SERVICES: Workers should build on the success of the campaign to save railway ticket offices by winning public support resisting attacks on services as rail union RMT did, the conference heard. 

A motion from West Yorkshire County Association of Trade Union Councils said public support had also helped win public-sector pay disputes.

The regional TUC will develop a “model response” to use media to win public support on issues affecting them.

EDUCATION: A teacher has warned of a growing number of pupils attending school undernourished and poorly clothed.

Laura Fisher, of teaching union NASUWT, told the annual meeting of Yorkshire and Humber region of the TUC in Leeds on Saturday that she packs her bags with extra pens and cereal bars for pupils.

Speakers also told how they included women’s sanitary equipment and underwear for young people among the materials they took to school.

LEGAL: The government will fail in its attempts to reintroduce fees imposed on workers seeking justice through employment tribunals, Tony Pearson of public-sector union Unison told the conference. 

The fees were declared unlawful by the Supreme Court in 2017 but the government is attempting to reintroduce them. 

Unions are to mount new legal challenges against the legislation.

MEDIA: Regional journalism is under threat by job cuts in newspapers and at the BBC, the NUJ’s Richard Edwards told the conference.

He said: “It has been absolutely appalling at the BBC and the cuts are affecting audiences.”

But he said a wave of new young journalists were becoming activists after their first experience of strike action.