Union news

Anna Burton
BURN: A warning from Detroit

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The European premiere of a new film about Detroit firefighters is being sponsored by the UK Fire Brigades Union. BURN captures a year in the lives of Detroit firefighters who are charged with the thankless task of saving a city that many have written off as dead.

Since 1950’s a vanishing industry has cut Detroit’s population in half from 1.8 million, leaving behind 80,000 abandoned structures, or kindling, as the firefighters call it. The result is a dying city with one of the highest arson rates in the world. BURN is about the men and women who risk their lives to battle those fires. Their equipment isn’t up to the job, and their pay is disgracefully low – a starting salary of $30,000 and they haven’t seen a raise in 10 years.

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Posted on April 30th, 2013 by Anna Burton filed under: Union news
Anna Burton
First Global Labor Film Festival Launches on May Day

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One of the most exciting things about my involvement with the London Labour Film Festival has been the chance to see first hand the growth of an international movement for labour film festivals. I’ve now been to two conferences of festival organisers in Washington DC and each time, I’ve come back with a new major initiative to work on.

At our last film festival organisers conference, we conceived of a Global Labor Film Festival, which we felt would provide an opportunity to showcase the growing worldwide scope of more than two dozen film festivals focused on films about work, workers and their issues.

This is now ready to go and the first-ever Global Labor Film Festival kicks off on May Day, as screenings from the U.S., Australia, UK and Norway launch more than a dozen screenings of labor films around the world.

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Posted on April 23rd, 2013 by Anna Burton filed under: Union news
Carl Roper
Enjoy the silence (of the Taxpayers Alliance)

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I had a short article published yesterday over at Union News reflecting on the deafening silence from the so-called Taxpayers Alliance in relation to the use of public funds for Baroness Thatcher’s funeral.

The article wasn’t a comment on the appropriateness of the State paying for the send off of a former Prime Minister, but an observation that a group that quite regularly issues apoplectic press releases drawing attention to whatever it regards as an inappropriate use of ‘taxpayers’ money (almost everything in case you’re wondering) appeared to have nothing to say about how the costs of the late Lady Thatcher’s funeral were being met.

So a hat tip is due therefore to journalist Ally Fogg who yesterday produced the following list of things the TPA has, and hasn’t, commented on since April 1st this year. It makes the point about the farce that is the TPA’s supposed political independence much more powerfully than my article could ever have hoped to. Let’s just hope the media, and the BBC in particular, are paying attention.

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Posted on April 17th, 2013 by Carl Roper filed under: Union news
Carl Roper
Unions: Still here and needed more than ever

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Union members march in Cheltenham in 1989 in protest at the union ban for workers at GCHQ.

Reading the tributes to the late Baroness Thatcher, it doesn’t take long to get to what her supporters clearly regard as one of her main achievements; standing up to and ‘defeating’ the trades unions.

If you were unbiased and went purely on the statistics you might agree that’s exactly what she did. Union membership in 1979 stood at around 12 million and more than half of the workforce was in a union. Today, there are half the number of unions members that there were when Mrs Thatcher moved into Number 10, and union density is now around 26%.

But if you took a broader view and asked if she succeeded in creating a country where unions no long existed or were even needed then you might come to a different conclusion.

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Posted on April 10th, 2013 by Carl Roper filed under: Union news
Carl Roper
Support the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign

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A policeman hits out at a protestor at Orgreave in 1984. Photo John Harris, via TUC Library Collections

The TUC is supporting an E-Petition, set up by The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, which is seeking truth and justice for all miners victimised by the police at the Orgreave Coking Plant, South Yorkshire, on June 18th 1984.

The petition says that Orgreave is part of a pattern of cover ups by the police from many different forces, which are now being exposed. A similar petition formed part of the campaign which led to the truth about Hillsborough finally being revealed last year.

The Orgreave petition calls for a full public inquiry into the policing and subsequent statements recorded by the police at the time, to be held as soon as possible.

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Posted on April 4th, 2013 by Carl Roper filed under: Union news
Carl Roper
TUC Young Workers call for jobs, fair pay and a future that works

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Jane Warburton (PCS) former Vice Chair of the Young Members Forum speaks at the Conference

Over 100 young trade unionists came together in London at the weekend for the annual TUC Young Members Conference.

In a week in which it was announced that youth unemployment had increased and is again nearing 1 million, the conference was dominated by the impact of the government’s austerity polices on young people. In addition to youth unemployment, motions on fair pay for young workers, housing, pensions and access to quality work experience were also debated.

As well as discussing motions submitted by TUC unions, delegates at the conference also attended workshops on effective local campaigning, working with Student Unions and Credit Unions.

Delegates also heard about plans to put the TUC Young Members Forum on a campaign footing and also make the way it operates the work it does more inclusive. Future meetings of the Young Workers Forum (as it will be called after ratification by the TUC General Council) will be held in TUC regions and will be open to all young workers, regardless of whether they are in a union.

You can read about the Young Members Conference as it was tweeted here. And see a great report from the conference by UnionNews here

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Posted on March 27th, 2013 by Carl Roper filed under: Union news
Owen Tudor
Great achievements on film: Spirit of ’45 & Made in Dagenham

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This weekend, I watched two films, one which I should have seen already, the other not yet on general release. Made in Dagenham, the first, was a story I knew vaguely, and to be honest, more from what I’d heard since the film came out than from when the actual events happened (honest, I was seven, and on the other side of London!) The other was Ken Loach’s new film, Spirit of ’45, which will be launched next weekend, and which deals with the legacy of the Attlee government.

In many ways they are very different films – one fictionalised, the other documentary – one full of people familiar as actors, the other with quite a few activists I know personally – and one made by the BBC, the other Channel 4! But they both describe enormous steps forward, whether towards equal pay for the women sewing machinists at Ford’s (actually only achieved in 1984 as a result of an ECJ judgment), and the other the 1945 Labour Government.

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Posted on March 11th, 2013 by Owen Tudor filed under: Union news