Owen TudorVancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympics are over, and attention is turning towards London 2012. The Playfair 2012 campaign, backed by the TUC, Labour Behind the Label and many others, has launched a website and a first campaign action, aimed at multinationals Adidas, Nike and Pentland (makers of speedo), urging these three major suppliers of sporting goods to commit to workers’ rights in their supply chains. You can see how they’re doing – gold medal, silver, bronze or wooden spoon – on the campaign website, and make your voice heard to make life better for workers in developing countries.
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Are you ready for Work Your Proper Hours Day this Friday (26 Feb)? It’s the day when, according to official statistics, the average person who does unpaid overtime stops working for free, and starts to earn for themselves.
We reckon that’s a day to celebrate, so we’re suggesting everyone makes a real effort to work only their proper contracted hours, even if it’s just for one day a year, and see what a difference it can make. Take a real lunch-break, not just a sandwich at your desk, and leave on time to enjoy your own time on Friday evening.
The official website is at www.workyourproperhoursday.com
Looking at the latest figures, employees in the UK who do unpaid overtime do an average of seven hours twelve minutes extra work a week, and would take home an extra £5,402 a year if they were paid the average wage for those unpaid hours. Or to put it another way, they did a whopping £27.4 billion worth of unpaid overtime last year.
The TUC’s Brendan Barber said: ‘Most employers are understandably focused on fighting their way through the recession. But they shouldn’t overlook working cultures such as pointless presenteeism – keeping people at their desks for no good reason. Regular over-long hours cause stress and damage people’s health and productivity – they’re bad for staff and bad for business too.’
Visit the website now to find out more, download posters, send your friends e-cards, and use our long hours advice quiz. And make sure to enjoy your own free time on Friday!
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Past and present TUC Organising Academy Trainee Organisers will recognise the above slogan from their training – it’s a template we try and get organisers to use so that they get the most from conversations with members and workers. Its a bit corny, but it does the trick in getting over the point that speaking to people shouldn’t be seen merely as an opportunity to TELL them what you think they need to know, but a chance to LISTEN to them so that you LEARN something about them and in particular their cares, concerns, hopes, fears and aspirations. Once you’ve done this you may be able to more effectively convince them that joining the union and getting involved would something that it would be in their interests to do.
Of course, doing one to one communication better and getting more out of it in terms of informing approaches to campaigns etc. has been an established element of effective organising for years but it’s heartening to know that the penny is dropping amongst some of today’s key political ‘thinkers’. The Guardian last Saturday (Feb 20th) reported on how James Purnell was stepping down as an MP at the election to become a Community Organiser with London Citizens. Apparently this will involve Purnell attending a course on which according to London Citizens he’ll learn how to “do one-to-ones – that means sitting with people and finding out what they need, not telling them…” Purnell is apparently also a fan of Saul Alinsky who of course wrote the Organiser’s bible ‘Rules for Radicals’.
Also featured in last Saturday’s Guardian was a piece on how the main lesson picked up by Douglas Alexander, the Labour party’s election co-coordinator, from the Obama campaign was the value of “peer-to-peer” communication. Alexander was told by David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager that “what people on the ground said to one another was just as important, if not more important, than what Obama said himself. We could not put a price on it, regular people briefing Obama’s message to their neighbours, serving as our ambassadors, block by block throughout the battleground states.”
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Some really engaging discussions today at the GFTU’s seminar on organising young workers.
Met some great union reps and officers, some of them from the bakers’ union BFAWU who are organising the often low paid, part time and largely female workforce at Gregg’s.
Two young women in particular from Gregg’s described the problems facing organising in that sector but also demonstrated that results can be achieved when its members themselves taking the lead in recruiting and organising and picking the issues to campaign on.
It was also interesting talking to representatives from the community and youth workers section of Unite. Their point was that there’s plenty to be learned from youth work professionals on engaging young people. There’s years of accumulated experience there. Expertise that we haven’t been tapping into enough in the past.
I think some further work with our youth worker colleagues is a must.
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Its no secret that young people are having a bad time of it in the labour market right now.
Youth unemployment stands at record levels, demand for apprenticeships and places in higher education is outstripping supply and too many young workers find themselves in low paid, low skilled, vulnerable jobs in the sharp end of our service industries.
As a response to this trade unions in the UK are uniting around the TUC’s Next Generation Campaign, making the case for a better deal for young people but also showing what role we can play in supporting, organising and developing young people at work and the wider community.
Unions are signing their names up to the Next Generation Accord which sets out our plans for tackling unemployment and vulnerable work among young people.
Contact mdykes@tuc.org.uk for more information.
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Here’s a video of some hardy Robin Hood Tax campaign merry men and women braving the 4am chill and nocturnal traffic wardens to beam a message ten metres high onto the side of Bank of England.
If you haven’t yet added your voice to the campaign, go do so now at the Robin Hood Tax website, where you can sign up and vote your support for the tax proposal.
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The Robin Hood Tax campaign launches today, supported by the TUC and dozens of other charities, faith groups and community organisations. The campaign is calling on the leaders of the UK’s political parties to support a global tax on the banks to help repair the human damage caused by the global economic crisis, protect public services at home, fight poverty abroad and help foot the bill for climate change.
Visit the Robin Hood Tax site now, and join the campaign!
John Wood
Carl Roper
Matt Dykes
