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.
Web links
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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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A significant success for UNITE's organising efforts in the food processing sector
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Sad news that Tim Costello – who was at the forefront of thinking about how trade unions can organise globally – has passed away over the Christmas break.
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Trade unions are the most effective tool for ensuring good health and safety at work. Put simply unionised workplaces are safer workplaces.
That is one of the main reasons that people join and stay in a union. When asked, 70% of new trade union
members considered health and safety a ‘very important’ union issue – more even than for payThere is a wealth of evidence for the union effect on safety, that has been produced over the past 10 years or so, both in the UK and abroad. In 1995 a group of researchers analysed the relationship between worker representation and industrial injuries in British manufacturing. It found that those employers who had trade union health and safety committees had half the injury rate of those employers who managed safety without unions, or had some other process to involve staff.
Source: The Union Effect. August 2004. Trades Union Congress
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Union Learning Reps increase the impact of training.
73% of Union Learning Reps and one-half of managers reported that ULRs have had a positive impact on either employer-funded or non-employer-funded training. Three out of the five managers stated that ULRs help to address employee skills gaps.
Both ULRs and managers report that ULRs are more likely to have had a positive influence in increasing employee participation in training where ULRs are active, where managers value their activities, and where managers negotiate with union representatives when deciding training matters.
Source: The impact of the union learning representative: A survey of ULRs and their employers. Bacon N, Hoque K. Nottingham University Business School. April 2009
