StrongerUnions-
What exactly has changed as a result of yesterday’s heavily spun public service pension announcement by the government? Our Pensions Justice campaign website examines the detail and finds the difference is hardly as great as Danny Alexander and David Cameron are making out.
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LabourList kick off the new “Unions” section of their swankily redesigned site with this piece from John Healy MP, on Aidan Burley’s Trade Union Officials (Public Funding) adjournment debate in the Commons, seeking to remove paid facility time for union reps. Healy argues the new Tory intake especially have an inbuilt hostility to trade unionism, born partly of a lack of knowledge of what unions actually do, and partly through work done by right wing outliers like the TPA to frame the debate. Facility time needs to be defended, as it enables unions’ grounding in the workplace. Attempts to remove it are a tactical move to undermine unions’ legitimacy and support.
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One of Carl’s recent posts on union facility time earned us a response on Conservative Home, from Tory MP for Witham, Priti Patel. He’s written this piece for Left Foot Forward, addressing the points she made.
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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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Brendan Barber spoke at a press conference today, to give details of public service unions’ decisions on action to protect public service pensions, after the conclusion of Congress 2011. Unions held an urgent meeting immediately following Congress, to discuss the recent round of negotiations with the government and consider the next steps to defend decent pensions for millions of public services workers as part of the campaign for decent pensions for all.
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As the government’s controversial Health and Social Care Bill receives its third reading in the House of Commons, we’re standing vigil to show Parliamentarians the level of concern around the country about the threats to our National Health Service.
Please join the vigil online by uploading a photograph of yourself to this site. We’ll be combining the pictures into a powerful mosaic image, to use in lobbying Parliament. It only takes a minute from each of us, but will build into something much bigger.
And thanks to Le Emu Tavern for the use of the song “All Things Being Equal” in this video!
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You know that placard you spent literally multiple minutes doing the night before March For The Alternative? You know, the placard with all that Pritt stick and gel pen? Funny wasn’t it?
Although after the march you callously discarded your half-drunken attempt at a uber-sophisticated political statement (e.g. Calling George Osborne an idiot), the Turner Gallery might want it.
500,000 of us marched through London in protest against government spending cuts – if you haven’t heard, the march went really well. The Save Our Placards team from Goldsmiths were asking people to donate their one-march stand placards to a good cause.
After sieving through a whole load of just terrible placards (sorry, your uber-sophisticated political statement was lost on them), they’ve settled on 12 they liked enough to send to the Turner Contemporary.
The problem is they didn’t get everyone’s email address…Sorry! They still need to track down 6 of those 12 creative placard designers ASAP. Are you one of them?
Please tweet, like and send carrier pigeons about the Save Our Placards blog and facebook group.
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With a heightened interest in Rupert Murdoch and his empire, it’s handy the TUC are currently hosting a new exhibition: ‘News International Wapping – 25 Years on’ – The strike that made the modern media.
The Wapping dispute marked the beginning of the end of Fleet Street, it was a turning point for the British press and for the already controversial Rupert Murdoch.
Murdoch had been making crippling demands on his papers’ print workers, including the right for management to change T&Cs whenever and however they wanted, the end of closed shops, and a ban on all industrial action. A strike began on 24th January 1986, and Murdoch switched production to a new facility in Wapping, undermining the unionised workers.
The exhibition takes you through it all, offering historical context to the current turbulent fortunes of Murdoch’s media empire. The origins of Fleet Street and Murdoch’s rise, through the start of the strike, the boycotts and the police riots, on to where the unions are today. It finishes with the question; is Murdoch really unstoppable?
The exhibition is produced by the Marx Memorial Library. It’s free to view and can been seen in the foyer of Congress House (Great Russell Street, London) until August 12th.
