GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

think I have probably taken up more than my time, I could talk for hours. Thank

you for the opportunity to speak, it has been a pleasure. (Applause)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Paul. Doug tells me that the courses

GFTU offers at Northern are among the most popular that we have got on our

books, so well done and thanks for looking after our members. Paul mentioned

apprenticeships towards the end of his presentation. I am going to ask Colin

Kirkham from the GFTU EC to say a few words about the work that has been

done on apprenticeships.

BRO COLIN KIRKHAM (Executive Committee): As John says, my name is Colin

Kirkham and I am a member of the EC on behalf of the GMB Trade Union. For

me to bring you up to speed I think it is only right and proper that I give you the

story from start to the current point. In April 2016, I think it was, the

Apprenticeship Levy commenced or the tax, whichever way you want to look at

it and I remember my boss saying to me, the General Secretary, “What does

that mean for us?” So I said, “Well, what it means for us is that they take some

of our members’ money, put it somewhere and we have to then utilise it”. He

said, “Can we do that?” I said, “It is going to be pretty tough, because there is

nothing on the shelf that fits with a lot of our employees”. At the same time,

and it is strange how things happen, my daughter asked me how I became a

trade union officer. After about 3 ½ hours of me giving her a boring history of

leaving school at 15, going down a coalmine, joining the NUM, becoming a rep

and so on and so forth I realise that I could not actually tell them if I did not tell

them my history. If that sounds familiar to most of us, that is because that is

the way it has been. The easy answer could have been that I went for an

interview and I got a job, but it is a bit more complicated than that, isn’t it,

because you have to do certain things sometimes or believe in what you are

doing to become what we do?

The final one was, almost coincidentally at the same time, I looked in an IOSH

magazine, Institute of Occupational Safety and Health that I get sent to me and

I looked at an article that said: “Construction firms create the first construction

apprenticeship level for construction”. So a group of big companies had come

together, seen that the Apprenticeship Levy was on its way and formed what

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