GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

This is a great swan song for me. I had absolutely no idea that this would be

where my career would end in the trade union movement and I cannot think of

a better way to end it. Having been on the GFTU EC since 2003, I can

genuinely say that my association with this organisation has been one of the

most enjoyable, worthwhile aspects of my time in the movement and in those

14 years I have seen some extraordinary changes in the GFTU, changes

hugely for the better.

The last four or five years in particular have seen some quite extraordinary

changes in the GFTU:

The new education programme is a remarkable testament to this change and I

do urge you both to study the new programme, it is in your pack, and to canvas

it in your unions.

Our move lock, stock and barrel to Quorn near Leicester and the major plans

we have to expand and increase our investment on that side are also

extraordinary. Our new partnerships with an impressively wide range of

impressive academic institutions developed over the last couple of years. We

have largely stabilised the GFTU’s finances and the investment in Quorn will

largely end our dependence on the casino economy, as Doug Nicholls calls it,

quite rightly, and we have seen a range of very significant innovations over the

last couple of years with, just as some of the highlights, the Summits at Stone

in Staffordshire, our work with the arts community, our work with various trade

union specialists (finance officers, education officers and so on), our

development of a range of shared services programmes, our work with the

youth festivals and so on. It is a very long, very impressive list and it is fully set

out in the pack that you have.

I think we have stabilised the GFTU’s pension scheme. I have at times felt as if

the GFTU is an extremely complex pension scheme with a small trade union

body peripherally attached to it. I believe, I certainly hope, that that is no longer

the case, as I think a great deal of concerted work has gone into stabilising that

scheme.

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