EU REFERENDUM – CWU POSITION POST BREXIT

EU REFERENDUM – CWU POSITION POST BREXIT
Following the decision to leave the European Union, the NEC has discussed how the political and economic consequences of Brexit may impact upon CWU members and all working people.
This is an ongoing debate and one which the trade union movement needs to be at the very forefront of if we are to influence future negotiations. The NEC, in respecting the decision of the Referendum, believes that the primary focus of the labour movement must be to unite around the core issues that affect our members’ everyday lives; from the world of work, to housing, living standards and health and public services.
As part of this debate, the TUC Executive recently produced a paper entitled “Working people must not pay the price for the vote to leave”. The CWU NEC endorsed the general direction of this document and accepted that it was a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate.
In addition, at the 2016 TUC Congress in Brighton last week, Composite Motion 1 detailed the post-Brexit policies which were adopted by the TUC in their campaign to protect and defend workers’ rights. The CWU formed part of the composite motion having submitted an amendment instructing the General Council to also protect pensioners’ rights by fighting to retain the ‘triple lock’ on the state pension.
A crucial area the NEC agreed to focus on as part of our post-Brexit position, is to counter the unacceptable rise in race-related crimes and abuse which appear to be directly linked to the referendum campaign. The issue of immigration featured highly in the EU leave campaign – and it is the negative way this was portrayed which many believe has now lead to the upsurge in cases of hate crime.
The threats and abuse have not been limited to EU nationals living in the UK but also towards non-EU nationals and British-born Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) people. Figures indicate that within a month of the referendum there had been more than 6,000 reports of hate crime made to the police. There have also been more serious incidents of violence which have recently been reported in the media.
We have received a number of reports from CWU representatives of unacceptable comments being made in some of our own workplaces and the union is taking all necessary steps to investigate these matters and if required take appropriate action.
In discussing this issue, the NEC has agreed we must again make clear to our branches, reps and members that the CWU will not, under any circumstances, tolerate any form of racial abuse, harassment or race-hate incidents against our members. To strengthen the union’s position, we have attached a workplace notice setting out CWU values and we would ask branches to immediately distribute this to all representatives and all workplaces.
Additionally, the TUC has also issued information to support union reps combat racist abuse in the workplace and this is attached for your information.
Finally, branches should continue to publicise details of the CWU Bullying and Harassment helpline number 0800 090 2303 http://www.cwu.org/departments-services/equal-opportunities/bullying-harassment/ – and contact the Equal Opportunities Department equalopportunities@cwu.org to advise of any specific incidents you would wish to report to us for our information or further investigation.
Any enquires on this LTB should be addressed to the General Secretary’s Office at gsoffice@cwu.org.
Yours sincerely,

Dave Ward