The General Workers Union turns 65 today and on this occasion the question if this union does have a future is very pertinent. Undoubtedly, the answer to this question is yes, the GWU does have a future. The initial challenge is which future the GWU will choose.
Trade unions exist because an individual worker has very little power to influence decisions made about his or her job. The greatest advantage of joining a trade union is because, by doing so, individuals have more of a chance of having a voice and influence in their place of work. By joining forces with other workers, an individual’s opinions and beliefs regarding his/her job will also be voiced by other union members, thus creating a stronger stance against management, if needed.
Therefore, the main purpose of a trade union is to protect and improve people’s pay and conditions of employment. In its 65 years of existence, has the GWU fulfilled these obligations as a major trade union? It undoubtedly has. The history of the GWU is success story. Moreover, the GWU through its dynamism is adapting to the new challenges that are emerging in the world of work. Today, the GWU assists members also on an individual, confidential and anonymous basis especially when employees, from all walks of life, seek assistance on individual contracts of employment.
The GWU is both a professional and a personal trade union. It is professional as it focuses on its core competence – that is, job security, a reasonable wage and decent working conditions for its members. It is a personal trade union as it focuses on the many new possibilities that enable the individual and his family to create and build a better quality of life.
Understanding that its members need economic security and want self-fulfilment, in its 65 years of being, the GWU never lost its identity and thus is prepared to answer to what it stands for, and why and how it acted on certain issues.
Surely, the future will present radical challenges in many aspects and the GWU will respond to them by focusing its activities according to the challenges that arise. For the GWU, this will not be a case of rediscovering itself in the field of industrial relations since it has achieved in itself an organization that is the best on our island.
The GWU has also been able to build up and sustain this position in a historical period sometimes characterized by economic slowdowns, by technological leaps, and social and political transformations. It is with this ability and determination that the GWU meets the changes and challenges of the future.
The future will continue presenting challenges to the individual wage earner’s role and security. The demand for new qualifications and upgrading of qualifications, the competition from Third World countries and the use of new technology are some of the conditions that are instrumental in influencing and intensifying competition demands for everyone – and insecurity for many.
In this scenario, the GWU will certainly react by focusing on its core competence – the safeguarding of job security for the individual through negotiations to ensure that the take home pay and working conditions are satisfactory. This is the foundation that has brought the GWU forward in its 65 years of history and which will also bring it safely into the future
As it did in the past, particularly the recent past, the GWU will continue to be its members’ guarantee in a future characterized by intensified competition. It will be safeguarding its members’ security – ensuring that its members receive what they deserve, knowing full well that in the coming years, the most important source for this security lies in the workers’ educational qualifications and professional knowledge. The workers are the firm’s most important capital, the “human capital”, and the GWU will contribute towards ensuring that this is taken into account in full in agreements concerning remuneration and working conditions.
Today’s society is changing. The society and economy of the future will certainly be extremely global and production will be based on knowledge and technology. These are changes that will influence work and the labour market locally and globally. Changes that will determine the framework for work and the workers’ daily life.
These are the challenges workers will have to face, challenges that must be given concrete answers. At the same time, the future also presents completely new possibilities for the workers to create, through their work, a life built on job satisfaction and self-esteem. Work occupies a large portion of a people’s daily life and therefore work is regarded as being very important. It is here that workers create and develop. Work has another and much more wide-ranging meaning than merely being a source of securing a material standard of living. The GWU is looking forward to many more workplaces where all the employees’ talents flourish, adding value to business and services, and enriching their own working experience.
Today, there may be no such thing as a job for life, but the GWU will definitely continue pushing forward the concept that there is work for life in the modern labour market for all.
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