CWU Conference 2026 General Secretary's Welcome

 

Today 10th May to Monday 11th May sees the CWU holding its first bi-annual conference in Bournemouth.

General Secretary, Dave Ward, welcomed delegates to this tw-day conference, before the Union delegates break to move to their two industraial conference, Postal and Telecomms and Financial Services.

 

"Morning conference, it's good to see you all in what will be our first general policy conference for a number of years because the union has rightfully focused in recent times on our industrial priorities and the need for restructuring, which we'll talk about later in this speech, and the progress that we've made on that to make sure that we maintain ourselves as an independent trade union. I'm going to start by saying that nobody in the hall today will disagree that whichever way you turn at the moment, we do face collectively some huge challenges for our members, their families and working class people everywhere, for our union, the wider trade union and labour movement, and for society and the world."

 

 

"When you look at the whole picture, I don't think there's ever been a time where the depth of those challenges are so serious for what we stand for, for what our members need from us, and I think that's particularly true when you look at the fact that they're happening at the same time and it feels relentless. The industrial landscape is changing rapidly, the world of work has become far more pressurised and the cost of living crisis that our members and workers everywhere are facing runs very, very deep. The society we live in today is more divided than any point that I can remember, and the world is definitely a more dangerous place than at any point that I can remember in my lifetime.

This is the background of the deliberations that are going to take place at this conference, and I recognise for our representatives everywhere, in particular our local and our branch representatives, that this is a really difficult moment, struggling maybe to work out how do you deal with all of these issues. So I want to say thank you to our representatives. Many of them, most of them, are volunteers.

They face these issues because they're good people, and we know that in the CWU we've got some fantastic representatives who care about people, and I want to say thank you to everybody who's a CWU representative for the way that you support our members, for the way that you support our union, and for your dedication in trying to make things better for all the values that we stand for. I'm also going to say to you all that in these times when it's hard to think about how you solve some of these problems, the most important thing for every single one of us and for every single CWU rep is to recognise that we should recommit to our core belief during this week of collectivism. It's collectivism that gives us the right to challenge employers, and employers today need challenging.

I think there's a bit of a disease in the UK where employers have learnt the art of how to manage their finances, but they've forgotten the art of how to grow businesses and look after workers. It's collectivism that gives us the right to stand up for working class people in work and outside work, and with or without the Labour Party. And it's collectivism that I believe will ultimately provide the solutions that working people need today.

So in these times of difficulty let's remember that. I want to reflect on the industrial landscape. I said that it's changing, and in postal we know and our members know that Royal Mail is at a critical point in its history.

We can't protect our members' jobs in the future without change. Our members know that. We can't protect the service and the fact that we are the ones that stand up for delivering for customers without change, and I think customers know that as well.

And the agreement that we've just reached is a good agreement, but it has to be viewed against the reality that Royal Mail is now operating in a permanently changed world of communications. We've moved the employer on USO reform. We've taken a step forward on the hugely important issue of equalising new entrance terms and conditions, and I think the union deserves credit as well for the way that we've government into a stronger position of taking note of what needs to happen in Royal Mail, and we're going to carry on with that approach.

But I'm going to say to the reps here today, the members will vote on the agreement and democracy will as always rule, but our job is to enforce that agreement as one union on the postal side. Do not let any branch, do not let any member face the change without great organisation at local level, supported by our area, regional level and supported by the national side of the union. I want to pay tribute to Martin, to the national officers and to the PE.

Lots of times where it's easy sometimes to take easy decisions about, you know, maybe we can avoid some of this stuff, but it is unavoidable and what they've done is stood up for the interest of our members and for customers, and I'm sure our members will recognise that when it comes to the ballot. In TNFS, perhaps even more than postal, the impact of new technology, of AI, is running deep. And during the course of that, it's important that we recognise that whilst we can't stop technological change, we have been able thus far to avoid compulsory redundancies.

We have delivered a decent pay rise. We have put the right focus on bringing up lower paid workers in that pay rise. But this year, and I know the TNFS are ready for this, we must step up the challenge on delivering a shorter working week.

The campaign has been a good campaign, there's been a lot of information about it, but it's now time for the employer to share in the benefits of technology with our workforce. There's also been some excellent work that's taken place, and we are on the brink of recognition in a number of bargaining units in Virgin Media, and I want to pay tribute to our team for taking that work forward. And I've also been speaking to Karen and Andy Mercer about how we can work together more closely to bring our political influence into challenging Ofcom, and the way that Ofcom prioritises the Altnets against the real service providers.

