Role description: CLP TULO Officer

CLP TULO Officer

As TULO officer your role is to strengthen the link between the affiliated trade unions and the Party at a local level. Trade unions bring the collective voices of working people to the heart of our Party – and this role is an opportunity to build these relationships in your CLP.

This role is what you make of it – it is suited to someone who is passionate about the trade union link with great relationship building and networking skills.

Key Responsibilities and tasks

• Build strong links between the CLP and local trade unions, in order to give trade unionists an effective voice within the local Party.
• Create a network of trade unionists and be the first line of communication between the CLP and union contacts.
• Work to increase union affiliations to the local CLP, and to maximise attendance and involvement of those affiliated unions.
• Grow the joint campaigning capacity of the local Party and trade unions.
• Ensure dialogue between local trade union members, officials and Labour’s elected representatives.
• Liaise with the CLP Vice Chair Campaigns & Membership to organise joint events and campaigning.
• Encourage affiliated union membership amongst Party members
• Promote a greater understanding amongst Party members of the historic and unique link between the unions and Party

Activity

As TULO Officer you will have a unique opportunity to contribute to the activity of your CLP in a wide variety of different ways.

You will be charged with encouraging collaboration between the unions and the local party on campaigns. This might involve organising party members to support industrial action or mobilising union activists to help distribute leaflets or knock on doors at election time.

Similarly, you’ll be in a great position to nurture the union voice and involvement in your CLP’s other activity. You could do this by actively working to keep union issues on the agenda within the local party, by organising a union event for party members, by arranging for a Trade Union speaker to address your CLP or simply by encouraging greater engagement from the affiliated branches in CLP activity.

One way to make the most of your role might be to start by mapping the formal and informal connections that already exist between your local party and the affiliated unions. This is a worthwhile exercise because it helps you to easily identify where your time and efforts might be most productively spent. A useful guide on how to map union connections is included in the TULO guide on the Labour Unions website.