A great year for Usdaw with more to come have a great Christmas

Usdaw is a modern union meeting the challenges, and grasping the opportunities, of a rapidly changing world.

We are not locked in the past, hankering for a return to the so-called 'good old days' and expecting the Labour Government to wave a magic wand and solve all of our problems. We are having success on our political agenda as well as our industrial agenda.

With membership up to over 332,000, the highest level since May 1992, our investment in recruitment and organising is really paying off. Our ambition to be a union with over half a million members in retail alone is not pie in the sky. It is clearly achievable if we all work together and confidently go out and offer the advantages of Usdaw membership to unorganised workers in our sectors.

MFI workers have been flooding in to join our ranks without us conducting any recruitment campaign at all. They have been joining, not just to assist in increasing our membership figures, but because they have problems with their employer and want us to help them. On our web site alone we have had enquiries from some 739 workers about joining Usdaw. Of those who enquired, more than 480 have joined the union.

Our success on Lifelong Learning has been more than impressive and a policy of which I am personally very proud. Our union learning reps do a magnificent job in the workplace, and it is largely due to their efforts that this phenomenal success has been achieved.

Usdaw can take credit for the fact that the Low Pay Commission is now considering the case for 16 and 17 year-olds to be covered by the Minimum Wage.

We have been commended for the excellent case, which was prepared by our own Research Department, and presented by Deputy General Secretary John Hannett, to the commission on 27th November.

Our Respect CD is now in the process of production and will further highlight our important Freedom From Fear campaign. It should also provide a musical antidote to the 'psychological terror' referred to by our trade union colleagues in Austria, which they claim is the result of the Repetitive Hearing Injury caused by ceaseless renditions of Christmas music played in retail stores.

I would like to thank all of our activists for the work they do on behalf of the union and our members. I wish all Usdaw members and their families a Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

 Printer Friendly Page

 Email to a Friend

© 2003 (USDAW) Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers
This page: http://www.usdaw.org.uk/getactive/news/1072195201_23331.html
Last Modified: Tuesday, 01-Jun-2004 15:46:33 EST
Proudly designed and programmed by Social Change Online
Site Credits