You are:

TUC 2009 - Tuesday morning

15 September 2009

Opening our contributions on the second day of the TUC conference, national executive member Mary Ferguson spoke in support of unemployed workers' centres.

Supporting motion 82 Mary said: “We should not forget that unemployed workers’ centres (UWC) were created at the beginning of the last great recession...and were at the heart of trade union campaigns against unemployment.”

TUC 2009 - image by Clifford Harper

Describing PCS as being “at the forefront of the campaign against the government’s welfare reform plans”, Mary cautioned against believing there is any difference between the two main political parties:

“It is simply absurd for some in the Labour government to point in horror to Tory plans for workfare when it was this government who first planned and then implemented exactly this type of welfare reform.

“The difference between Labour and the Tories on welfare reform is the difference between Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee.”

Mary said the government’s focus is now on using large private companies to deliver welfare provision, rather than the charities and ‘third sector’ companies of earlier spin.

Supporting the call for a national redundancy counselling service, decent funding for UWCs and ‘one fund for all’ schemes, Mary summed up by saying: “The labour movement should be campaigning against these plans – if they are wrong under the Tories, then they are wrong now.”

Reinvigorate our membership

Speaking in support of composite 5 on increasing union membership, Sian Ruddick outlined the benefits of being in a union, including better pay, safer workplaces and improved access to training.

Sian described several ways of encouraging people to join unions; the most important of which is to ask them.

“PCS has maintained its levels of membership despite losing up to 100,000 jobs in the civil service,” said Sian. She called on unions to “empower their activists and use every angle possible to promote trade unionism,” including green campaigning and life long learning.

Sian ended by urging the TUC to provide practical guidance and support: “The impact of the recession, including escalating levels of unemployment and the ever present threat of the sack, makes it more important than ever for us to pool our resources and co-operate more closely.”

Keep our prisons public

Describing the “lamentable catalogue of failure and mismanagement” in private sector prisons, the Ministry of Justice’s Austin O’ Harney pledged our support to the Prison Officer Association’s campaign to keep prisons in the public sector (motion 64).

Austin told delegates that the public sector continues to outperform the private sector and reminded them that both Manchester and Lakenhurst prisons had been returned to the public sector following unsuccessful stints with private companies.

“Privatisation is a failed experiment and a discredited dogma,” said Austin, “and yet the new labour government has gone further and faster than any previous governments in privatising prisons and prisoner care.

“We must give a lead to nationwide campaigning against further prison privatisation and publicise the appalling record of the private sector in criminal justice.”
 

Tab Comment

  1. View comments
  2. Add a new comment

Tab Comment content

  1. Comments are yet to be posted for this article.
  2. Add new comment

    All comments will be moderated before publication. PCS does not guarantee that all comments will be published. Please see our comments policy for more information.