Meet our equality partner: Community

“We are pleased to partner with the Bevan Foundation – an organisation that is also looking at practical and lasting solutions to improve people’s lives.”

About Community

Community is the modern union that’s been helping working people in Wales for generations. Historically, they’ve been the voice of steelworkers in Wales, but for the past 20 years they’ve been reaching out to other workers across the private and voluntary sector in Wales and now represent thousands across all industries and sectors.

Community is proud of its diversity, equality and inclusiveness and welcomes anyone as a member, regardless of their age, industry, employment type or life stage.

How Community is working towards equality

Community offers a range of services to support the growing number of self-employed people in the economy and also develops responses to the challenges springing up as a result of automation and technology change to make sure everyone can understand and access them. Their services include:

Advice and representation: Community run an advice line to answer questions about anything from pensions, workplace training and rights to consumer law, neighbour disputes and housing matters. They also provide individual and collective representation to secure fair treatment, fair pay and fair pensions for their members.

Learning and training: Like the Bevan Foundation, Community recognise that learning is a fundamental human right and that providing equal opportunities to access it is key to staying safe and succeeding in the changing world of work. Members who live or work in Wales have access to the Community Welsh Union Learning Fund (WULF) project which is designed to increase employability skills within the Community’s branches, supporting professional and personal development.

Credit Union: Community works with Capital Credit Union to offer Community members access to various banking services, such as savings accounts, loans and mortgages. Credit Unions support people regardless of financial background, to support greater equality.

Legal services: Community’s members have access to expert employment lawyers, free of charge, to manage the stress, confusion and financial burden of legal complications, whether it’s personal injury, will writing or another situation. Their families are also covered.

In addition, they offer financial and family support, LifeChange benefits and a Total Assist Community platform which includes discounts and free motor cover.

Hot topics 

Community campaign politically for issues that affect their members. Their current campaigns include:

Stop the Trump tariffs: Donald Trump’s proposed steel import tariffs could have a devastating impact on UK jobs. Community’s General Secretary, Roy Rickhuss has led calls for International Trade Secretary, Liam Fox to use all leverage necessary to ensure the UK is exempt from any such tariffs and protect the jobs of British steelworkers.

Mental health priority campaign: Following an overwhelming vote by delegates at Community’s Torquay 2017 conferece, Community have made mental health in the workplace the focus of a priority campaign throughout the union in the absence of government action.

Safer Justice Sector: In the aim to create a safer justice sector, Community has launched a new campaign to tackle the deterioration of standards and safety reported by members working in justice and custodial services across the UK.

Save our Steel: Without a vibrant steel industry we will not have vibrant manufacturing and construction industries. Community is running a major national campaign, ‘Save our Steel’, that brings together union members, community groups & local businesses from across the country.

To find out more about Community, please visit their website or follow them on Twitter @CommunityUnion


The Bevan Foundation is delighted to be working in partnership with Community towards greater equality in Wales.

We’ll be hosting a joint event in summer 2019. Keep an eye out news on this and our other Equality-themed activities.

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