Usdaw – Need for change at the top

THE BROAD Left group in the shop and retail workers’ union USDAW has
decided to back Terry Savage as their candidate for president of the union,
which will be contested later this year.

The decision was taken by the Broad Left at the annual conference of USDAW.
Terry is a former national executive member and a former national officer of
the union.

There is an urgent need for change at the top of the union. The current
leadership has taken it to the far right of the union movement. They have done
deals with big retail employers like Tesco that have been detrimental to USDAW
members’ interests. And, although there has been a huge expansion of the
numbers working in retail, USDAW has only made a marginal membership gain in
the last year.

The conference was turned into a pre-election rally for the Labour Party
with union officials continuously trying to exhort USDAW members to not only
vote but to campaign for Labour. They told everyone what a wonderful deal they
were getting off the government and that they had to be very afraid of the
prospect of ‘Hatchet Howard’ getting into 10 Downing Street.

USDAW members may not want to see the Tories elected but they will also be
questioning, given the low pay and dreadful conditions they suffer, what the
Labour government and their union are doing for them.

There is undoubtedly a layer of conference delegates fed up with hearing
about doing deals with ‘progressive employers’ and how wonderful the Labour
government is supposed to be and are looking for an alternative. This was
shown by 30 copies of the socialist being sold in ten minutes before the start
of the first conference session.