DGST speech conference 2016
Colleagues, Conference welcome to our 2016 telecoms and financial services conference.
It’s good to see you all here it’s been a busy year, and I, the executive and the branches have been confronted with new challenges as the landscape of the businesses we represent constantly transforms.
You, in the branches deal with the fallout from our members during these challenging times. And we all strive to be the best ambassadors of this Union that we can. So my thanks go to you all for your dedication in difficult times.
My thanks go to the SOC for putting together the agenda and allowing us some time to have presentations. We have one this afternoon on our Building Tomorrow Together campaign where our organisers will provide their annual presentation. We’ve carried out some important research on our younger members, which we will present to you at this session. We also have a BT Presentation tomorrow from Clive Selley Director Openreach, which for our BT colleagues, will provide a useful insight into the future of this industry and the challenges BT face.
Colleagues, this is my 8th time making this speech, and many of you in this room will have seen me giving it eight times! I’m getting older, many of the people in the room are getting older, which is a fact of life that we have no control over. Fortunately, with age comes experience and with experience comes confidence, knowledge and commitment.
These qualities provide us with strength in dealing with the issues for our members, but it can also lead to complacency and the belief that the way we’ve always done things is the right way.
It’s also good to see some new and younger faces in the audience. It’s everyone’s responsibility to develop and engage these younger activists as they are the future of this union, with them we can adapt quicker to changes out there in the world of work.
So I encourage the younger activists in this room to get involved, make contributions over the next few days and give us your views. Because we don’t know it all and we can still learn from new, younger perspectives.
On that note I‘ll give you some general statistics. Our membership since last year decreased 3.4%, which is not so encouraging. But this year we’ve seen a number of efficiencies and redundancies in the workplace, which are a constant pressure that our members face and constant pressure for us as an organisation.
There is an encouraging statistic however.
We have seen an increase in young membership by 13%. We’ve also seen our young activists increased by 19%.
This is good news, but how do we engage these members and get them involved ?
How do we engage and retain our new activists?
And what does engagement actually mean?
This will be dealt with later in our Building Tomorrow Together presentation.
Turning to employment in the UK.
The Government would praise themselves I’m sure, as the employment rate is at a record high. But sadly higher employment doesn’t translate into greater bargaining power for workers.
On the contrary, years of economic crisis and austerity have created a climate of fear for most people in work. Zero hours contracts are on the increase with 801,00 people now working these. This colleagues, is an increase of 14% from last year.
As a consequence, there’s an acceptance of hard times and reluctance from employees to push for higher wages and better working conditions or better contracts.
In the T&FS sector we’ve managed to get above median pay rises for many of our members proving the benefits of being in a Trade Union.
The political landscape remains unchanged in terms of government and sadly we have another four years of a hostile Tory government. A Government that’s hell bent on squeezing the average worker in every way they can. A government that is ideologically driven to attack everything we do and everything we stand for through the Trade Union Bill. And a government that want to steal our pensions and make us work forever.
To add to this, the Labour party are going through a period of transition and we’ve heard from Jeremy Corbyn yesterday. His words were encouraging words and are clearly on the side of working people of this country. But whilst this change of face in the Labour party may bring optimism. And as an organisation we can lend all the support we can to get them elected, we can’t rely that this will happen come the next general election in 2020.
So workers are not in a strong place politically, they need Trade Unions more than ever. But we need to be a strong organisation to attract new members and support existing members.
If we’re weak or underrepresented we can be exploited. Where we’re strong, through strong representation, strong organising and collective bargaining we are a force to be reckoned with.
But we can only be strong when we have an organisation that’s structured properly and that means change.
Turning to our own T&FS sector – I’m convinced BTT the ROCs and the emphasis over the past five years on recruitment and organising are all about one thing; changing the way we run branches to be more effective in building tomorrow.
Why did we want to change?
We didn’t want to change we had to for the reasons laid out in the first booklet:
· Less members willing to come forward to take on branch responsibilities
· Dwindling numbers of workplace activists
· Increasingly complex branch make-up; both industrially and geographically
· A failure to develop new branch roles that do not consume facility time but add value to branch organisation and communications
· A reactive rather than a proactive approach to dealing with problems
Ask yourself 5 years on – were we wrong to try to encourage change? No, I don’t think so. Were we wrong to anticipate some resistance to change? Are we still struggling to deal with the issues set out in the blue booklet:
· Less members willing to come forward to take on branch responsibilities
· Dwindling numbers of workplace activists
· Increasingly complex branch make-up; both industrially and geographically
· A failure to develop new branch roles that do not consume facility time but add value to branch organisation and communications
· A reactive rather than a proactive approach to dealing with problems
We’ve made progress but I don’t think we have yet managed to achieve consensus on the need to change.
In the same booklet we set out the vision for what we aspire to achieve through changing the way we work:
“To be the World Leader in Trade Union Organisation in the 21st Century”.
And by organisation I mean identifying and grouping the work to be performed, defining and delegating responsibility and authority. And establishing relationships for the purpose of enabling people to work most effectively together . To accomplish the objectives that will make the difference.