This is a moment where we want that work to take place, and it's a moment where that work will be in the interest of our members, of customers, and of all of those who believe in universal services. So again, I want to thank Karen, I want to thank the TNFS, I want to thank the officers of the TNFS for the dedication that they have shown in what is undoubtedly difficult times. In the tech sector, our Utah branch continues to go from strength to strength.

We now have over 6,000 members in Utah. It is now the biggest branch within the CWU, and crucially, we have reps and members who are giving us a great insight into how to challenge AI. CWU, Utah have a unique opportunity to use the expertise that is within our membership there for the benefit not just of our members, but for all workers and for society.

Conference, these are exciting times, and Utah have moved, and you may have seen this, significantly forward, a bid for union recognition in one of the most powerful tech institutions in the world, Google's AI lab, DeepMind. We are on the brink of recognition with those bargaining units, and that is an historic achievement. And I want to pay tribute to John Chadfield, to the reps in Utah, and to our members in Utah.

It is such a vibrant group. It cares about not just what they're doing, but it understands there is a need here to challenge the powerful people who are going to use AI for their benefit and not for the benefit of wider society. So it's something that we are committed to building on, and we are having discussions about how we can build membership in the tech sector.

But it's a good start, and it's going to continue next year. I want to address the future of the trade union and labour movement. Now, I'm going to talk a lot about labour tomorrow, but I do want to offer my commiserations, and I'm sure many of you, for the fact that we would have lost a lot of councillors who have worked hard in their areas for many, many years.

And I'm going to say to you that there's nobody in this room who doesn't understand that that wasn't down to the work of labour councillors out on the ground. That was down to the simple fact and truth that labour has completely and utterly misread a lot of the situations that it faces, and it has disconnected from working-class people. And if we're going to have a debate about real change, and I will talk about this tomorrow, surely now everybody knows with the situations that we face on inequality of wealth and power, if you haven't got the courage to stand against and challenge the wealthy and the powerful and redistribute wealth and power back to working people, then don't stand up and say that you're going to deliver real change, because it ain't going to happen.

So we've got a job to do there. And I also want to talk to you about the trade union movement. I think the CWU is recognised within the movement as a progressive union that's influencing all unions about how we move forward.

And sometimes I think that our movement has become too insular. It talks a lot about what happens to your own union, but it doesn't talk anywhere enough about how we can use our collective strength to bring about change. And that's why in the coming year we are going to push hard for a new deal too.

We're going to push hard for unions to finally recognise that internal competition about members isn't going to get us anywhere. We have to start agreeing ways to take forward sectorial collective bargaining, both within our movement and within this government. We have to stand against now the issue of bogus self-employment, where multi-national companies are able to undercut, many of them undercutting members of our union and the companies that our members work for, by exploiting workers through the gig economy.

And ending bogus self-employment by creating a single status of worker is the right policy going forward. So these are going to be the priorities. There's no contradiction here between trying to hold Labour to account on the existing Employment Rights Bill and the Make Work Pay agenda and pushing harder and further on the next stage of that.

And our union's going to lead that debate and you're going to hear us talking about that a bit more. Finally I want to talk about the future of the CWU. We've took some really really difficult decisions and later this week when we give you our financial update you will see that we are starting to see the benefits of some of those decisions.

Because what it was about was recognising overall membership loss but realising that we are far better off as an independent CWU. You'll see that we've now completed the sale of CWU headquarters and that will give us an opportunity to reinvest in areas where we need to reinvest. And you will see that we're going to continue to build on the structure that we want to bring the union together.

Maybe some hard decisions still ahead on that. I think particularly around the focus that we need on recruitment and organising. But our commitment is that when we say one union we know that one union is in the best interest of every CWU member and in every type of work that we do.

And we're going to continue with that agenda. Conference you've got some very important debates over the next few days and I'm going to return to that message. Wherever we end up in these debates when you leave the hall recognise the challenges are in front of us.

Recognise that just simply being part of a group that says we don't like what's going on is not good enough for our members, is not good enough for working class people. The CWU has influence. It's strong.

It's strong industrially. It's strong politically. And if we recommit to collectivism we are going to take forward working class people, our members and our movement.

Thank you Conference"

Source: CWU You Tube  

 

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