GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

“Sailed through. Impressed. Couldn’t understand why it had not been done

before”. That is only halfway. The next bit was it went from the committee to

the Board and the Board were the final decision makers. Last Thursday,

colleagues, we got a very nice letter from the Board – no changes, nothing

removed, very complementary and we are on our way.

Our target point is that, hopefully, if we are not interrupted or something does

not derail us, by 2020 January we may well have created the Trade Union

Official Apprenticeship kitemark level 4. What does that do for us? It is only

afterwards I began to think what it does for us. What does it say to young shop

stewards and health and safety reps? What does it say for us as officials? We

have finally got something that says we know we are professional and we know

that we are seen as professionals, but sometimes we are dependant on some

other qualification that we have in our back pocket from something else we did.

From this point on it could encourage us to have existing fulltime officials and

certainly new fulltime officials going down an apprenticeship pathway that is

signed off after 18 months at level 4. I personally think it will be a bargaining

chip for officials within unions. It will help when we advertise for new people to

come and work for us to say, “Have you got this? Do you want this? Would

you be prepared to do it?”

I think it will be somewhat easier with new employees, because hopefully it will

become the norm over a period of time. The nervous bit that I had was about

existing officials, so I had a conversation and some conversations with people

of my age who have done it for a while. “Would you consider if this comes into

place, and I know that you have done it all and you do it all, but what about that

level 4 for you?” I have not had a negative response yet. “That will be okay,

Col, I ain’t got any qualifications, I just did this job, because I did this job and

got from here to here”. So myself and the EC and the GFTU and the people

that have assisted on this are pretty excited about where this is going. Now we

have got the need, now we have got the letter that says that it is I do not think it

can be stopped. It is the fine detail now. Let me be clear, colleagues. When it

is created, when it is finished and when it goes on the shelf you will make your

own minds up in your own unions whether you are going to take it off the shelf

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