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General Secretary’s report July 2017.
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managers and ensure that our best practice intentions, our policies, and rules are applied in
the nursery the hotel and the GFTU. The third focus will be to manage the nursery manager.
3.6
In general terms this leaves us without a professional internal communications and design
the facility. This is something me what we may want to address through in-service training of
existing staff.
3.7
The EC agreed previously to the appointment of a new ICT officer. Following discussions with
our new third-party ICT provider and our expert consultants we have full confidence at this
stage that this post is not needed. Our new third-party provider has proved extremely good
so far. We are also grateful to the very good support that Tony Johnson has given us over
this period. We are grateful too for the work that the operations manager had to do to
assist in a range of crises that the set the network and virus attacks in 2016. At this stage we
are confident that the new third-party provider is putting us in a much safer and more
secure and stable ICT position.
3.8
The EC agreement to points a producer for the Liberating Arts Festival has been
implemented and Chris Jury who addressed the BGCM is doing a good job.
3.9
The educational trust agreed to appoint a fundraising consultant. A number of applications
have been made but so far unfortunately without success.
3.10
Our Ph.D. student to produce materials on the history of the GF TU and assist with
our 120
th
anniversary comments is works shortly. Our post-doc student will contribute to our
education programme.
3.11
Our joint bid with Leicester University for £1 million for a research project into the
future of pensions has passed its first hurdle which is a very good sign and discussions will
take place as to how any appointed researchers could assist the GF TU and its affiliates in
pensions related work which will be incredibly important.
3.12
Hotel and nursery staffing issues are dealt with by the relevant boards of directors.
3.13
I have held supervision meetings with seeing the senior management team.
3.14
A meeting will be held for the entire new staff team.
3.15
Our expansion of staffing means that our current national office is too small. Use of
space is currently under review and I am grateful to staff for their forbearance.
3.16
Shamil Karia, Finance Officer, and Claire Ryan, my PA undertake weekly website
updating.
4
Pension Scheme.
4.1
The pensions’ regulator has approved the valuation documents.
4.2
The Head of Finance and myself attended a meeting with legal and general investment
management, our asset managers, to ensure that the reshaping of our portfolio, following