Community members targeted by union

A new membership scheme to ensure that those pushed to the margins of society can benefit from collective power has been launched by the general union Unite.

The union’s new community membership is available to students, the unemployed and all others not in work for whatever reason costing just 50p a week.

The scheme offers members a range of financial benefits and services, including a legal advice helpline, a welfare benefits check-up, debt counselling, assistance with CVs, application forms, and interviews and hardship grants.

Community members will be developed as community activists, bringing together people across their locality who have felt left down or excluded by politics to ensure that they too have a voice at a time of economic turmoil and social change for the nation.

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: “These are terrible times for ordinary people, but we want to send them a message of hope. So we say now to the millions unemployed, including the young people wasted on the dole and worried for their future, in Unite you have a home.”

www.unitetheunion.org/news__events/latest_news/community_membership_pledge_to.aspx