§ ASDA Wal-Mart through the law 1e Susan Moore ? GMB members at Asda Wal5. Mart distribution depots cele • brated an important victory on June 28 with management forced to concede the right to collective bargaining in all the depots in the face of five days planned strike action.
Shop stewards meeting to discuss the agreement drawn up between General Secretary Paul Kenny and Asda Chief Executive Andy Bond and also signed by Brendan Barber for the TUC deliberated long and hard over the detail but in the end agreed to call of the
called U11 "Hamas to renounce their campaign of terrorism and accept that Israel has a right to exist in peace and security" was passed.
Therein lies a big issue in the GMB. Despite its size, there is virtually left organising in the union. Even fringe meetings are "official".
IWO events dominated media reports: Blair's question and answers session and the debate on merger with T&G and Amicus.
The latter was dealt with very quickly as all regions but one were clearly opposed to the merger. The main arguments put were that the other lwo umons were very celltralised unlike the GMB. There was no real discussion on why super unions are not m me teress ormenders
Tony Blair gave a smooth performance. There were some good questions but there were also missed opportunities.
GMB has called for a public enquiry into the 1984 Cammell Laird dispute which resulted in 37 trade unionists being jailed. Instead of asking for support for such an enquiry the question referred or Freedom on intormation under the Information Act. Blair simply said "if you leave your name with my people, I will get back to you personally".
This structure does not of course give opportunity to come back. So when a delegate asked Blair if it were fair that MPs can retire
Paul Kenny said:
"This new agreement which GMB and Asda Wal-Mart have worked very hard to achieve heralds a new fresh approach to representation and bargaining between the company and GMB."
Activists will be on their toes to make sure it really does represent a change from the notoriously anti-union company.
Meanwhile, they will be working to use the momentum of this success to step up union organisation within the stores too with the aim of securing collective bargaining there too. early on a full pension when at the same time legislation was passed forcing others to work longer" he could glibly reply that changing the retirement age effected everyone including MPs, without fear of further challenge
The question on Iraq was to the point: "Every single person sitting in this room today knows that you took us into an illegal was on a lie You told us that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and there was not.
"You told us that al Qaeda operated in Iraq and they did not, but they do now. You promised us the world would be a better and safer place, and it is not... When are you going to fetch our troops home?"
Blair despatched this question briefly offering to send the questioner the intelligence he had at the time. He claimed that the situation today is different from the time of the removal of Saddam, without of course admitting that it was the invasion itself that caused those differences. He believed it was "our job" to stand with those forces fighting for democracy and he was sorry if people did not agree
He ended by blaming failure on Labour governments on "one part of the Labour Party that would actually like to have a really left-wing Labour government". He was obviously thinking about the Winter of Discontent!
but professional smooth performance resulted in standing ovalon Therein lie GMB's contradictions. It knows that Labour's delegates the policies are not helping its members but like most trade unions cannol see anv allella tive.