Thursday, July 16, 2015

UNISON General Secretary Dave Prentis: My 3 Pledges to you






My 3 pledges to you

Dear John

I hope you enjoyed UNISON's recent national delegate conference in Glasgow.

During my speech, I made three key pledges to conference to show how the union is committed to supporting members and fighting the austerity agenda.

I now want to update you on progress so far.

I pledged to:
  • treble the number of fighting fund organisers from 100 to 300 to support branches,
  • double the union’s legal funds in order to take on strategic cases that we can use to challenge the government, and
  • build for a mass demonstration in Manchester during the Conservative Party conference to show the strength of the union’s opposition to cuts to public services.
Pledge 1 - triple our fighting funds organisers
Since conference, we’ve started to recruit more fighting fund organisers. There are more than 100 in place already and branches can contact their regions to make proposals for how a new organiser could support their work. This army of organisers is a vital support for our hard-pressed branches, so do reach out to your region if your branch could benefit.

Pledge 2 - double our legal funds
On legal cases, we’ve put the resources in place and the union is already taking advice on how we could best challenge the government’s plans to change the law on strike ballots. We are continuing to pursue our legal challenge to the  charges for employment tribunal cases and we are fighting non-payment of the minimum wage in particular sectors. We’ll continue to use the law to fight for our members’ rights.

Pledge 3 - build for a mass demo in Manchester
As for demonstrating in Manchester, we’ve talked with the TUC about organising this protest and UNISON is committed to mobilising our members to make their voices heard. You’ll hear more about this in UNISON’s publications, emails and the website over the coming months – I hope you’ll get involved too.

See you in Manchester,


Dave Prentis
UNISON general secretary

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