During ♥UNIONS week, Usdaw is highlighting successes that have been achieved through collective campaigning in workplaces and communities, working with employers and politicians, on solutions to our members’ issues and concerns:
- Protection of shopworkers: New legislation was passed in Holyrood and Westminster after decades of Usdaw’s Freedom from Fear campaign.
- Coronavirus: Protections were negotiated by Usdaw with employers and government to help keep members safe and safeguard jobs and incomes.
- New deal for workers campaign: Successfully achieved £10 per hour in many workplaces, pushed for a higher minimum wage and opposed youth rates.
- Festive working: Usdaw’s continued call for a proper break over Christmas and New Year saw many retailers scaling back their opening times last year.
- Fire and rehire: Usdaw successfully challenged in the courts an attempt to fire and rehire long serving Tesco distribution staff.
Paddy Lillis – Usdaw General Secretary says: “Usdaw is the campaigning union, improving workers’ lives and delivering for our members. Usdaw’s reps and activists do a great job promoting fairness at work, getting a better deal for our members, along with improving health and safety in their workplaces.
“The pandemic has shown just how much we rely on key workers, who are too often underpaid, poorly treated and do not receive the respect they deserve. As we hopefully emerge from Covid-19, there must be a new deal for workers based on decent pay, an end to insecure employment, respect and action to ensure that key worker jobs are no longer underpaid and undervalued. All that is best achieved by joining the union.
“Throughout ‘Heart Unions’ week, Usdaw, along with the TUC, is celebrating the positive contribution trade union members make to the UK economy and wider society, while highlighting the benefits of trade union membership.”
Notes for editors:
Usdaw (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) is the UK's fifth biggest trade union with over 360,000 members. Most Usdaw members work in the retail sector, but the union also has many members in transport, distribution, food manufacturing, chemical industry and other trades.
Heart Unions’ week: www.tuc.org.uk/heartunions 14 to 20 February 2022 highlights the positive contribution that trade unions make in workplaces and across wider society.
Join Usdaw: www.usdaw.org.uk/Join-Us
For Usdaw press releases visit: http://www.usdaw.org.uk/news and you can follow us on Twitter
@UsdawUnion