2010 manifesto

(This is the text of Christine’s manifesto for the 2010 BECTU President election)

I am asking for your support to be elected as the President of BECTU.

I have been a BECTU activist for over 18 years, an NEC member for 8 years. I am chair of the Finance & General Purposes Committee, a RPD divisional representative and the chair of the Equality and Diversity Committee. I have a wealth of experience and knowledge about our union and it’s membership in the broadcasting, freelance, theatre and cinema divisions. I’ve worked as a freelance stills photographer in film and television and a lecturer in photography.

I believe that to make our union work we need to build on the strength of the divisions and the branches. I believe that what the union needs is a vision across the range of working practices of our members and a committment to the recruitment and especially the retention of members.

BECTU has had a great number successes in protecting individual members rights, improving working conditions and defending jobs. Our campaign against ‘top slicing’ of the BBC Licence Fee has proved successful and that option has been shelved, for the moment at least. BECTU is campaigning to save regional news in ITV and is keeping an active eye on the pilots being by Independently Financed News Consortia. Our concern is for protecting jobs and maintaining a quality service.

The developments in technology obviously impact on our members and their work. As a member of the NEC I have participated in the debates of how we can harness it’s use (our new website) or respond to the challenges for our members, such as our cinema members facing the sea change occuring with the introduction of digital technology.

Across all our industries, but especially in the theatres, we are seeing the number of people permanently employed reducing. People are being hired on short term and casual contracts. In the BBC we have just launched a campaign for a charter for fixed term contract staff. We are also campaigning to secure a recognition agreement for freelancers across the whole of the BBC. This will be a major achievement and will provide a backdrop to the delivery of fair treatment and consistency for freelances engaged by the BBC.

We are going to be facing some big challenges and we need to continue to develop our strategies to respond to these. It is vital that we continue to build and develop strong local and regional branches across all of the divisions. We must motivate and encourage more members to become branch activists. But most of all we must continue to recruit new members to grow in size and strength.

I am proud to be a member of BECTU and an activist in our union. I would be honoured and pleased to be elected as BECTU’s first woman President.

Coming soon info at www.christinebond.org

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