At the start of December, our Southern region hosted over 70 GMB Women from all over the UK for the 2nd annual National Women’s conference.
Starting with an address from Paul Maloney, Southern Regional Secretary & Barbara Plant, GMB National President. Speaking of those who inspired them, our own mothers and the mother of our Union Eleanor Marx, they set the tone of conference.
We heard from inspirational women in our movement such as 2 brave members who spoke so passionately in Parliament when we discussed the launch of the Work To Stop DA Charter and policy, which was a topic discussed at last year’s conference. We also heard about women winning in the workplace through Organising from Shona Thompson GMB Glasgow Branch Secretary and Rhea Wolfson GMB Scotland Regional Organiser, who lead workers during the Glasgow Women Workers strike in October.
During the 2 day conference, workshops were delivered by activists and officers on a wide range of subjects and skills, from tackling Imposter Syndrome to Equality bargaining in the workplace, using social media and public speaking. We look forward to using the feedback from the sessions to develop further training materials over the coming year.
It was inspiring to hear from our panel of speakers, Shona Thompson, from Glasgow Women Workers strike,Sarah Owen, National Political Officer and Nancy Platts Councillor at Brighton & Hove Council on how they have broken down barriers to become leaders. This lead to brilliant questions and comments from the floor and we learned that some of our delegates have already taken those steps by standing for local council positions in the 2019 elections.
Finally, we asked all delegates to work with their regional delegations and pledge to ’lead the way’ when they returned back to their own workplaces. Delegates responded with all sorts of pledges, from encouraging other women to attend GMB events and to join the union, to standing as reps, writing motions for congress & delivering campaigns on them! Some women spoke about setting up sel forganised groups and promoting GMB equality policies to make the workplace better for everyone!
Top of everyone’s agenda were equality policies such as Menopause, Neurodiversity and Domestic Abuse and ensuring that the importance of equality asks whenever and where we bargain.
It is going to be a very exciting time over the next 12 months and we hope to be able to support the pledges become reality.
Sarah James – GMB National Women’s Lead
Taranjit Chana – GMB National Race Lead
