During ♥UNIONS week, Usdaw is highlighting campaigns and successes in workplaces and communities; working with employers and politicians on solutions to our members’ issues and concerns:
- New deal for workers: Campaigning for £12 per hour as a step towards £15, an end to youth rates and action to tackle the cost of living crisis.
- Not all disability is visible: A new campaign launched this year to help reps support members with a hidden disability.
- Mental health: Supporting members with mental health issues, with a theme of ‘it's good to talk’, helping to open up conversations and reduce the stigma.
- Protection of shopworkers: Legislation was passed in Holyrood and Westminster after decades of Usdaw’s Freedom from Fear campaign.
- Menopause: Raising awareness, campaigning for better workplace rights and negotiating improved health and well-being for women experiencing the menopause.
- No room for racism: Helping reps engage members, non-members and employers with our anti-racist message: ‘not in my name, not in my workplace’.
- LGBT+ Equality: Tackling discrimination and harassment by standing together with our LGBT+ friends, colleagues and members.
Paddy Lillis – Usdaw General Secretary says: “Usdaw is the campaigning union, improving workers’ lives and delivering for our members. Our reps and activists do a fantastic job organising for fairness at work, promoting equality by tackling discrimination and getting a better deal for our members, along with improving health and safety in their workplaces.
“The vast majority of our members are key workers who keep the country fed and healthy, but they are too often underpaid, poorly treated and do not receive the respect they deserve. There must be a new deal for workers based on decent pay, secure employment, respect, equality and action to ensure that key worker jobs are no longer underpaid and undervalued.
“All that is best achieved by joining the union. Throughout ‘Heart Unions’ week, Usdaw, along with the TUC, is celebrating the positive contribution trade union members make to the UK economy and wider society, while highlighting the benefits of trade union membership. Workers can join Usdaw through our website.”
Notes for editors:
Usdaw (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) is the UK's fifth biggest trade union with around 360,000 members. Most Usdaw members work in the retail sector, but the union also has many members in transport, distribution, food manufacturing, chemical industry and other trades.
Heart Unions’ week: www.tuc.org.uk/heartunions 13 to 19 February 2023 highlights the positive contribution that trade unions make in workplaces and across wider society.
Join Usdaw: www.usdaw.org.uk/Join-Us
For Usdaw press releases visit: http://www.usdaw.org.uk/news and you can follow us on Twitter @UsdawUnion