How else are we going to stand up for working people in an increasingly hostile world? I’ll tell you how, by collectively agreeing the way forward and working together to build a future for the CWU.
Can we do it – yes we can, but we have to start today:
· Not when someone retires
· Not when we have time
· Not when it’s too late
We need to start today.
Turning now to industrial issues ,
Sticking with the organising theme, my congratulations go to the financial services branches that have this year, made a sterling effort, to continue to grow their membership within the Santander Group. May growth in this sector continue.
Negotiations continue to go well in Santander with the National Team securing an agreement on pay which made a groundbreaking agreement on shared parental leave for Grandparents – two years ahead of the legislation.
In the mobile sector, we see increasing convergence with BT buying up EE and the potential for Three taking ownership of 02. But it’s up to Europe and possibly the Competitions markets authority to decide the outcome of the Three deal.
If approved the deal would transform the UK mobile market, creating a new leader with over 30 million customers and a market share of 41%. It would also relegate Vodafone to last place. For the CWU this will bring uncertainty, instability and has the potential for a huge challenge. Our understanding is that if 02 isn’t sold to Three, it will be sold elsewhere. These changes won’t put our members in 02 in a desirable position.
But we also see the increasing demand for data on mobile devices, which consumers are increasingly utilising over fixed broadband as it represents better value for money. Converged operators benefit from this phenomenon because increased usage of data, including mobile data, actually reinforces the value of the fixed broadband connection. Put simplistically telecos are increasingly going to want to provide mobile and broadband packages.
As we’ve known for a while telecoms is a growing, rapidly changing industry. What does convergence mean for our members? Where we have recognition, we can negotiate deals. With EE now part of BT, and access to its sites, a strategy and plan is being drawn up to target the call centre sites. I thank all the branches for their work so far, and let’s hope that we are able to persist in expanding our membership within EE.
We will continue to keep an eye on Three’s takeover of 02 and utilise any changes in our organising strategies.
In TSO, the future voice project has implications for our members across BT. BT wish to bring voice into the IP world, switching off the public switched telephone network and providing customers with bundled packages for broadband, TV and mobile. The rise of streaming Over the top players coupled with the recent government-level discussions that fixed line rental should be abolished, is evidence that people want services delivered wherever, whenever – not about tying services to specific delivery vectors.
This will no doubt have implications for those that work on the PSTN line. There will be a migration of services from PSTN to future voice and a reduction of PSTN equipment. There may well be a skills gap in terms of software developers for future voice. Dave Jukes will I’m sure do everything he can, to ensure our members are protected and gain skills where necessary to continue to be effectively employed.
In Openreach we are faced with one of the biggest challenges since my time as DGS T with the Ofcom strategic digital review.
Ofcom announced in February that breaking up BT wasn’t its first option, but it hasn’t been ruled out completely. We know that BT made a proposal for reforming the relationship between Openreach and the BT Group. However the proposed changes from BT did not go far enough.
Ofcom say they remain open to voluntary proposals that address the concerns about such matters as: the independence of investment decisions and the enforcement of effective quality of service standards.
BT continue to try to negotiate a voluntary option for the future of Openreach but we know that if BT’s negotiations on a voluntary solution fails, turning Openreach into a wholly owned subsidiary with its own purpose, board of directors and governance arrangements is a very real possibility.
As I put to conference yesterday, this would create many of the problems associated with full separation. This decision would massively affect our members’ job security, terms and conditions and their pension scheme. Not only for the 32,000 employees of Openreach but potentially for those in other parts of BT.
It would also be the biggest TUPE in history - making the changes complex, time consuming and some potential legal challenges from BT. All of this would cost money and divert money and effort away from Openreach’s ability to modernise the network.
It would also threaten the jobs of our members in other companies like Sky and TalkTalk that rely on the BT network to deliver their own services.
That’s why the CWU have already been lobbying MPs and Ofcom to argue the effect this decision could have on our members, the industry as a whole and the UK’s broadband strategy.
Consideration in this review has to be given to the workforce. Our members have worked tirelessly to implement the BDUK work,and have ensured we are on target to reach 95% of premises by next year. Yet Ofcom still believe BT monopolise the network.
Colleagues, regulation cannot just be about market driven solutions. Left to the market, there’s no protection for workers. Employers will look for ways to penalise workers to improve productivity and maintain profits. That’s why we need to fight this.
Should Ofcom still plough ahead with this decision, we will launch a country-wide campaign to fight this. But, colleagues, we will need your help – to raise a national campaign. We’ve produced a brief to aid you.
We need to get the message out to MPs loud and clear as to why we need an integrated BT if we want high quality communications services for everyone across the country.
Moving onto to other sectors..
In Ericsson, sadly it’s a road crash. The company are finding it difficult to move from an ‘equipment manufacturing company’ to a ‘Field service provider’. This is due to the market including companies from China and India who are challenging the incumbents, such as Ericsson.
Ericsson are finding significant pressure on company costs which in turn, as always, is leading to significant pressure being placed on our member’s terms and conditions.