King’s Lynn councillor Jo Rust on the importance of Trade Unions

In the latest weekly Friday Politics, Cllr Jo Rust discusses trade unions…

As some of you might know, as well as being a borough councillor and cabinet member for people and communities, I’m also the secretary of the King’s Lynn and District Trade Union Council, a role which I’ve held almost continuously since 2009.

I’m really proud of my connections with the trade union movement, I see it as closely linking my work with people and communities because it’s about trying to improve things for as many people as possible.

In the case of those in the workplace, that’s their terms and conditions of employment. The successes and wins fought for and achieved by the trade union movement and its members benefit everyone in the workplace.

Those gains include improvements specifically for women such as menopause policies to support women as their bodies go through a significant change. Once a policy has been agreed upon, the workplace can make changes so that women won’t face disadvantages due to menopause, which they could have done previously.

It also means that the workplace can continue to benefit from the skills and talents of female employees, after all, they don’t just disappear when they hit menopause.

It’s the same for maternity rights and rights relating to menstruation. These wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago.

On Tuesday I joined a trade union picket line in Long Sutton. The members of Unite the Union at Princes Food had felt forced to take lawful industrial action, claiming the new owner was refusing to honour the pay award offered by the previous owner, reducing it from 4% to 3%.

I spoke to members on the picket line who were so disappointed and demoralised to have moved from owners who showed that they valued and respected them, to an owner who they say refused to meet with the trade union face to face and only offered one Zoom meeting, giving the appearance that he didn’t recognise the trade union or the benefits of having one body to negotiate with.

There will be further industrial action taking place there and in Wisbech, which I’ll attend to show solidarity and support If you drive past either, perhaps you’d toot your horn, as many drives do, as a demonstration of your support.

The unions work to benefit all, not just a few. After all, if the workers losing pay to make their point, are successful, then all the employees in that workplace will benefit from that pay award. In the same way that if Unite the Union is successful in challenging the government over its failure to conduct an Equality Impact Assessment before withdrawing, the Winter Fuel Allowance, then all pensioners will benefit.

Challenging the government is a huge step to take, but with the backing of your trade union, you know you’ve got the power to do so. On Monday evening trade union members heard from former sub-postmasters and mistresses who had been falsely accused of theft, fraud and false accounting and imprisoned because of it.

The Trades Council hosted an open meeting where the guest speaker was Janet Skinner who was sent to prison for nine months because of the faulty IT system, Horizon, that has been forced onto local post offices for them to use as an accounting system.

Two years after her release from prison, as she was trying to piece her life together, having lost her house as well as her employment and standing in the community, Janet then faced a further five years in prison for failing to have paid the Post Office the £11,000 it put against her house by way of compensation for the £55,000 they falsely claimed she had stolen.

Janet’s mortgage company had penalised her because she sold her house in a hurry to avoid it being repossessed and thus didn’t get the highest price for it. This meant that there was no money left over (and Janet didn’t get a penny herself) to pay the post office their demands.

I was glad to hear that Janet didn’t go to prison wrongly again but asked of the role of the government in this matter. The system needs to be changed so that this can’t happen again, because it’s glaringly obvious that currently, it can.

No one should face prison like Janet and Seema Misra - who was also at the meeting - because of faulty IT bought in by a huge profit-making organisation. The trade union members present at the meeting offered Janet, Misra and all the other former sub-postmasters and mistresses their solidarity and support and agreed to write an open letter to the local MPs calling on them to lobby for full payment of the long-awaited compensation as well as calling for changes to be made to the system to take away the power that the PO has to make prosecutions without going through the CPS.

These people suffered terribly for no fault of their own, the very least that they deserve is a proper apology and compensation for every bit of damage this caused to their lives.