{"id":15438,"date":"2018-06-22T16:43:32","date_gmt":"2018-06-22T15:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=15438"},"modified":"2020-11-12T12:58:40","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T12:58:40","slug":"unite-celebrates-100th-birthday-tom-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=15438","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;100 years young&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Unite celebrated the 100<sup>th<\/sup> birthday of one of the union\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s longest serving members on Friday (June 22).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Former Unite shop steward and retired fitter and turner engineer and train repairman Tom Jones was joined by family, friends, care home staff and Unite general secretary Len McCluskey at a care home in\u00c2\u00a0 London (pictured below) to celebrate turning 100 and to honour his commitment to the union.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-15441\" src=\"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/len-tom-jones-2-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"len tom jones 2\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/len-tom-jones-2-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/len-tom-jones-2-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/len-tom-jones-2-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Tom, born in 1918, left school at the age of 15 and joined Fraser and Chalmers as an office boy. After undertaking an apprenticeship at the firm, he later became a fitter and turner engineer working on slotter-shaper and planner machines. It was here that he became an active shop steward.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>During the Second World War, Tom was in the Home Guards based at Shooters Hill in the reserved occupation. After the war, he returned to Fraser and Chalmers \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which later became Parsons \u00e2\u20ac\u201c where he worked for nearly four decades until he was made redundant.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>He then went on to work for British Railways repairing trains at Slade Green sheds.\u00c2\u00a0 There, Tom was active on the works committee until retiring at 65.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Retirement hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stopped Tom from being active in his local community, however \u00e2\u20ac\u201c he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s helped in a local paper shop and unloaded lorries for British Bakers for a time. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also been active in several working men\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clubs and has served as branch president of the Pensioners Members Forum at Civic Offices.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>On behalf of Unite, McCluskey presented Tom with a commemorative engraved bowl in recognition of his \u00e2\u20ac\u015bunprecedented loyalty to the union.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bOne of the joys of my role is meeting our members,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 McCluskey tweeted. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bI am spending this morning with one of them, Mr Tom Jones, who is 100 years young and a member of our union for 83 years.\u00c2\u00a0 What an honour to be able to share today with him and find out what our union means to him.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThank you so much to Tom and his wonderful family for letting me share this day with them,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he added. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bA very happy birthday to Tom and thank you for your years of membership and dedication.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unite celebrated the 100th birthday of one of the union\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s longest serving members on Friday (June 22). &nbsp; Former Unite shop steward and retired fitter and turner engineer and train repairman Tom Jones was joined by family, friends, care home staff and Unite general secretary Len McCluskey at a care home in\u00c2\u00a0 London (pictured below) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15439,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[160,262],"wps_subtitle":"Unite celebrates 100th birthday of long-serving Unite member Tom Jones","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15438"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26112,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15438\/revisions\/26112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}