GMB Congress 25
A summary & semi-personal view
I attended GMB’s Congress held in Brighton in June 2025 as a delegate from my branch and region. I have reported in detail on my personal blog, and in summary on the branch web site, and the list of articles can be found there, tagged gmb25 . This article is a summary/index of what I saw and said.
I have written about the debates on our branch motions on Privacy, Immigration and Higher Education. I withdrew our motion on international trade as the CEC special report on International Solidarity incorporated what we asked for, which was to add the Pan-European Mediterranean agreement to the union’s demands within the “reset”. Both the immigration motions were carried, and I am proud of the role I and our branch have played in developing a decent and humane immigration policy for the GMB.
I report and comment on speeches by Gary Smith, who spoke of stability and priorities, and Rachel Reeves, who spoke of the success and plans of the Labour Government and was strongly questioned on disability benefit cuts. I also report on the presidential election, won by the incumbent, Barbare Plant, the debates on A.I. & Infrastructure, which had clearly both been thought hard about, and of course the rules debate.
My final article reflects on some thoughts provoked by the debates on privacy and the GDPR’s freedom from profiling as a protection against workplace surveillance and the use of AI to manage workforces. I also report on the French supervisory authority’s fining of Amazon for breaches of the GDPR through workplace surveillance software.
It was as ever, a very collegiate and friendly experience.
This article and the blog thread is probaly best read with [some of], the following documents, the final agenda document, GMB’s Congress page which contains all the documents and the video index is available as a playlist or as individual videos at the GMB’s youtube channel.
Originally published at https://www.gmblcgx58.org.uk, this has been marginally edited from that version.
