MSF President Speaks

Vice president - conference - Laurence Galbraith - president of amicus-MSF section.

I feel very proud and privileged that conference gave me the chance to serve in this prestigious position as president of two unions - MSF and amicus - the MSF section.

The last 12 months have flown by and in the main it was very enjoyable but it would be remiss of me if I did not make reference to the atrocities that took place in the united states on the 11th of September last year while we were at the TUC in Brighton. Those memories and subsequent happenings will never be forgotten for as long as anyone here shall live and it was no small wonder that Congress that week did not have the will to carry on after the death and destruction we watched unfold. It is imperative that those who planned and helped to carry out those atrocities are brought to justice. I would hope that sooner rather than later there is a sustainable stable situation in Afghanistan and the surrounding area which is heading for a greater humanitarian tragedy and this Conference knows that this tragedy has been occurring for years. No one seemed to care before that women were being denied their basic human rights. They had no education - no job - no means of survival - in effect non entities - has anything really changed for them? Yet the world went mad when the Taliban blew up the statues of the Buddhas.

It is up to trade unionists like us to deny the likes of the BNP the ability to vent their racist bigotry on innocent citizens here but the recent lethargic attitude of voters in Burnley and in France has given hope to the far right and cause for concern for many others. Indeed all sectarianism and racism in whatever shape or form or in whoever's name must be eradicated from our society.

We must also be wary of the words of George W Bush as he declares war on Iraq, Iran and North Korea - are we heading for World War III to satisfy this egotistical megalomaniac and his father? -I sincerely hope that Tony Blair does not fall for the Texan patter. The Trade Union movement has a vital part to play in maintaining World wide peace as shown in the past by their role in Northern Ireland, South Africa, the Middle East and lately in Colombia about which we hope to hear more of this conference.

I welcome the further exercise to decommission arms by the IRA and trust that all arms held by all paramilitary groups on the island of Ireland are put beyond use as soon as possible and I call on those responsible for the recent spates of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland to stop their mindless actions immediately. I also must condemn the warring Israeli and Palestinian factions in the middle East for their total disregard for human life and their seeming intransigence at trying to reach a peace settlement.

There was more significance to 11th September as it was the date that the terms of Roger's leaving were agreed. He will give up executive Powers in September next year as he hopes then to become president of the T.U.C.

No more will we hear about the 14 million inherited debt - all of which and more Roger brought with him from ASTMS all those years ago. For 2001 we have a surplus of over 1 million pounds and it is intended to be debt free by the end of the year as Roger will take great pleasure in telling you when he presents the financial report, but I ask conference to compare your MSF diary of 1994, if you have one, with this year's and ask where has all our property gone? - you can only sell the crown jewels once.

Thankfully, very soon, no more will we hear the phrase - it's got nothing to do with me - accompanied by the ritual washing of the hands. So I would like to bid my fond farewells to Roger while I have the opportunity to do so as I doubt if I will be allowed to address Conference next year that is, of course, if I haven't been investigated or disciplined by then.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank those Regional Councils who invited me to their meetings and weekend schools while I was both president and vice president and especially for the hospitality that was shown to both Flo and myself but above all I would like to thank my partner Flo Wardle for her tolerance, her support and her understanding. To those members of the Executive Committee of Ireland - who failed to recognise my election as vice president or president -I will send you a photograph of the proverbial T-shirt.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Gay Pride march in London despite the hailstones and rain - many thanks to Lesley Mansell and Katie Hanson for their help on the day. To Jan Feraghty and Anne Hansen - thank you for a wonderful LAGIM Weekend at Whitehall college. The most noteworthy times during the past year, apart from those previously mentioned, were going to various branches and workplaces to give support to our members and listening to their concerns - particularly Rolls Royce at Derby, who have suffered so much both before and after last September, with its staff and metal mechanic branches and my special thanks to the stewards there. I would also like to thank the stewards and members at Imperial Tobacco, IBC, Peugeot, Mayflower Vehicles, London Taxis, Alstom Turbines, Alstom Trains, Hardy Spicer, Gallaghers, Myson radiators, Huntingdon life Sciences, Jabil, Avery Berkel and Marconi together With all the officers who helped in arranging the visits - Mike Mulhern, Glen Johnson, Tommy Keogh, Bill Holmes, John Wall and Roger Jeary to name but a few.

To top it all I was part of a delegation to Moscow and St. Petersburg as guests of the Russian Oil and Gas Workers Union (ROGWU) along with Flo and Roger Spiller. ROGWU are due to visit the UK and Ireland in September to strengthen links with Thompsons, the T.U.C. and ourselves. Some funding from branches would not go amiss - see Roger later.

I would question the message being sent to the rest of the Trade Union movement by Ken Jackson. For many years we have been campaigning for a reduction in the retirement age and here he is attempting to extend it - at least Ken Gill had the decency to go at 65. We won't talk about Sir Ken's latest QUANGO appointment to one of the most unpopular positions in these islands - the chair of Nirex for at least 45,000 per annum - this, coupled with his recent call for the government to give the go ahead for a new generation of nuclear plants, has, needless to say, gone done like a lead balloon with the members and the wider community across the Irish sea.

