GMB members from all regions are invited to attend online national equality strand summits on Saturdays in November, December, January and February.
The five summits are an opportunity for GMB members who belong to the equality strands to come together and take part in workshops and learning on the top workplace equality priorities.
When are the national equality summits?
- Race Summit (Black, Asian & minority ethnic workers): Saturday 4 November
- Disabled Workers Summit: Postponed until Saturday 20th of January 2024
- Young Workers (30 and under) Summit: Saturday 25 November
- Women Workers Summit: Saturday 2 December
- LGBT+ Workers Summit: Postponed until Saturday the 3rd of February 2024
Times: Between 10am and 4pm, exact times tbc
How can regions find and nominate attendees?
Regions can circulate the info in the way that works best for that region – e.g. all-member email, through officers, through branch secretaries, social media, etc. Shareable graphics have been provided.
Info will also be circulated nationally to members involved in national equality campaigns, including to delegates to TUC equality conferences 2023, strand lead network members, CEC members etc. All attendees should personally identify with/belong to the strand of the summit they want to attend. All members will need to contact their REO/regional Young Worker organiser to secure attendance.
Additional action for Young Workers summit
To help build activist diversity and secure the future of the union, GMB has one delegate place to TUC Congress and one place to Labour Party Conference 2024 reserved for Young Workers. These will be elected at the Young Workers Summit. At least one of the two delegates must be a woman.
Regions should submit nominees for these places along with their summit attendees. If your region nominates a member for each place, at least one of them must be a woman. Members should submit an election statement of 250 words, and for Labour Party Conference they must be a Labour member. Ideally, nominees won’t have attended TUC Congress/conference before.
As there will be an election at the summit, regions should identify six of their regional attendees for the young workers summit who will cast their regional votes – in the Excel form provided.
Will there be elections for national equality strand leads?
No. The current five equality strand leads’ terms are due to finish Dec 31 2023. However, the CEC is due to hear papers from the National Equality Forum culture and strategy working groups in the Autumn. Until these papers are heard with decisions from the CEC, it isn’t possible to run NEF member/strand leader elections.
What will the summits include?
The summits will focus on how members can organise to make work better for members of the relevant equality strand. That includes how to campaign for fair pay, health and safety and anti-discrimination at work.
The exact content will be different for each summit. Content might include:
- Campaigning workshop (5 campaign questions)
- Recruitment conversations around equality issues
- How to identify future activist leaders
- What is intersectionality and why does it matter at work
- GMB trans toolkit
- Campaigning to improve work for those with unseen disability
- Spotting equal pay issues
- Tackling the ethnicity pay gap
- Young workers organising
- How activists can practically use GMB equality toolkits.