President Chris Tansley welcomed delegates to the union’s annual conference in Liverpool, noting that this was always a special time for the union – and all the more so this year as UNISON marks its 20th year.
It was also appropriate that the national delegate conference was meeting in Liverpool – the city where he began his social work career in 1974.
Mr Tansley noted that that year began with a Tory government, at war with the trade union movement, spreading misery through the three-day working week – so not much had changed.
Now conference was meeting a time of high unemployment, with British workers having seen the sharpest fall in wages of any of the top 10 economies. The scale of the challenge facing the union is shown by requests to our charity, There for You, which reports increasing numbers of members taken to breaking point by the grind of in-work poverty.
Meanwhile, council services and the NHS are being savaged and food banks have become a staple of life for half a million people.
“It doesn’t matter how you dress it up – it just isn’t right,” declared Mr Tansley.
And it’s far from inevitable, said the UNISON president.
“This is the route chosen for us by the government – but there is always a different path.”
And in times of trouble, “people turn to the trade union movement to stand up for them against the government.
“In tough times, there’s only one place to be: in your union – in UNISON.”