Last December the NEC elected their fourteen members to sit on the Joint executive and its' six to sit on the Rules Commission. Yet not only did the NEC then ignore two regions and three countries, they chose to ignore the only real one democratically elected by the sovereign body of this union - conference - and that is myself - as president - and before you ask I am not one of the NEC substitutes to the Joint Executive or the Rules Commission either.

The new rule-book will be put to the joint conference next year and if agreed we will be as one with the AEEU - in amicus - by January 2004. Unfortunately only 400 of you will be there to vote yes or no. Within that rule-book will be the rights of the members. It is important that you continue to lobby your regional councils - your NEC members - your joint executive members and the members of the Rules Commission itself to try and retain the democratic structures and all our equality committees that we have and with adequate funding for them and for the sovereignty of our annual conference.

Amicus will seemingly increase our political clout to over 100 MPs at Westminster and is the largest Trade Union grouping in Brussels. This is most important when you consider our very successful equal pay and working time directive campaigns, the demise of manufacturing industry and the governments attempt to introduce PFI and PPP into the National Health Service and other public services, which is privatisation by the back door. Furthermore, with the billions of pounds allocated recently by the Chancellor in his budget, who nNeeds the private sector to run our health service? But make no mistake, the battle against PFI and PPP will be hard to win as Tony Blair is hell bent on it's introduction.

Over the last two years we have witnessed the continuing decline in what used to be the backbone of this country - manufacturing. Former giants of industry such as Marconi have been decimated and it was only when I visited the company did I realise the gravity of the situation if Marconi folds - world-wide chaos. Government support must be given immediately.

We have seen the reduction of our steel making and textiles capacity with many thousands of redundancies. The sad demise of shipbuilding - when you consider that this is a maritime nation we must condemn the government for their attitude and lack of investment - the defence review is too little too late to save many thousands of jobs nation-wide. Ken Jackson at the national craft conference in January called for the need for us to be more competitive - well Ken I call upon you to persuade your friend Tony to create a level playing field with the rest of the world to enable us to be more competitive because from what I have seen around the factories there is nothing wrong with the skill or commitment of our workforce. Alan Johnson's recent appointment as minister for manufacturing is tTo be welcomed but he has a mammoth task on his hands to restore the sector to its former glory.

Big business has blamed the Euro and the U.K.'s non-membership of it. This week we have, at long last, a chance to debate the Euro and I Look forward to the contributions from John Monks and Gordon Brown on this issue.

I seek re-assurances from the chancellor for those who for mMany years have contributed to final salary pension schemes, only to see one third of them being terminated in the U.K. and many others in danger of collapse.

How long do we have to wait and how many more tragedies do we have to endure before the government takes the railways back into public ownership - take back the track now and the 250m sop by Stephen Byers to those shareholders who raided the franchises. Maybe Alastair will turn out to be our darling after all.

We once had a vibrant automotive industry but look what has happened to Ford, Rover and Vauxhall over the past two years or so and now the car components industry is under threat as well.

Thousands of jobs have been lost in aerospace where despite companies having billions of pounds worth of orders, they have used the events of last September as an excuse to offload workers. Serious questions must be asked of those companies and others alike. Overall since May 1997, according to TUC figures, around 400,000 workers in manufacturing alone have been made redundant and still the government does little or nothing. Add to that the thousands of jobs lost in the finance sector due in the main to mergers of large finance houses - the projected loss of 40,000 jobs because of the bad management of Consignia - it made considerable profits when it was called the post office - the airlines - to me British Airways is still the most reliable - and the threat to many jobs in the tobacco industry because of European legislation on the tar levels in cigarettes.

Many of those workers who lost their jobs are members of our union whose subscriptions are vital to sustain the level of service that the membership is used to. Over the past two years I have been part of NEC selection panels to appoint quite a few new officials. The cost of whom came from the same budget which took into account the paying membership of the day. However, realising the downturn in subscription income, the NEC decided to appeal to branches and Regional Councils for funds to supplement our organising and recruitment campaigns.

Don't forget we must sustain ourselves as an independent section of Amicus until 2004 and also that all subscription levels are frozen until then. Throughout my period as President I have been pleased to expouse and support the union's organising priority. Organising Workers is what unions exist for - and is their primary function. Well-organised work places have better pay and conditions together with a safer working environment. Badly organised or completely unorganised work places hold back working people in their legitimate demands for a better working life. I have been pleased to support our officers and organisers and those representatives who have caught the organising bug. But we need many more to do so if we are going to strengthen and secure Trades Unionism for the new Millennium. So far almost 100,000 has been contributed, details of which are readily available to conference and I thank those branches that have made donations to the organising fund - but most have not. There is over 4.5 million out there in the regional councils and branches - most of which is lying in bank accounts and not being used in any shape or form for organising or recruitment campaigns - this is criminal. I can inform you that some regional councils have over 95,000 in their main account and in excess of 50,000 in their education account. There are regional councils that are running recruitment campaigns and have made funds available to do so to officers in their regions but these are few and far between - a drop in the ocean of what is required. Sadly there are regional and branch officials that think that the money is theirs. Let me remind them it is the members money, given by members to be used in building the union and if it is needed to sustain the level of service that they crave for, then it is incumbent on them to act responsibly and not send letters of rebuttal to the General Secretary - but to send donations to the fund instead. To date we have started a project in the London and Southern regions to recruit specifically in the NHS. We have another similar project proposed for the north west and are talking to Astra-Zenecca regarding the secondment of one of our members to undertake face to face recruitment in this very under organised business. These projects will be closely monitored and will be judged on results - new members. I am asking all the branches and Regional Councils to revisit the appeal because if we don't take recruitment seriously and give the centre the means to do it, then we are going nNowhere but in a downward spiral and this will be a sad reflection on our efforts as there is so much potential out there - especially among the youth.

