T&G makes recruitment top priority

The T&G general union has launched a major recruitment drive, reflecting a major refocusing of its priorities. It says the "radical strategy" will "refocus all the union's time, effort and resources on organising in the workplace to end the decline of union influence and membership."

The first phase, called the "100% campaign", aims to sign up all the employees in workplaces already organised by the T&G. The union's 250 local officers will be targeting such workplaces over the next few months, with the hope that tens of thousands of new members will be recruited.

The idea in this phase is to create "a stronger bargaining position for union members in the T&G's core areas of manufacturing, transport, services and the food industry."

Later in the year the organising drive will be extended to non-union companies throughout the economy.

The campaign will be co-ordinated centrally by a new organising department headed by deputy general secretary Jack Dromey.

* The T&G has launched a campaign to organise low-paid, mostly immigrant, cleaners at London's huge Canary Wharf office complex. The cleaners are often paid around £5.20 an hour, compared with, for example, the £16 million earned by the chair of Canary Wharf tenant Lehman Bros. T&G general secretary Tony Woodley said: "This inequality cannot go unchallenged."