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Annual report for 2010
The main focus of our activity in 2010 has been has been the fight to defend jobs but also against privatisation, pay cuts and attacks on conditions at work and pensions. We have also organised successful events and supported campaigns against unemployment, attacks on union rights, fascism, way, climate change and much else. The following report tries to be brief but comprehensive. Please let the secretary have any additions and corrections.
In the fight to defend jobs, we supported the UNITE strikes at Fujitsu in January and February. After ten days of strike action, the first national dispute in IT, compulsory redundancies were reduced from over a thousand to single figures. There were also substantial improvements to pensions, a large increase in membership and the number of reps. The PCS’s successful national strike action on two days in March saw many well supported picket lines. In defence of civil service jobs we produced a ‘Defend Civil Servants’ petition, attended the PCS Young Workers anti cuts protest in the Peace Gardens in October and, together with PCS activists, did a mass leafleting at Piccadilly Station in November.
We were on the UNITE picket line at Terminal 3 in April. Sharon Owens, senior representative for BA cabin crew, spoke at the June meeting which voted £100 to their strike fund.
Together with many others we were on the picket lines in the BBC pensions strikes on 5 and 6 November and helped get Claire Mooney to sing there. NUJ and BECTU reps spoke at the October council.
On pay, we backed the UNISON members at Supported Living in Wigan, donating £50 and our banner was on the Heinz picket line in Wigan in December.
Education has been prominent throughout the year, starting with the successful ‘noisy protest’ against redundancies in February organised by UNISON at Manchester Metropolitan University who went on to ballot for action and succeeded in reducing the number of redundancies from over a hundred to less than five. This was quickly followed by the disputes at the Manchester College starting with a attack on the sick pay scheme and then a further attack, this time on lecturer contracts together with de-recognition of UCU. This led to a strike on 30 June with the council donating £100 to the strike fund. There was a lively ‘Defend Education’ march and rally on 27 March and teach-in on 15 May. Jean O’Neill spoke on behalf of the NUT at the May council about the successful boycott of SATs in primary schools. Our October meeting had NUS officers and members from the Student Unions at all three local universities and resolved to support the great UCU/NUS demonstration on 10 November in London. Following the police attack on students in Parliament Square on the night of 9 December, we sent a message of solidarity to Alfie Meadows and Jody McIntyre. Together with all education unions, we have been involved with Greater Manchester Anti Academies Alliance since it was established at a meeting in the UNISON regional offices in July and have taken part in the work of its steering committee and supported its meeting in Trafford in November.
At the first TUC Congress in Manchester since its founding, with 200 attending, our fringe meeting on 14 September was one of the largest at Congress. Billy Hayes CWU, Matt Wrack FBU, Mark Serwotka PCS, Christine Blower NUT and Paul Holmes UNISON spoke from the platform and many more from the floor.
We have been committed to re-establishing the tradition of May Day, international workers day for some years. This year 120 trade unionists, asylum seekers and others marched to St Peter’s Square for a rally followed by food and entertainment in the Friends Meeting House with songs by Claire Mooney and poems by Dave Puller.
We commemorated the 191st anniversary of Peterloo in August, supporting the rally and organising a successful evening event in the Briton’s Protection with Claire Mooney, Dave Puller and Alun Parry’s Rich Man’s Ruin band.
We supported Workers Memorial Day, 28 April, following this with Lol Hunt, UCATT convenor of the Media City, addressing the council in July. Hilda Palmer of the Greater Manchester Hazards Centre was our nominee for this year’s Elizabeth Gaskell Award and spoke to the September council on the 'We didn't vote to die at work' campaign against the coalition govt’s threat to health and safety with the council purchasing £100 of campaign T shirts.
During the general election campaign, we organised a coach to the ‘Defend the Welfare State and Public Services’ demo in London in April.
Our banner was at the 250 strong protest against the closure of Hope Maternity Unit in Buile Hill Park in September.
