enacted; an increase in redundancy pay as agreed in the manifesto; help for members facing job losses including training and re-skilling, help for the car industry and in the steelmaking industry as well as in the public sector and manufacturing. He said Unite's political influence has helped and we have made progress, but it hasn't been enough!

He outlined the creation of Workers Uniting with the USW in the USA and Canada saying: "We need to fight on the same playing feild as global companies and the USW is a similar union to Unite and faced the same problems". This had been the case in the papermaking industry where the Unite GPM sector is working well with the USW in developing policies to handle global companies in that sector.

Recent discussions in Germany had shown that IG Metall Germany's biggest union faced similar problems as Unite. However the Government in Germany, is providing help to the car and steel industry, via scheme to scrap all cars over ten years old and help with discounted new cars, and providing help to workers facing short time working over an 18 month period. Why couldn't the UK goverment undertake a similar programme. He said that Unite discussed these problems with its own members, IG Metall, discussed the same issues with its own members, so why why don't we sit down in a formal way and discuss these issues jointly - not just at one-off conferences and meetings?

In regard to the Times articles, he said these articles were not just an attack on himself, but also on Unite. The Times and the establishment had nominated the candidate they wanted to win the election - in order to get a return to the past, when the union didn't fight for its members. The NEC were now taking legal advice on the Times articles as they contained defamatory reporting.

Derek Simpson said the new democratic structure within Unite was now agreed and would be in place soon following a breifing for Regional Secretaries and National Officers last week. Whilst it was true he and Tony Woodley had disagreements, it was not true that they were at "loggerheads" and the office and departmental issues have been resolved.

On the "walkouts" he said that that the members were construction engineering workers, who worked from project to project. Despite warnings to the Government including Gordon Brown, they had ignored these warnings. Sending Italian workers home as the press were saying, was not the answer - UK workers have worked with overseas workers for years. This was about UK construction workers being direcly debarred from working on various sites and gave an example of a report of one subcontractor saying that they would go anywhere in the world other than the UK to hire labour.

The recent ECJ decisions protected these practices. Some of the companies had said that they were paying the "going rate", however if that was the case, the costs would be higher given the cost of transport, accommodations, travel etc. He made it clear that what was being sought was social protection for UK workers to stop social dumping.

Discussion took place on the problems in the car industry, manufacturing, the personal attacks on Derek Simpson and the attacks on the union and those person's who had been providing information to the Times and Derek's elction campaign.