TUC Young Workers Action Bulletin no. 5

TUC Young Workers Forum Bulletin.

Welcome to the fifth TUC Young Workers Forum bulletin

Welcome to the fifth bulletin from the TUC Young Workers Forum.

Report of TUC Young Workers Conference 2015

Young Workers Conference took place on 21 and 22 March this year. Conference was well attended and included workshops on the subject of Organising including a session run by Ritzy activists who took part in the Living Wage Campaign. Ritzy workers also won the TUC Youth Campaign award and received a standing ovation from conference delegates when they took the stage to collect their certificate.

The two issues picked as priority campaigns were: Housing and Mental Health. The CWU’s motion on Mental Health was also picked to go to TUC Congress in September.

A full report on the Conference, written by a delegate from the NUJ, is available here.

Housing

April’s forum meeting was the last forum meeting before the General Election and delegates agreed their first campaign action on the issue of Housing.

Working with Generation Rent to develop an ‘email your candidate’ campaign, the TUC Young Workers Forum is encouraging young people to find out what their candidate plan to do to tackle the housing crisis, letting them know that in order to win young people’s vote they need strong policies aimed at providing decent affordable housing.

Mental health

The meeting also discussed the priority campaign on Mental Health. It was decided that the next forum meeting which will take place in Manchester on 4^th July will be followed by an Open Forum Session on the subject of Mental Health. The forum will also be supporting Mental Health Awareness Week 11-17 May #MHAW15 and World Mental Health Day on 10^th October. The forum will be approaching speakers at YWC who gave moving contributions and asking for blogs and case studies from young people on the subject to promote and raise awareness during these campaigns. The office will also be conducting research into the statistics concerning young people and mental health issues and producing a short report/ fact sheet as well as info graphics for sharing online. TU Education are also producing a workbook for union reps to identify and support members with mental health concerns in the workplace.

Voter Registration Drive in Liverpool

With time running out to register to vote in the General Election, forum members took to the streets of Liverpool to encourage young people to register and have their say in who runs the country.

The forum will continue to support Bite the Ballot’s campaign #DeDay on 15^th April via social media with one last push to get young people registered before the big day.

Global Fast Food Rights Campaign

On 15 April, Fast Food Rights is organising protests at McDonald’s in cities and towns across Britain, as part of a global day of action in solidarity with the fast food workers’ strike movement in the US. Details of events which are taking place across the country have been shared with all forum delegates and can be found here.