The Motion voted to go to Congress at the TUC Young Workers Conference 2014 was Motion 13 from Unite on a Young Workers Organising Strategy. 

The Motion was carried unanimously at TUC Congress 2014.

This conference notes:

Trade unions are finding it difficult to organise in sectors of the economy where young workers are far more likely to work, e.g. in retail, catering and hospitality where there is a high-turnover of staff, casualisation, poor employment contracts and a prevalence of small workplaces.

Additionally, as young people often see their engagement with the workplace to be temporary or transient, unions are finding it a challenge to represent young workers.

Furthermore, trade unions lack a clear strategic vision about how these young workers can be recruited and organised.

The trade union movement needs young workers if it is to continue standing up for working people of the future.

This conference further notes:

Leading young members in the TUC have already been involved in successful campaigns to recruit and organise young workers from un-unionised workplaces, one of the most successful of which was the SERTUC young workers’ committee campaign around ‘Save HMV Workers.’

This conference resolves to:

• Call on the General Council to support the creation of a TUC young workers organising strategy that will be developed by the young members, alongside the Organising Department, which seeks to recruit and organise young workers, specifically in the casualised workplaces referenced above.
• Call for a review of how the TUC can more effectively deploy and train its lay companions to establish what more they can do to support individual members in un-unionised workplaces and promote the union to young workers.

UNITE THE UNION

For a full list of Motions please see attached.