May Day recruitment drive for CSP Associate activists

CSP Associate members make incredible activists. We have Associate members in the highest activist positions, like Steph Heasley, CSP regional steward for Northern Ireland. Regional stewards are our top lay member positions, responsible for networking our reps and representing the CSP’s trade union arm at the highest level. 

Associate members are just over two per cent of the CSP membership. The proportion of CSP Associate members that are activists is just over 2.5%. 

We need YOU, Associate activists! 

The importance of May Day for all workers

1 May is celebrated as a national or public holiday around the globe. The date originated in the 19th century around the time trade unions worked towards their famous wins – the eight-hour working day, and later, the weekend. What better day than 1 May to kick off a new campaign to recruit for CSP activists? 

This year, May Day was particularly poignant as we celebrated past and present solidarity and victories but also remembered thousands of workers, including over 230 NHS staff, who died over the past year as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

What is CSP's new campaign?

On May Day 2021, CSP launched a new recruitment campaign for workplace stewards and safety reps.

The work CSP local reps do with and for thousands of members each year, is truly amazing

With CSP membership numbers at an all-time high, the need to recruit workplace stewards and safety reps has increased.

The geography of the physio workforce has changed significantly in recent years with workplaces and employers increasingly fragmented. CSP members now work in approximately 400 different employers in just over 3,000 locations. So it is difficult for some reps to cover multiple sites, or across a large geographic location.

This is your opportunity to change that, to build a strong physiotherapy presence in your employer.

Workplaces are safer, provide better care and are more inclusive and diverse when staff are engaged in local decisions and feel supported to speak up when things are not right. Stewards and safety reps trained and supported by the CSP ensure this happens.

By stepping forward as a workplace rep you will help maintain a strong professional and trade union identity, deliver a better place to work for your colleagues and promote physiotherapy within your employer.

Why you should sign up: 

• CSP workplace reps gain skills, experience and networks which benefit members and their careers in physiotherapy 
• workplace reps make workplaces healthier and more productive
• safety reps reduce the serious injury rate of staff by 50%
• we need more Associate members as activists to represent this important section of our membership and also to make sure that Associate member experience is elevated within the CSP 

To mark this May Day campaign do something for yourself and to help your colleagues. Become part of the solution - sign up to be a CSP workplace rep!

• email us on jointheteam@csp.org.uk
• find out more 
• CSP members can download rep recruitment posters (from the Union tab in ‘choose your leaflets).