GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

Subway and it is always young people in there, they are in there because they

are cheap labour, you will find the likes of McDonalds paying some of their

people £3.30 an hour. It is absolutely disgraceful. These are the sort of rates

of pay that they are getting away with in the name of apprenticeships and all

that. But in America a lot of these fast food workers are actually families, they

are family people – husband and wife working in a McDonalds or one of the

other fast food outlets over there who have got kids and they have got to raise

them on a rate normally round about $9 or $10 which, I am sure, you would

agree is poverty pay. We actually took up in 2013 our fast food campaign and

so it was in line with what the Americans are doing we called it a £10 Now

campaign. That is what we called it. I suppose in real terms it should be like a

£13.17 Now campaign because of the way the pound has changed.

But, as trade unionists, and I have done it myself and I am sure many in this

room have done it, we have celebrated the victories of people in the past. We

have done it. We go to the Tolpuddle Martyrs Rally in July and we have a party

and we listen to the music and we commemorate the feats of those agricultural

workers from Tolpuddle. We laud what the suffragettes did to get the votes for

women and the fantastic battles that they took up, the chartists, even like the

Shrewsbury 24 and the people in the modern day. I was just talking to John,

the photographer. I would laud what our members at Hovis did in their battle to

take on a giant and they won. So what does it show? It shows that things can

go better.

These people in America, these Fight for $15 workers, I believe, will go down in

history, in trade union history. They came together, they joined a union and

they took on a global giant and, okay, they have not won yet, but they are

winning. They are winning. There are chinks in the armour that are happening

and now we are seeing people being paid. If I tell you just a couple of facts.

These fast food workers in America who have taken this strike action, despite

being on low pay, against the likes of McDonalds, in the states where they are

32,000 companies now have adopted the $15 an hour, 32,000 companies.

That affects 19 million people and that is because of the collective action of a

few thousand. So you can see that if we do things we can win eventually. It

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