YOUNG WORKERS REPORT
At the CWU Young Workers Conference 2019, held in Birmingham in January, the branch submitted a motion supporting the work of Kent Refugee Action Network helping young migrants and refugees crossing the Channel to enter the country, overturned a SOC decision to omit the motion, and successfully carried the motion.
The South East Young Workers Committee also submitted a motion supporting the union affiliating to Renters Unions with the goal of helping people (particularly young people, who are significantly less likely to have a foot on the ladder) to get reasonable, affordable prices for habitable residences, something that is tragically out of reach for many of our members due to difficulty in reaching full time hours, the particularly high property prices in the South East, and unscrupulous landlords charging extortionate rates for hazardous, uninhabitable accommodation.
Let it not be said that this union only fights for its members in the workplace.
I’d like to put out a call to all of our office reps, both IR and H&S, to reach out to the young workers in your workplaces, those unlikely to have encountered unions and what they do in their past experiences in work, and if not to encourage them to get involved in the union as a Young Workers Officer, then at least to inform them of the power of solidarity between workers, the strength of collective action, and the safety in numbers we gain from sticking together. It appears to be the case that a lot of the solidarity and militancy that we have had in the past has diminished in some of our workplaces, and while we have to work to recapture that in the immediate short term, we also have to have a long view of instating that spirit of co-operation in our future.
We need to have every office in our branch ready to stand together in defence of each other and ready to take the initiative in that endeavour, and it’s even harder to inspire that in someone who’s never known it than someone who’s seen it and lost it.
The motivation behind our interest in the voices of our young workers is more than just ensuring the future of the union and therefore the future wellbeing of workers in our industries, though that is certainly of utmost importance, it is also about getting the unique perspectives of people who have grown up in this increasingly digital, globally connected world, and the ideas that come from those experiences.
Jordan Hartley
Young Workers Officer