Becky WrightYou may have picked up Carl’s original posting a month or so ago on trade union membership. But, in case you haven’t, here’s our first Organising Academy webinar on those figures and what they mean for unions. Be great to hear your thoughts.
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The fire engines on display in Dundee before their long trip to Nablus. Photo FBU
FBU Scotland are donating two fire engines (what firefighters call ‘appliances’) and a load of equipment to the municipality of Nablus on the West Bank as a gesture of solidarity with Palestinian firefighters: a great idea which echoes similar donations to Iraqi and other firefighters over the years.
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Zoe Lanara of the GSEE (the Greek TUC) gives her side of the Greek strikes story on Touchstone blog.
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Unite’s Rick Coyle tells us the real story behind the Daily Mail’s “Foreign workers at Waterstone’s made to speak English claim ‘human rights abuse’” story, and calls on trades unionists to help expose the programme of orchestrated lies and half-truths around union issues in parts of the media.
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The Robin Hood Tax campaign have come up with yet another corker of a video to promote the campaign, and this time, we want you to be in it. You can add in your name and photo and share it with everyone you know. It’s the start of an autumn of really serious campaigning that could see the G20 and the EU signed up and Governments delivering on their commitments to a Financial Transaction Tax.
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An interesting footnote to the global union submission to the autumn meetings of the International Financial Institutions (the IMF and the World Bank) might be of interest to trade unionists constantly being told that they need to give up their hard won employment rights to be competitive in global labour markets. Basically, the IMF can’t make up their mind who’s got the toughest labour laws at the moment.
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The EU Finance Ministers’ meeting this weekend in Wroclaw, Poland, was not going anywhere anyway – Governments across Europe have only one response to the crisis, which is to pass the cost on to ordinary working people. But it still broke up early because they didn’t want their ruminations disturbed by a 20% larger than expected European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) demonstration.
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An email from HR Review Update landed in my inbox. ‘Majority of private sector employees oppose public sector strikes’ read the story. But on closer inspection, it made for slightly more interesting reading than the usual line trotted out by various right wing commentators and Tory ministers.
The poll was conducted by recruitment consultants, Badenoch & Clark, of 1,000 private sector ‘office workers’. It found that around 55% opposed, with only 14% ‘strongly opposing’ the strikes. This figure increased for men over the age of 55 but younger workers and women seemed more sympathetic.
Owen Tudor
StrongerUnions
Matt Dykes
