RECRUITING WOMEN SAFETY REPRESENTATIVES

Our ref: HSR/4/1

Head Office Circular: NP/128/23

28^th July 2023

To: The Secretary

All branches

Regional Councils

RMT young members committee

 

Dear Colleague,

 

RECRUITING WOMEN SAFETY REPRESENTATIVES

 

Your Health and Safety advisory committee are working on a campaign aimed at recruiting more women safety reps, the reason being that only 9% of RMT members are women, whereas women form 17% of RMT membership. 

 

In connection with this your National Executive Committee (NEC) was convened on 27^th July 2023, to consider a report from its Health and Safety sub-committee from when it met to consider an analysis from the Lead Officer of the situation as regards RMT women and health and safety representation. 

 

Your National Executive Committee (NEC), at its meeting, noted and adopted the following report from its Health and Safety sub-committee:

 

We note the report from the Lead Officer as regards the number of RMT women safety reps, which shows that RMT have a total of 1781 safety reps, and yet only164 are women (9% of RMT safety reps), whereas women form 17% of RMT membership.  We also note that in comparison 345 women are RMT IR reps (12% of total IR reps).

 

We recognise that the success of this project is important to the future ability of RMT to be more representative of its membership in relation to women RMT safety reps.  

            

To address this issue, we instruct the General Secretary to develop a strategy/in conjunction with the RMT women’s committee, which includes the following:

 

• to survey all women members to find out the barriers to them becoming safety reps

-       to map RMT membership to find out where women members are employed and to find out where are there are safety rep vacancies

-       to set up a system of mentors, so that women members who volunteer as safety reps can be given the assurance that they will be supported

-       to invite Shelly Asquith, TUC Health and Safety Policy Officer, to take part in the campaign

-       to work on poster/email/video campaign for attention of women members.

 

The General Secretary to commit the necessary time and resources to enable the success of this strategy. 

 

The General Secretary is further instructed to provide the NEC with regular progress reports on this project.  Branches, Regional Councils RMT Women’s Committee to be advised and the Lead Officers report to be shared with them. 

 

I am acting in accordance with these instructions. Please bring the contents of this circular to the attention of relevant members. 

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

Michael Lynch, 

General Secretary