Matt Dykes's Archive

Matt Dykes

I’m a Policy Officer at the TUC, covering issues around transport, public service reform and civil society. I’m responsible for the TUC’s work on public service reform and have led the work on the TUC’s response to the Open Public Services white paper, as well as authoring the TUC’s report Civil Society and Public Services: Collaboration not Competition. I’m particularly interested in the relationship between public services and civil society, social enterprises, mutuals and co-operatives.

I’ve been at the TUC for 8 years and was formerly policy officer for our London region and national youth officer. I have previously worked for the Mayor of London as well as several years in the civil service. I’ve been an active rep for both PCS and UNISON, and was also a founder member of Justice for Colombia.

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http://www.strongerunions.org

Matt Dykes
Unions take action over soaring rail fares

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Rail union leaders take their message to commuters and the media at London’s Euston Station this morning.

Rail fares are continuing to outstrip inflation and wages, even in times of recession. Our research has shown that from January 2008, rail fares have increased over 26%, three times faster than average wages.

Now they’re set to rise again, with a 3.9% increase in January, the tenth straight year of inflation-busting rail fare rises. This, being an average figure, masks the more eye watering hikes you’ll see on some fares, including up to 6.5% on some season tickets.

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Posted on December 11th, 2012 by Matt Dykes filed under: Union campaigns
Matt Dykes
Action for Rail: Joined up unions in action

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Action For Rail coalition campaigners outside Waterloo station.

These are pivotal times for the UK’s railways, for those who use rail services and those who work in the industry. Multiple franchises are up for grabs in the next three years and the government and train operators are looking at ways to slash £3.5bn costs from the industry.

The government is unsurprisingly backing the train companies, giving longer franchises with more commercial freedom to hike up fares, cut less profitable services, close ticket offices and shed thousands of staff from train and stations. At the same time, Network Rail is being broken up and possibly sold off or placed under the management of train operators through regional business alliances. Thousands of safety critical maintenance, renewals and signal staff face the chop.

The scale of these challenges requires a bold response from those representing rail workers and rail passengers.

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Posted on August 14th, 2012 by Matt Dykes filed under: Union news
Matt Dykes
Do private sector workers support public sector strikes?

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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.

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Posted on September 19th, 2011 by Matt Dykes filed under: Union campaigns
Matt Dykes
How unions help … two great cases in this week’s news

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If confronted by some cliched ridden dinosaur telling you that unions have no place in the modern world of work and achieve nothing, helpfully point them in the way of two news stories that broke this week.

On Monday, we learned about the RMT’s deal with Network Rail protecting their members from compulsory redundancies while delivering a very satisfactory pay rise. All this in the face of a hostile employer, who let’s not forget attempted to use legal action to cow the union, and a transport industry threatened by cuts and job losses all round.

Then today, we learned that Unite had reached a deal with Jaguar Land Rover keeping car production going at three major UK plants, protecting thousands of jobs at the plants and JLR’s supply chains and, again, delivering a decent pay rise.

In their separate ways, both deals show the lasting strength and relevance of trade unions and the massive role they have to play not only in supporting working people but also boosting jobs and growth.

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Posted on October 15th, 2010 by Matt Dykes filed under: Union news
Matt Dykes
ITUC steps up the youth campaign

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As a second step of its youth campaign, the ITUC is relaunching its youth blog and is launching the campaign’s brochure.

The youth blog comes with a redesign, new functionalities such as Facebook and Twitter sharing as well as a special campaign section.

The brochure is a best practice guide on organising young people and is aimed at informing young people in trade unions about the wide range of work covered by trade unions at the international, regional and national level.

The brochure is available for download on the campaign section of the blog.

If you would like to receive printed copies for your union members, please contact me at [email protected]

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Posted on March 19th, 2010 by Matt Dykes filed under: Union campaigns
Matt Dykes
Joe the Dog

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Today the ITUC launched its youth campaign, with the release of this handy little video: Joe the Dog tries to change the world

Feel free to cut’n'paste to whatever social network sites you use.

Looking forward to getting the details of the campaign as the ITUC’s own youth officer, Phillipe Gousenberger, addresses the TUC Young Members Conference which takes place in Birmingham on 26th – 28th March.

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Posted on March 18th, 2010 by Matt Dykes filed under: Union campaigns
Matt Dykes
Sausage rolls brought to you by union organisers

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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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Posted on February 18th, 2010 by Matt Dykes filed under: Union organising