GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

that you have not got the capacity or infrastructure currently. It might be about

sharing practice and not just fishing in the same pond all the time. It might be

that resources are tight and there is a more efficient way of doing things, but all

of that really matters.

There are other spin offs as well, aren’t there? What I see, believe, understand

might be different to somebody else, so it might provide a professional

development opportunity for somebody who has not gone that route. It might

be that it introduces fresh ideas, fresh approaches, different ways of doing stuff

and clearly there are benefits of sharing costs, economies of scale and the

chance to really squeeze the maximum value out of things, because in reality

we have not got a bottomless pot of resources. We do want to be very

sustainable so the movement is fit for the future. How do we do that? We do

that through collaborative workflow.

Doug asked me to comment on a few real examples which I am very

comfortable with doing. Let’s think about being here. When you arrived in the

hotel yesterday you will have come to the little reception desk. Obviously the

hotel gave you your registration card and said, “Sorry, you can’t come in until 3

o’clock” and all those things, but then you wandered down the corridor and you

will have seen Simon and Anthony. They were from Red Meet Event Services.

They currently arrange the training venues for TSSA, because they negotiate

corporate deals with hotels like here and the benefit in terms of price is quite

grand. You will have seen the email recently where we invited people who are

going to the TUC in September to take part in a negotiated deal where we all

come together, we all stop at the same hotel, it gives us a chance to network,

we are stopping at the Jurys Inn in Brighton and I think the saving per room is

£85 per night by booking it altogether compared to what we were quoted last

year. That for me is a no brainer, because it keeps the money in our unions’

pockets, but by having a commercial arrangement and booking training

venues, booking places like this and them taking some responsibility in

supporting us makes life easier, makes it more affordable.

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