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This year, PCS will again take part in the TUC Young Workers Month in November, where TUC affiliated unions will be focusing on campaigning around young members issues. This development is a direct result of the work by PCS Young Members within the TUC Youth structures in building support for wider campaigning on youth issues.

Dear Colleague

This year, PCS will again take part in the TUC Young Workers Month in November, where TUC affiliated unions will be focusing on campaigning around young members issues. This development is a direct result of the work by PCS Young Members within the TUC Youth structures in building support for wider campaigning on youth issues.

PCS will focus around pay, mental health, and harassment and work, but also on recruiting and organising apprentices, and encouraging involvement of young members across the union, in conjunction with the National & Group organising priorities

Across the union, we are asking branches to get involved and take part in activities involving young people in their branch. This could include:

• identifying where your apprentices are and organising events to sign them up to PCS and get them to become active,
• encouraging all young members to sign up to the union and to get involved,
• encouraging young members to become union advocates or young members’ officers,
• holding a meeting or social event,
• campaigning around an issue of importance to young members,

The PCS Young Members Network will also be active and organising events across the UK including:

• Recruitment days, including recruiting to PCS and to the young members network
• Training events
• Young Member meetings
• Campaigning & Protests
• Regional Socials and quizzes
• Involvement in regional pan equality events

If you have young activists in your branch, make sure you are getting them involved and the Young Members Network can help you do that.

Why are we doing this?

We know from experience that young workers are often the worst affected when it comes to pay freezes, attacks on terms & conditions, redundancy, job security, welfare cuts, and their treatment in the workplace. This is why it is vital that we continue to organise young workers, and it has been shown time and time again, that when we take action and fight, young people will join and get active. Our union is campaigning and fighting back but at the same time we need to be actively building our collective and industrial strength

With our rep age base getting older and branches losing key officers to retirement and voluntary exits, it is vital that we are building the next layer of union activists. All branches need to be doing this, whether you have 5 young members in your branch or 100s.

Objectives of TUC Young Workers Month

The PCS Young Members network are participating with the national union to:

• Encourage young members to ensure they are ballot ready
• Recruit young workers to join our union
• Get more young members signed up to the network at youngmembers@pcs.org.uk
• Increase young members participation in all union activity
• Encourage young members to get actively involved and become distributors, reps and union advocates
• Make links with other trade union youth networks and campaign groups
• Collect personal email and mobile numbers for all of our members
• Raise the profile of our union in the workplace
• Recruit more apprentices to PCS (they get 6 months subscriptions free), find out their issues and encourage them to get involved.

All branches and regions are asked to organise events during young workers month to carry out young members organising activity in the branch, using young members and PCS materials that will be provided (photo cards and posters are available as well as the young members’ charter and joining form).

Ideas/suggestions of activity are:

• Mapping young people and apprentices in your workplace and targeting them to join the union, to get active, or become an activist/advocate
• Desk-dropping and distribute targeted young workers month material
• Getting young members involved in the regional YM network activities
• Invite along young members to your BEC and invite them to get active
• Arrange a stall or event in an office where a number of young members are located and encourage people to come and find out more about the union and the network. (Contact your regional office for assistance).
• Organise a young members training event/potential reps course
• Hold a workplace meeting aimed at young people on an issue relevant to them. This could include a general discussion around what the union is.
• Approach other branches in your area where possible to discuss joint activity
• Identify a particular issue in your workplace relevant to young members to campaign and recruit around, e.g. apprentices
• Invite a local young members’ convenor to come and talk about the network and how people can get involved (contact youngmembers@pcs.org.uk to find out who your regional convenor is)
• Plan a social event out of working hours where young people can talk about their situation at work in a relaxed and informal environment
• Set up a website, Twitter/Facebook/Snapchat/ Instagram page or blog around young members issues and encourage young members in your area to contribute to it. Regional offices have speech bubbles to support young workers month – get your young members to fill these in to say why they support young workers month and take a photo and tweet @PCSYMN using #YWM2018 

Please send reports of any activity to equality@pcs.org.uk

For further information please contact your regional young members convenor, branch youth officer, the national young members organiser Julie Young, equality@pcs.org.uk or your regional or group office.

Yours sincerely,

                                     Mark Serwotka

                                      General Secretary 

 Facebook – PCS Young Members

Twitter – @PCSYMN

Instagram – pcs_young_members_network

Snapchat – pcsyoungmembers