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Resolution 21
Support UK Manufacturing
(1)
The GFTU believes that it is imperative that UK manufacturing is supported in order
that there can be no over-reliance on financial services and the service sector ever
again.
(2)
Conference believes that the decline of UK manufacturing must be reversed through
an interventionist industrial and manufacturing policy to drive the economy forward
– which the current coalition government is failing to do.
The ConDem coalition government’s growth strategy and manufacturing policy has
failed to materialise.
(3)
Conference also notes the support given to German manufacturing companies by
their federal and national governments with the government, unions and employers
working together – which ahs protected German manufacturing from the worst of the
economic crisis and defended their strategically important manufacturing companies.
(4)
Conferences therefore calls for the GFTU to campaign to support and defend UK
manufacturing.
(5)
Including support for:
•
A strategic Investment Bank where manufacturing companies including
SMEs have easy access to investment funding at an affordable rate. This will
facilitate loans at competitive rates to enable SMEs to increase capital
investment in new machinery, technology and equipment.
•
The use of government procurement opportunities to ensure goods and
services purchased are manufactured or produced in the UK by UK based
companies.
•
The establishment of a Takeover Commission to ensure that workers and
their representatives to be informed and consulted on the business and
financing plan of any takeover prior to the acquisition. Through their trade
unions, workers should have the right, equivalent to that
of pension fund trustees, to seek fair compensation and protection should
substantially greater levels of leverage be part of a takeover.
•
Support for a new skills strategy based on skilled apprenticeships, providing
long term, skilled and well paid employment.
•
Environmental considerations can only fairly be considered on a global
basis but they must form part of any sustainable industrial policy in the
future and must include the maximisation of opportunity that the low
carbon revolution provides whilst crating a level playing field to deliver
security and fair pricing for energy. The structure of “green taxes” must be
such so as not to stifle manufacturing growth or export it to parts of the
world where such taxes do not exist, but to create a sustainable industrial
strategy which embraces equity and viable employment.
(6)
Conference calls for more government action and less rhetoric on boosting the UK’s
manufacturing sector. Without action now the threat to the future of manufacturing
in the UK is real. The current 12% contribution to GDP does not represent a
balanced economy which economists and politicians alike agree is what the UK
needs.
Resolution 22
UK Equal Rights Framework
(1)
Conference condemns the ConDem Government for repealing sections of the
Equality Act 2010 aimed at protecting workers from discrimination and harassment
and attacking institutions such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission
(EHRC). Alongside many other attacks on employment rights, widespread use of
zero hours contracts, attacks on collective bargaining, reducing access to justice
by implementing fees for employment tribunals, conference believes the current
Government is systematically dismantling the equal rights framework within the UK.
(2)
Conference believes charging a fee for registering a claim at a tribunal undoubtedly
deters the lowest paid workers and those who are unemployed as a consequence of
dismissal from registering a claim. To charge people for exercising a statutory right is
an attack on equality, is unacceptable and is, in reality a denial of access to justice.
In the first year on the Tribunal fees regime, applications to the Employment Tribunal
was down 79% comparied to the previous 12 months.
Implementation
The GFTU has constantly prioritized
these policies as central to its work.