EC Meeting March 2017

* Be informed by our commitment to social justice, empowering communities, and internationalism.

9 We have also taken a significant professional lead in cross fertilising the related disciplines of popular education theory and practice with trade union education. We are committed therefore to changing the way trade union education is delivered and what it delivers. We offer our first training courses in this subject this year. 10 Structurally we have established three wholly owned subsidiary companies, one to provide training on the general market, one to run the hotel and one to run the nursery. 11 We tendered for new accountants last year and appointed Sturgess Hutchinson. This has reduced our costs and improved the quality of service. Regular management accounts are produced internally. An annual budget is fixed and assessed monthly. 12 The funding to the Trust from the GFTU depends on its own health financially and this in turn depends on two factors, the number of affiliates and the impact of the triennial pension scheme valuations. One larger GFTU affiliate did not re affiliate last year but five new small and medium sized affiliates joined. The pension scheme valuation was better than predicted, the deficit is reduced somewhat but the annual GFTU payment into this of £70,000 remains the same though to be repaid over a shorter period. In addition the Pension scheme following considerable advice is adopting a new statement of funding principles and investment strategy. 13 We have a tradition of supporting university students in their studies through bursaries. For the next three years we are funding Edda Johnson to produce an up to date history of the GFTU at the University of Wolverhampton, we have given a bursary of £1,500 to the President of BECTU to study trade unionism and free-lance work, and we have donated small £100 prizes to students in the Industrial Relations Department at De Montfort University. In addition Dr Shirin Hirsch has been appointed to a post doctorate at Wolverhampton which enables her to contribute some time to our education work. 14 We occasionally donate to worthwhile educational and historic projects. This year we have donated £1,500 to the Marx Memorial Library to restore some Spanish Civil War Banners, £1,000 to the Radical Book Fair as author prizes, £2,000 to Banner Theatre to assist in the compilation of a book of the songs of Dave Rogers with music transcription and photographs. We have donated also to assist in the production of a film about the London Recruits, those brave young trade unionists who went to South Africa to undertake clandestine work against the Apartheid regime. We commissioned a new performance piece Our History Our Future which can be used at Union education events and conferences. 15 We were pleased also to be able to support the production of a play about an early leading woman trade unionist who was on the GFTU Executive, Mary Quaile, and to support the work to preserve archives of the North West Women’s Union. 16 Our normal funding of a biennial study visit by the Executive Committee of the GFTU did not take place in quite the same way in 2016 due to funding and time pressures on the committee. However, we were able to fund a visit by younger EC members to Greece. We have also been able to support two educational exchanges to the GFTU by ESNA the Latin American trade union education and research organisation. Work with the Vietnamese

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