I am seeking your support to elect me as a member of the GEC.  I am a socialist and a member of Left Unity.

I became a member of the civil service and PCS in 1999.  I became a rep within a few weeks as the office I joined did not have a rep.  Since then I have held many roles within PCS at local, regional and national level.

I have been on the GEC since 2006 I have done different roles over the years but I have specialised in health and safety.  As the Group Health and Safety Officer I have had a very challenging year negotiating and challenging the department on safety issues as well as giving support to safety reps and members.  I have done my best over the years to ensure that we have safe working practices in place despite policies that cause an increase in violence.   There are also a number of working practices that increase the levels of stress in the workplace.   Nobody should be injured through work.

I am also part of the GECs L&D committee as I have been a Union Learning Rep since 2002.  I have seen learning opportunities increase skills and confidence and believe there should be opportunities for all.

I am Chair of the DWP Ty Taf branch which came about after the closure of 6 offices and the opening of TY Taf.  It has been a challenge few years setting up new branch from scratch and dealing with a number of previous reps taking redundancy.  I’ve worked with the reps and work with new reps to get an active branch.  We have 16 different parts of the department in Ty Taf and we are trying to get consultation structures set up with all of them.  We are also dealing with some of the worse health and safety issues I’ve known in any offices. The GEC and I have pressed the department to learn lessons so that these type of issues do not happen again.  Sone changes have already been put in place.

I also deal with a lot of personal cases which is rewarding and frustrating when dealing with the same similar cases over again.  The DWP has some really good policies which have been negotiated by the GEC but they are not always implemented as they should have been which causes unnecessary distress to members.

I am proud to be a member of Left Unity as I know that they are the group that listens to members.  I’ve always thought that members are the most important part of the union and working with them the union can be great.  Listening to members meant that I was part of the campaign to pause the levy and I spoke for this at the senior lay reps forum.