|
<<back to articles
2005 was a year of great success for the affiliated trade unions. Through our combined efforts nearly 600,000 trade unionists within the most marginal parliamentary constituencies were contacted and asked to support the Labour Party. We recruited nearly 16,000 postal votes, and brought many thousands of volunteers into the election campaign.
But this was not our only success – through our efforts the Labour Party gave a manifesto commitment to deliver the Warwick Agreement in full during a third term in office.
Already there has been substantial progress on the agreement. The Union Modernisation Fund delivers nearly £10 million for trade unions to strengthen their infrastructure and build organisational activity; the forthcoming Work and Families Bill will extend maternity and paternity leave, and ensure that all employees are entitled to four weeks paid holiday; or the proposal to triple the number of union learning representatives as set out in the recent White paper on Skills.
Nevertheless, there are areas where we are keen to see progress, and through TULO the affiliated unions will be pressing the Government to act. For example, the Warwick Agreement committed Labour to introduce legislation to protect temporary and agency workers; it was agreed that the Government would review the facility time available for union representatives to conduct their activities; and we should not forget that they are committed to introducing regulations requiring at least 50% of all pension trustees to be working members of the fund.
Additionally, there are many other issues in the Trade Union Agenda which need addressing.
During 2006, TULO will seek to build on our successes. We have set in motion an organisational strategy that build on trade union campaigning throughout this third term of a Labour Government – for the first time we will be resourcing a trade union campaign for the London elections. Through our collective political activity we will ensure that Labour delivers the commitments made at Warwick, and be raising contemporary issues of concern to our members.
I hope that you will take the opportunity to visit our website www.unionstogether.org.uk. On that site you can keep up to date with our organisational activity, actively participate by volunteering or ordering materials to distribute in your workplace, or just simply see more details of the Warwick Agreement.
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.
<<back to articles
|
TULO Newsletter January 2006 
