GMB CONGRESS 2015 …………………. SIS. MARY TURNER MBE (President) (In the Chair) …………………… Held in: Citywest Hotel, Conference and Event Centre, Dublin on: Sunday, 7th June 2015 Monday, 8th June 2015 Tuesday, 9th June 2015 Wednesday, 10th June 2015 and Thursday, 11th June 2015 ……………………… PROCEEDINGS DAY THREE (Tuesday, 9thth June 2015) ………………………. (Transcript prepared by: Marten Walsh Cherer Limited, 1st Floor, Quality House, 6-9 Quality Court, Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1HP. email: [email protected]) …………………………. 1 THIRD DAY’S PROCEEDINGS TUESDAY, 9TH JUNE 2015 MORNING SESSION (Congress assembled at 9.30 a.m.) THE PRESIDENT: Will Congress please come to order! Good morning Congress. Did you all have a good night? (Calls of “Yes”) I‘ll soon find out from the video at the end of the week. We have a couple of announcements. ANNOUNCEMENTS THE PRESIDENT: The GMB Politics magazine has been distributed. To register to vote in the contest to choose the next Labour Party Leader, complete the form on the back of the magazine and bring to Exhibition Stand 27. You can also pick up other leaflets there to take back to your workplace to sign up online. The Pellacraft branch website has been very successful. This is the outcome of the work achieved by the Branch Working Party. If your branch does not have a Pellacraft branch website, please go to the Pellacraft stand to find out about how easy it is to purchase and manage the branch website. Also visit the stand if you would like some help or refresher training on managing your website. I‘m first in the queue. Rianne Greenway, a member of staff for Wales & South West Region, wishes to thank Congress for your kind donations and wishes to say a massive thank you to everyone. We wish her luck. (Applause) Congress, we have a guest speaker from across the seas with us this morning. I would like you to welcome Joe Maloney, Vice-President of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers in Canada. (Applause) Joe has been in the building and construction industry all his working life and started as an apprentice and moved up through the ranks to be manager and organiser. In January 2000 he was elected as Secretary-Treasurer of the Building & Construction Trades Department for the AFL-CIO, representing over — listen! — three million workers. He is passionate about training and was the driving force in the establishment of the ―H2H‖ Helmets to Hardhats Program, which links returning military veterans to jobs and training. Joe, welcome to the GMB Congress. Please address Congress. (Applause) ADDRESS BY BRO JOE MALONEY BRO J. MALONEY: Thank you very much, and thank you for that kind introduction. It‘s a real pleasure for me to be here today to bring greetings from Canada. I also bring you greetings from our International General President, Newton B. Jones, and our International Executive Council. I would like to start off by saying that the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers in North America represent approximately 60,000 very highly-skilled workers, and in Canada we have about 10,000 workers out of the 60,000. We only work in heavy industrial facilities throughout the nation. We build power plants, ships, oil refineries and that kind of stuff, so it is very high pressure, very intense work and it needs intense training. With the 10,000 members that we have in Canada and the industries we represent, we control approximately 85% of our market share. That is very good for a small union like ourselves. The main reason that we control a large market share is that we are able to supply qualified boilermakers and welders on a regular basis to our fair contractors. 2 Over the next several years, as we are enjoying right now, we are going to be experiencing a major increase in demand for boilermakers and welders. Currently, in Canada it takes us four years to train a qualified boilermaker or welder. We cannot train boilermakers fast enough to meet the demand. We control our own apprenticeship programmes, we control the intake of apprentices and referring them out to employers. Unfortunately, we cannot train them fast enough with the understanding of the demand that is coming our way. In order to prepare and be pro-active, we have developed our own temporary foreign-worker programme, as it is known in Canada. It is a union programme, It is not an employer programme and it is not a government programme. It is a union programme developed by us in the union and run and operated by us. With that in mind, you have to understand that all over the world there is a lot exploitation that goes on and there are many labour brokers who are dealing people around for cheap wages and stuff like that. We don‘t do that. We don‘t deal with labour brokers and we do not take any money for what we in our programme. This is a service provided by us in the union. With that in mind, we came over in January and met with your General Secretary, Paul Kenny. We discussed the situation, and the UK has a great relationship with Canada. I, personally, work with a lot of boilermakers in Canada who came from the UK. We thought where better could we, hopefully, establish a relationship with an organisation such as the GMB to help us recruit welders and boilermakers on a temporary basis for our peak periods in Canada, which are the spring and fall in each year. After that meeting, things progressed a little bit and we have developed a protocol, a protocol between the GMB and the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers representing Canada. I have the protocol With that in mind, you have to understand that all over the world there is a lot exploitation that goes on and there are many labour brokers who are dealing people around for cheap wages and stuff like that. We don‘t do that. We don‘t deal with labour brokers and we do not take any money for what we in our programme. This is a service provided by us in the union. With that in mind, we came over in January and met with your General Secretary, Paul Kenny. We discussed the situation, and the UK has a great relationship with Canada. I, personally, work with a lot of boilermakers in Canada who came from the UK. We thought where better could we, hopefully, establish a relationship with an organisation such as the GMB to help us recruit welders and boilermakers on a temporary basis for our peak periods in Canada, which are the spring and fall in each year. After that meeting, things progressed a little bit and we have developed a protocol, a protocol between the GMB and the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers representing Canada. I have the protocol here. It‘s a protocol that respects each other‘s organisation but, mainly, it respects the working people who will be working under the protocol. I want you to keep in mind that when a worker, a boilermaker or a welder, from the UK, comes to Canada, they will operate and work under the same terms and conditions as a Canadian boilermaker. They will get paid the same money, they will receive the same benefits, they will be entered into our pension plans and our health and welfare plans. Every penny that is offered under our collective agreement the member from the GMB will get the same benefits. They will be flown over free of charge and they will be housed free of charge (Applause) The bottom line with us is that there will be absolutely no exploitation of anyone, anywhere, when they come and work under our programme. (Applause) It is very important to us. We are very strong union-minded in Canada. We respect people and we respect the hard work that they do in building our country. We want people to come to work every day, to get a fair day‘s pay for a fair day‘s work and go home and enjoy the evenings with their families. (Applause) I would, especially, like to thank the GMB for agreeing to enter into this protocol with the boilermakers. It is going to be a great relationship and you are, really and truly, doing us a tremendous favour by helping us supply to these contractors in Canada, because if we can‘t supply qualified 3 boilermakers and welders we will lose work. As long as we can supply, we will maintain a high market share and we will maintain a good union presence. With that, I thank you again. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and I am looking forward to the future. Thank you so much. (A standing ovation) THE GENERAL SECRETARY: Colleagues, how often in the last 10 years have I said to people that if you want to do something, you must do it yourself. When I first met Joe, this seemed to be an ideal opportunity for union to reach out to union. We cut out the agencies, we cut out the gangmasters, we cut out the exploiters and we don‘t need government patronage. This is workers supporting workers, unionisation, good pay and good conditions. (Applause) Now we sign the protocol. Mary Turner has asked if you would take three hundred Tory MPs as the first batch. (Laughter and Applause) Duly signed. (The protocol was raised to the Congress by both Paul and Joe) (Applause) THE PRESIDENT: Joe, it was a great pleasure to listen to you, and we won‘t even charge you to take the Tory Party.