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Making the Case for Decent Work January 24, 2013 Brian Forbes – Mandate National Coordinator. Launched at Christmas!. Objective of Fair Shop Campaign.
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Making the Case for Decent Work January 24, 2013 Brian Forbes – Mandate National Coordinator
Objective of Fair Shop Campaign To support and promote quality employment in the retail sector by encouraging trade union members, their families and supporting organisations to make an informed choice to use Fair Shop designated retail outlets.
What is a Fair Shop? A Shop that recognises a union for collective bargaining The following Shops are deemed Fair Shop: Tesco, Superquinn, Marks and Spencer, Penneys, Arnotts, Brown Thomas, Heatons, Boots, Shaws, Argos, Debenhams, Clerys, Shoezone, Supervalu (some groups)
The Retail Sector • Over 200,000 workers employed in sector • Union density under threat by new employers • Attacks on JLC’s • Increased casualisation of employment • Huge demands on workers to be flexible • Thousands underemployed • Anti-union - New Look, River Island, Dunnes, Aldi and Lidl, IKEA etc etc • Always Tesco, M&S etc that do business with us
What can we do? • Make worker exploitation an issue for consumers • Win support for a consumer campaign • Ethical consumerism = most effective brand/message • Develop strong communications platforms and messaging • Use individual and collective purchasing power as leverage and to help make a difference
Support from ICTU Affilates • Our aim is to establish and build a broad coalition of supporters • Our weakness is the lack of combined purchasing power • Our strength is the untapped activism of thousands of ethically minded trade unionists who will “spend their money where workers count”
Support outside the movement • Notice issued to employers of Fair Shop status • Seeking NGO endorsements similar to those supportive of the Fair Hotels initiative • Seeking broad coalition of supporters
THIS SLIDE SHOULD HAVE THE COMBINATION OF APPLICATIONS FOR FAIR SHOP
Conclusion This will only work with yoursupport
4 Practical things you can do: • Make sure your union actively supports Fair Shop • Help promote Fair Shop campaign within all communications channels in your union • Let employers (union and non-union) know that your union supports the Fair Shop campaign (we will provide templates) • Like Fair Shop on Facebook and Twitter and share our updates and status!