EC Meeting March 2017

14

Implementation The GFTU has constantly prioritized these policies as central to its work.

Resolution 21

Support UK Manufacturing

(1) The GFTU believes that it is imperative that UK manufacturing is supported in order that there can be no over-reliance on financial services and the service sector ever again. (2) Conference believes that the decline of UK manufacturing must be reversed through an interventionist industrial and manufacturing policy to drive the economy forward – which the current coalition government is failing to do. The ConDem coalition government’s growth strategy and manufacturing policy has failed to materialise. (3) Conference also notes the support given to German manufacturing companies by their federal and national governments with the government, unions and employers working together – which ahs protected German manufacturing from the worst of the economic crisis and defended their strategically important manufacturing companies.

(4) Conferences therefore calls for the GFTU to campaign to support and defend UK manufacturing.

(5)

Including support for:

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A strategic Investment Bank where manufacturing companies including SMEs have easy access to investment funding at an affordable rate. This will facilitate loans at competitive rates to enable SMEs to increase capital investment in new machinery, technology and equipment. The use of government procurement opportunities to ensure goods and services purchased are manufactured or produced in the UK by UK based companies. The establishment of a Takeover Commission to ensure that workers and their representatives to be informed and consulted on the business and financing plan of any takeover prior to the acquisition. Through their trade unions, workers should have the right, equivalent to that of pension fund trustees, to seek fair compensation and protection should substantially greater levels of leverage be part of a takeover. Support for a new skills strategy based on skilled apprenticeships, providing long term, skilled and well paid employment. Environmental considerations can only fairly be considered on a global basis but they must form part of any sustainable industrial policy in the future and must include the maximisation of opportunity that the low carbon revolution provides whilst crating a level playing field to deliver security and fair pricing for energy. The structure of “green taxes” must be such so as not to stifle manufacturing growth or export it to parts of the world where such taxes do not exist, but to create a sustainable industrial strategy which embraces equity and viable employment.

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(6) Conference calls for more government action and less rhetoric on boosting the UK’s manufacturing sector. Without action now the threat to the future of manufacturing in the UK is real. The current 12% contribution to GDP does not represent a balanced economy which economists and politicians alike agree is what the UK needs.

Resolution 22

UK Equal Rights Framework

(1) Conference condemns the ConDem Government for repealing sections of the Equality Act 2010 aimed at protecting workers from discrimination and harassment and attacking institutions such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). Alongside many other attacks on employment rights, widespread use of zero hours contracts, attacks on collective bargaining, reducing access to justice by implementing fees for employment tribunals, conference believes the current Government is systematically dismantling the equal rights framework within the UK. (2) Conference believes charging a fee for registering a claim at a tribunal undoubtedly deters the lowest paid workers and those who are unemployed as a consequence of dismissal from registering a claim. To charge people for exercising a statutory right is an attack on equality, is unacceptable and is, in reality a denial of access to justice. In the first year on the Tribunal fees regime, applications to the Employment Tribunal was down 79% comparied to the previous 12 months.