‘Unite, fight and win’

Mary Callaghan, Unite delegate, moved a motion on Universal Credit. She said she was “proud and honoured to be moving this motion on behalf of all of those women at Labour Women’s Conference earlier this year.”

“She reported, “We heard incredibly powerful and heart-breaking speeches made by our women members, recounting their direct experience of the long wait for care, the very low pay and poor conditions of care workers. The horrifying experiences of Universal Credit and the destruction it has had on our lives and loved ones.

“So when just last week David Cameron, in selling his memoirs, tells the Today programme that he was proud of Iain Duncan Smith’s work I can only be struck by the cruelty and continued inhumanity of the Tories. But conference, so much of the debate at Women’s conference and why I am proud to move this motion is that it was not just about despair. It was also about Labour’s solutions.”

Callaghan continued, “The commitments to transforming the very structure of our economy – to put women and equality at the heart of our society – rather than tinker round the edges is what my union – and what I as a worker - a Unite rep in a food factory and a Labour activist have fought so hard for decades to achieve.

“When Laura Pidcock spoke at TUC about what Labour would do in government to strengthen trade union and employment rights, to bring about a change of power in our workplaces create sectoral collective bargaining and to bring in statutory rights for equality reps. Laura spoke about how it would change the lives of tens of millions of workers for the better.

“The low paid care worker with poor conditions we heard about at women’s conference would be properly valued.”

She concluded, “By ending austerity and rebuilding our public services, by having a social security system that enables rather than punishes like Universal Credit does, by putting equality at the heart – rather than as an afterthought – we can end and bring about real change.

“But to do that we need to unite, fight and win a Jeremy Corbyn led Labour government. I believe we can. And we will.”