GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

out whether there is an opportunity for us to work together in solidarity and be

mutually supportive.

I will tell you the story of Win:Win. You have heard it on several occasions

already. One of the things that we are really keen to do is make sure that we

all get stronger through this model of collaboration and the benefit to the GFTU,

of course, is that any commissions paid are paid to the Educational Trust. I like

John’s quote yesterday and I also picked up on the paperwork that we should

be using quotes to make certain points. I have got one and it is from Albert

Einstein and it is that quote that we all know: “If you always do what you

always did you will always get what you always got”. I am just urging people to

think outside the box a little bit and let’s not forget that luck favours the brave.

When TSSA put the motion in 2015 that urged us to explore collaborative work,

it set me on a bit of a quest with the help of other people in the office to think

about how we can support affiliates to do things. We have then gone out and

found some commercial partners. Some we were already working with, some

are new on the scene. Mo is not in the room yet. He is knocking about

somewhere, but there is a new emerging product from PG Mutual which is

quite an exciting opportunity. We will tell you a bit about that. We have got

Protego doing NHS dental plans, we have got Steve Fox doing stuff for Affinity

Marketing. They are not here at the moment, but the opportunities are good

and they will generate revenue and opportunity for the affiliates plus it adds

value to membership.

I am going to start off by just reflecting on what we are doing from Quorn,

because our start point in all of this is what we can do in the office. As people

are aware, we have got some subcontracted services within the finance team.

Obviously we are looking after management accounts, performance reporting,

sales and purchase ledger, pensions administration, payroll and so on. Claire

will be with us shortly and she will be able to tell you about how that works, so if

there are things that you want around support for making your finance function

slicker I am sure that we can help out. There is then the stuff that we are doing

within the education team. There is a lot going on in education at the moment,

a lot of reforms. We look after the programmes for a couple of unions. It is

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