We supported the Campaign against Climate Change (CaCC) Trade Union conference in February and following discussion at the next council meeting, agreed to back the campaign for a million green jobs. We sponsored and chaired the ‘Million Climate Jobs’ meeting in November organised by CaCC with Manuel Cortes TSSA speaking.
Colette Williams, Manchester Unite against Fascism spoke on campaigning against the BNP and EDL at the February council. Our banner was at the UAF demonstration against the EDL in Bolton in March. We joined the protests against the outrageous behaviour of the police, supporting the successful Justice4 Bolton campaign against false charges including conspiracy and discussing the threats to civil liberties and the right to protest with Joanna Gilmore and Robert Lizar, Haldane Society members (to which we are affliated) at our April meeting. Our banner was on the UAF ‘No to racism, Islamophobia & Fascism’ march & carnival, also backed by the TUC and many national unions in November in London, to which we donated £100.
We took part in the hustings organised by PCS during the election after which we backed the protest at the Liberal Democrat conference in Liverpool in September and the Right to Work (RtW) march outside the Tory Party conference in October attended by 200 people in four coaches from Manchester.
International solidarity: we donated £100 to the TUC Aid appeal following the Haiti earthquake and £200 to the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research, Karachi, flood relief appeal. Our delegates initiated a collection at NWTUC regional council for both Haiti and Pakistan appeals.
We have continued our support for the Shrewsbury 24 and anti-blacklisting campaigns. Both issues have high hit rates on our website, Shrewsbury 24 having the highest, 940.
We supported Stop the War’s demonstration in November calling for troops to be brought home from Afghanistan.
We supported the Right to Work conference in Central Hall, Manchester attended by over 900 and sent a delegate to RTW’s emergency conference held after the election and backed both the 200 strong Budget Day march in June and the 1000 strong march on the Saturday after the Comprehensive Spending Review in October.
We sent a delegate to the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) conference in London in June, supported the large NSSN lobby of TUC Congress in Manchester in September and the NSSN protest against the Comprehensive Spending Review on 23 October in the Peace Gardens. We also backed the Youth Fight for Jobs protest on 13 March.
We sent delegates to North West TUC Disability Forum, the NWTUC Women’s and LGBT committees, the Mechanic’s Institute Trust Board, Manchester Council for Community Relations and the National Assembly of Women.
Our delegates to GMATUC put forward motions on international solidarity and supporting the work of the Equality Trust. Our delegates took an active part in the annual conference of trades councils in Blackpool in May. We also sent a delegate to the TUC Black Workers conference in Liverpool.
In November we together with Bolton Trades Council we invited Tom Mellish, national TUC officer responsible for Trades Councils to speak on ‘Building Trades Councils, defending our communities’
Other speakers at council included Mike Thompson, UNITE North West senior organiser reporting on the Lloyds Bank organising campaign.
Thanks in large part to the ongoing support from our webmaster, our website www.manchestertuc.org was has continued to expand and develop. There is still plenty of scope for this to go further, especially for affiliated branches to register and add their own reports.
There are currently over 40 branches affiliated to the council with an affiliated membership of about 18,000. We need to thank those branches which donated generously to our events and also to the TUC for its financial support for these and our coach through the TUC Development Fund.
The audited account for 2009 will be available at the AGM in March.
2011 promises to be even tougher than 2010 with serious fears of a double dip recession and the government planning to destroy half a million public sector jobs and at least as many private sector jobs as a consequence, we face the fight of our lives to preserve the welfare state that generations before us have fought for. Preparations for events in 2011 began in 2010 with much work going into organising the Robert Tressell exhibition, the LGBT Trades Union History Month conference and the celebration of International Women's Day. For the latter two we were granted £500 from Manchester City Council and £1000 from Manchester Pride.
If we can follow the determined example set by the students in the battle against fees and cuts in higher education, if we can organise resistance to the cuts on a sufficient scale through the Manchester Coalition against the Cuts we have just helped to found, then, as always, using our collective strength can help us defeat this government’s attacks.
Geoff Brown,
Secretary, 4 February 2011 |
About Manchester TUC 