Last November I attended a Yorkshire and Humberside weekend school on the human rights act and its introduction into U.K. Law. One basic Human Right is freedom of speech - yet we are curtailed. Why can't the members or officers publicly criticise the employer? While speaking to a motion on Human Rights at this years united craft Conference, Lucy Anderson referred to MSF speaking out to retain jobs in Harland & Wolff and Bombardier Shorts in Belfast, yet we suspended two officers in Belfast for doing exactly that and in the process received a complaint from the Human Rights Commission on behalf of one of the officers concerned - Joe Bowers - who has now sadly left the employ of MSF by mutual consent but in truth he was forced out because he told the truth about Bombardier Shorts in a Belfast newspaper article. Thankfully Joe hasn't left the movement -to coin a phrase, he hasn't gone away you know.

The Human Rights Commission was set up as part of the Good Friday Agreement which is supported by MSF policy - therein lies a question - does the truth embarrass the employer - the union - or both? Maybe the tTruth hurts - so what - it's nothing less than our members deserve. After all it's their subscriptions that pay the wages. Why can't the members criticise the government? Since 1997 this Government has done many good things to benefit this country and I hope they continue to do so as there is no viable alternative but they are not always right. It is our government -The voters put them there - it is our right to criticise them when the NHS is in turmoil - manufacturing is on its knees - our old age pensioners still don't have their pensions linked to earnings - we still have Tory anti Trade Union laws and we still don't have a workers Charter compatible with or if not better than our European Colleagues.

Again I wish to thank conference for two wonderful years, firstly as Vice President and then as President, that you have given me. I did my best to serve the membership. In many ways I feel that I succeeded but I know that I did have my failures. I failed to save the jobs of our stewards and former stewards in the staff group in Bombardier Shorts in Belfast who were on a hiding to nothing as the company used September 11th to rid themselves of those who for many years had fought for the rights of the members and had won - only to pay the ultimate price - their jobs. Mass meetings were called and statements were made in the local media - mainly by the stewards themselves. I wrote to the General Secretary asking him to intervene with the company on behalf of the stewards - he did not. He responded 4 months later saying he had referred the matter to the National Secretary for aerospace. The first industrial action called for publicly by an MSF official was when John Wall was called in to try and mediate - the day before the stewards were literally forced out of the company. A subsequent ballot for industrial action was held but to no avail, the heart had already been knocked out of the members. Many of those stewards has been shifted from low to high risk of redundancy areas, without one word of protest from MSF. Then to cap it all when they applied for interim relief in a Tribunal the officer concerned not only didn't even bother to turn up but he also failed to complete the appropriate certificate for the Tribunal even though he had been advised by counsel that he hadn't done so at least two weeks previously. Needless to say the application failed. I find this utterly disgusting and distasteful and it only confirms to me and conference once again the transparent collusion between the management at Bombardier/Shorts and the union.

At the first NEC meeting of my year as President it was unanimously agreed and subsequently minuted to move forward together as a united NEC into the new union. Despite my many efforts behind the scenes to reach some sort of compromise with NEC representatives regarding investigatory/disciplinary issues concerning members in The London Region and members in Shorts, I failed, because many on The NEC side were not even willing to talk. On the other hand they were prepared NOT to apply the rules to a former NEC member ...[4 words deleted to avoid this web site being sued for libel] who was quite evidently guilty of defalcation of union funds and another NEC member ...[2 words deleted to avoid this web site being sued for libel] who verbally abused delegates on the floor of a conference in Ireland.

Add to these examples a list of ten complaints from members in the Ireland region over the last 7 years, which I have registered with the General secretary and the NEC, not one has had an investigation or disciplinary panel set up. So in effect it still depends on your allegiance to the leadership as to whether or not the rules of the Union are enforced - so much for unity.

If the witchhunts continue and there is no other word for them, where will they end and what harm will they do to amicus? There are those who will be rewarded for their actions but who instead should hang their heads in shame, as their behaviour over the past number of years is not the behaviour of what I, or conference, would call that of a Trade Unionist. For the sake of the future of amicus I can only hope that you, the members, ensure that history does not repeat itself.

Let us now take the opportunity to complete the business on the order paper and not let any motions fall off the agenda for the first time in many years. I ask conference to assist me in that respect and in doing so, prevent the wasting of conference time by a few. Enjoy your conference - thank you.

Laurence Galbraith - President - amicus-MSF section