unite Life
BY RYAN FLETCHER
Never give up With Unite, Stuart Davis has hope
It’s hard to imagine thinking of others at your time of greatest pain – but that’s exactly what Stuart Davis does.
Stuart, a senior Unite rep at Bentley Motors in Crewe, had lost his wife Wendy to cancer just five weeks before taking his two children, Alex, 12, and Emma, 10, to the Tories Out march in central London (pictured above).
“We’ve been coming on marches since the kids were little and I felt like Wendy was with us. We had a nice day. Things have changed for us now. Our income’s halved with my wife passing and I’ve got to reduce my hours to accommodate childcare,” explained Stuart.
“We’re going to have to start watching the pennies now, but I know there are a lot of people going through this that will be a lot worse off than us. The Tories have just cut bereavement payments.
“If Wendy had died in April my children would have received the payments until they left full time education as a support. Now it’s just 18 months. It’s things like that we need to march for.”
Stuart said Labour’s resurgence has given him hope for the future. “Jeremy gives me hope and the Labour manifesto. I was also inspired by the maiden speeches of the new Labour MPs. There’s a general feeling of change politically. It feels like there’s a breath of fresh air.”
34 uniteWORKS Summer 2017
At Bentley too there are successes to cheer. Stuart joined Bentley and the union in 1986 when he was just shy of his sixteenth birthday. Shortly after that, Stuart recalls, Bentley’s reps began pushing for a 35 hour week.
In June, after more than two decades, the firm’s workers finally secured an agreement which from January 2019 will see their working week reduced from 37 hours to 35 hours with no loss of pay. Their wages also increased by 6.5 per cent as part of the ground breaking multi-year pay deal.
“You can’t put a price on more time at home with the family,” Stuart said.
But for Stuart, the shorter working week also represents something else – it is part of a much longer union history.
“It just goes to show that trade unions never give up. We’ve negotiated our own pay rises for a long time and over the years we’ve had excellent national and regional representation and now we’ve succeeded in ‘the drive for 35’,” explained Stuart.
“I grew up in Stoke and my family had trade union roots. There was still a big mining community following on from (the strike in) ’84, so I knew the importance of trade unions right from starting work. It was always a given for me and Wendy always supported me every step of the way with everything I’ve done with Unite. I was lucky to have someone like her behind me.”
Mark Thomas
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