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TULO’s work was perhaps best demonstrated on 5th May 2005, when the Labour Party won an historic third term in power. The trade unions were instrumental in delivering that third term. Together, under the TULO banner, the afffiliated trade unions helped deliver a Labour Government back to power by;
• Sending 6 million pieces of direct mail to their members urging them to support the Labour Party, 1.8 million of these in the 100 most marginal seats.
• 15,818 trade unionists applied for a postal vote through the unions’ postal votes centre.
• A number of unions placed billboard and newspaper adverts explaining what a Tory government would mean to their members.
• The TULO network of key seat coordinators brought in several hundred volunteers to work on the campaign in the marginal seats, which translates into literally thousands of hours of work. The Party did lose a number of seats, of course, but held on in three-quarters of the seats that had TULO Co-ordinators
• The unions provided a national network of over 70 drivers to work out of the 9 English regional Labour party and Scottish and Welsh Labour party offices; plus a further 12 drivers to work out of the Labour party head office in London.
Now that we have a Labour Government for the next 5 years we, as trade unionists, can look forward to the implimentation of the Warwick agreement. The Warwick agreement was negotiated in July 2004, between the various component parts of the Labour party, including the Labour Government and the trade unions.
Under the Warwick agreement, the Labour Government has pledged to:
• Introduce four weeks paid holiday for every worker, exclusive of bank holidays. This will benefit two million workers currently forced to count bank holidays off as part of their annual leave
• Introduce training for pension trustees, and ensure members of schemes make up 50% of trustees
• Extend the two-tier workforce protection in local government across the public services
• Promote a public procurement policy which safeguards jobs and skills and encourages contracts to be given to UK firms for UK workers within EU law; and also to support a review of EU procurement policy.
• Keep the Royal Mail in public hands, with telecom regulation focusing on service choice and reliability as well as network competition.
To view the Warwick agreement please click here (www.unionstogether.org.uk/resources/resources/warwick.pdf)
As union activists we need to remind ourselves of what the Labour Government can offer trade unions and what the Conservative Government would take away, as we campaign to see the Labour Government re-elected for a fourth term. The affiliated trade unions will continue to work through TULO to strengthen the Link between the two wings of the Labour movement at every level towards this end.
PS: If you are a branch officer; please pass this article around to your members so that we can have as many trade unionists signed up to the www.unionstogether.org.uk website as possible.
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