GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

Singapore. They will have to fly people there, we do not, we have an office in

Singapore. We will deal with disciplines and grievances if that is what they

want to do. We do not do it any more, we do it on the Isle of Man, because it is

an easier situation. It is still offshore for them, as far as they are concerned,

but we will work through it on whatever we do.

Why is that important? Why have I just mentioned that? That is important,

because when we were thinking of what we are going to do for the next 20, 30,

40, 50 years and we were talking about the young leaders coming through and

we are bringing quite a few young people into the organisation, what are they

going to be doing in 20, 30 years’ time? They are not likely to be doing the sort

of work I am doing today, transitional work. They are not likely to be doing the

work that officials did 10 or 15 years ago. It is going to be far more organised

and orientated rather than servicing, because it is going to be far more global

for us, so we have to have the right people in the right place to do that. How do

we do that? How do we bridge that gap? We have merged with other

countries, so we were a union in the UK, affiliated to the TUC, affiliated to the

GFTU. We had a choice. Do we merge with Unite, RMT, TSSA? They are all

transport unions. No, we do not. We do not, because we are a small specialist

union looking after seafarers. We do not wish to do that, because it is more

globalised. Nothing in relevance to those unions, they all do good work out

there, but we have to take a view what will service our members going forward.

So about six or seven years ago we merged with the Dutch. Why did we

merge with the Dutch? Because on a lot of our ships going all round the North

Sea, the Irish Sea, the Mediterranean, we have Dutch and British officers. We

do two sets of separate negotiations when we talk about pay. Why? Shared

services. Why not do it all at the same time? Why not stop them playing

people off against each other, the Dutch getting paid more than the British, the

British getting paid more than the Dutch? So we came together, we are one

union, we create a federation. We let anyone come into the federation. We

have got 12 countries in the federation – Australia, New Zealand, Croatia,

Belgium, the Scandinavian countries. What happens after two years, once we

believe there is a natural fit and we actually have the same ethos, we have got

140