StrongerUnions-
Privatisation of the post office makes no sense at all – private companies will no doubt skim off the profitable parts (like city to city mail and bulk mail), and the Royal Mail will be left to struggle with those bits that will never make money – support the CWU’s campaign!
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You know what its like – you drive your company to into the ground, make a loss of £28bn, ask the tax-payers to bail you out to the tune of £20bn, and all you get in return is a £693k a year pension from the age of 50…
There has been much outrage (and on-line action) about ‘Fred the Shred’s’ pension, and the fact that bank bosses seem to think failure should be rewarded with nice fat bonuses, but its important to remember that not all ‘bankers’ are, well, ‘bankers‘.
At yesterday’s TUC General Council meeting Ged Nichols of HBOS union Accord drew a clear distinction between ‘bankers’ and ‘bankworkers’ – many of whom work part-time and who draw down an average salary of £17,000 a year. For hundreds of thousands of these workers, ‘bonuses’ of £1000 or £2000 are actually a fundamental part of their pretty modest incomes, which is why unions like Accord and UNITE are doing their best to ensure that their members don’t get left to pick up the bill for the incompetence of those that managed them. Government needs to do more to play its part too – by actively using its (growing) shareholdings in the key high street banks to sort the ‘bankers’ from the ‘bank-workers’ – which is why its good see the Chancellor sticking his two penn’orth worth in.
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Amnesty International is one of the best loved organisations in Britain, regardless of whether you grew up with the Secret Policeman’s Balls (which in the late 1970s were the adult equivalent of early 1970s playground recitations of Monty Python sketches – only with the original cast on the stage leading the chorus!) Everyone knows they help people who need help most – especially the political prisoners for whom they were founded. Today (25 February), Amnesty and the TUC signed a formal agreement to work together. The TUC promised, among other things, to take part in 25 Amnesty urgent actions every year, and increase the number of union affiliations by 10% a year. And Amnesty, whose slogan is “Protect the human”, will encourage its members to join unions so their rights can be better protected at work. So while we work together to support union rights abroad, Amnesty will be working with us to organise at home.
The memorandum of understanding was launched by TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber and Amnesty International UK’s Chief Executive Kate Allen in front of TUC and Amnesty staff and members of the TUC General Council. The memorandum is here, Brendan Barber’s speech is here, Kate Allen’s is here and our joint press release is here.
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At the weekend i attended the first ever festival of learning and organising. The festival was a celebration of the achievements of the learning agenda as a major factor in the organisation of the justice for cleaner’s campaign (J4C). There were over 70 activists from the campaign which had organised, educated and won the living wage for over 5000 migrant cleaners in London. There were cleaners in attendance from a wide range of nationalities, from Nigeria, Ghana, Poland and Latin America.
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I saw the headline “Nestlé Hong Kong: Strike action wins dramatic step-down from management” on the IUF website today and thought I would look a little deeper. It seems that the Hong Kong Nestlé workers took strike action at 6.30 am last Saturday morning to force the reinstatement of their suspended union president. Within five hours management had agreed to meet the union and, faced with strong united action, withdrew the suspension of union president Chan Pong Yin and another worker suspended at the same time.
All this happened just two weeks after the IUF-affiliated Hong Kong Nestle Workers Union called off industrial action as a sign of good will and to pave the way for negotiations on granting permanent employment to temporary workers and establishing formal union recognition. The company launched an aggressive assault on the union by suspending the union president, Chan Pong Yin, indefinitely. In doing so the message from management was clear: Nestle wanted to return to the 17-hour workdays, wage increases of one percent in 12 years, and a system of insecurity maintained by having a third of the workforce on revolving casual contracts.
The famous Nestlé brands are increasingly made in the obscure factories of third-party contractors, raising questions about food safety and quality as well as the working conditions of the new generation of workers who produce, package, warehouse, transport and distribute Nestlé products but are told they don’t work for Nestlé. Nestlé workers around the world are under attack from an abusive system of outsourcing, casualization, “temporary” hiring and “co-packing” which is steadily eliminating the use of permanent employment contracts.
For background on the campaign for union recognition at Nestlé Hong Kong click here http://www.iuf.org/cgi-bin/dbman/db.cgi?db=default&uid=default&ID=5721&view_records=1&en=1 and for further information about Nestlé’s employment practices go to the IUF’s NestleWatch website by clicking here http://www.iuf.org/cms/ .
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The Irish Times reports that 100,000 people have gathered in Dublin today at a demonstration organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) to protest at the Government’s handling of the recession. Almost alone among EU Governments, Fianna Fail have opted to make cuts in spending – especially public sector pensions, and unions are up in arms (sorry – have got to their feet and marched!) The ICTU ten-point plan for action is a good example of the practical solutions that unions are putting forward – demonstrating that Obama is right to say that unions are part of the solution, not part of the problem.
British trade unionists will get the chance to follow suit on Saturday 28 March when the TUC and others are calling on us all to Put People First: March for Jobs, Justice and Climate.
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The North West TUC has launched a campaign for agency workers to be treated fairly.
The campaign wants to see agency workers receive fair pay and conditions. Many are paid far less than permanent staff for exactly the same work. Terms and conditions can also be far inferior.
Both sides of industry, the Government and Europe agree that agency workers should get equal treatment, after 12 weeks employment. Legislation has been promised.
But agency workers have waited long enough for fair treatment. That’s why we are calling on employers to introduce equal treatment now.
It’s only fair.
Paul Nowak
Owen Tudor
Anna
Tom Mellish
Carl Roper
