Throughout her professional career Mandy has demonstrated unremitting support for union membership and activism having been a member of the NUS, NAS/UWT, NUJ, UNISON & Unite through subsequent career transitions.
Mandy has been active in UNISON as a Publicity Officer and Steward balancing the intense pressures of working as a Youth Justice Caseworker and manager, with offering voice and support to colleagues in periods of immense change due to successive restructures.
Mandy has represented local members at UNISON’s Regional Council meetings, National & Regional Black Members Conferences, National Local Government Conference and the National Delegate Conference and was elected by the NBMC to represent the National Committee at the union’s Labour Link Forum and the Labour Party Annual Conference. She has also been instrumental in drawing members together to re-establish Black Members Self Organised Groups and raised collective awareness on issues like UNISON’s consultation and subsequent deal on pensions, strengthening union organisation, the adverse impact of austerity cuts on young people, women and black workers and how pay freezes have fuelled the growth in food banks nationally. She has further highlighted the national discrepancies between the disproportionate numbers of black workers being made redundant in relation to the numbers represented in workforces as a whole.
In one borough black workers were cited as constituting 31% of the workforce yet staggeringly made up 63% of the redundancies. She has spear headed calls for robust equalities impact assessments to be undertaken regionally and nationally.
These are sentiments she has echoed across the union’s principal forums and supported from conference platforms to expedite calls for the government to address the on-going devastating impact of austerity cuts on workers and their families.
Through her direct Labour Link Forum liaison with National Officers and UNISON General Secretary Dave Prentis, Mandy tasked representatives like Andy Burnham the then MP & Shadow Health Secretary, and now Manchester Mayor, to be true to his repeated promise to repeal the Health and Social Care Bill. Mandy continues to strengthen Party and Union unity by putting the party back in touch with grassroots union members, ensuring that any austerity cut fallout shouldn’t be amongst ourselves but instead firmly target Tories for their misguided steering of the economy.
