Here’s a great video from the US Transport Workers Union, part of their campaign against worse terms and conditions at American Airlines and American Eagle, whose parent company has filed for bankruptcy. It contrasts the commitment that workers give to their job with the rewards they – and management – receive, emphasising a dignity of labour/respect at work agenda. TUC surveys over the years find that – although we all grumble about our jobs and our employers – most workers are proud of the work they do, and want their employer to demonstrate the same about them. So, does this video work? Is it the sort of thing that UK unions should be doing?

An opportune time to give this UNISON campaign video another airing. It may be tongue in cheek, but points to a deadly serious problem.

It’s particularly topical as the House of Lords are set to be discussing raising the Private Patient Income Cap next week – the part of the government’s controversial Health and Social Care Bill that will let hospitals make up to 49% of their income from private patients (typically it’s currently around 2%). This could see NHS patients pushed to the back of the queue for treatment in NHS facilities, and waiting lists growing and growing as more people take up private care in order to be seen more quickly. It’s an ideological blow aimed at some of the founding principles of our NHS.

The Lords are debating three amendments to the Bill that would address this threat – 218A, 220A and 220C. They’ve come close to defeating the government before on this Bill, and this could be a deciding moment if enough crossbenchers and Liberal Democrats are willing to back these three amendments.

Please take a moment to use our “Adopt a Peer” tool to send an email or letter to a member of the House of Lords, urging them to vote against raising the Private Patient Income Cap.

Take action: Write to a Peer now

The idea is to help inject a bit of solidarity with the UK’s hard pressed public service workers into the charts and the media, ahead of the day of action on pensions justice planned for 30 November.

The song was the brainchild of Jeff Chegwin, a music promoter whose many credits stretch from discovering Billy Bragg through to getting Simon Cowell his first hit boy band. From idea to iTunes in only 2 weeks, this has been a bit of a roller-coaster for the group, who have coped amazingly with their first experiences of using a professional recording studio, appearing in a video, and talking to the media.

The song is only one small part of a day which will see actions and events taking place right across the country (find your nearest here), by members of 23 unions taking industrial action and others offering support. Hopefully though, the awareness and morale raised by having a high profile song will benefit all of the action happening that day.

Public service workers are under a lot of strain – Job losses are happening at an even higher rate than in the private sector, and the cuts mean more people need to fall back on our public services – putting more strain on fewer staff. Workers are demoralised from seeing the needs of the people they care for threatened by the unrelenting attacks on the services they try to provide.

But to cap this, the government are also attacking public sector staff themselves – aiming to drastically cut their pensions, and make people work much longer and pay much more into the bargain. This will mean many low paid staff unable to afford to contribute to any pensions provision at all – a race to the bottom that will do nothing to help pensions under attack in the private sector too.

So please take a moment to help The Workers set the mood music in the run up to 30 November. You can download the song for around 99p (raising money for Age UK into the bargain), but once you’ve done that, please help to spread the word to all your friends and colleagues (some useful tools here). Or as The Workers might say:

“Come on people, get on the ball and work together…”

Today’s TUC rally and lobby of Parliament was very well attended. Thousands attended to hear speakers at Methodist Central Hall, and to lobby their MPs. Here’s a quick video of some of the day’s activity.

Their campaign, which made headlines prior to the introduction of the Equal Pay Act in 1970, included organising a three-week strike for 850 female workers and protesting outside Westminster.

The winner of the TUC 60 Second Ad Contest will receive tickets to the Premiere of the film and their winning ad will be shown at a special pre-release screening of the film.

www.tuc60seconds.org.uk

The mining companies are, predictably, claiming that these new taxes will ruin them… as employers always do, whatever the issue, however reasonable the case, however ludicrous their whingeing.

The CBI in Britain has done the same over the National Minimum Wage, the Temporary Agency Workers Directive and so on. They never seem to get called on their serial crying wolf.

Until now, in this brilliant video …. watch and share!

Here’s a video of some hardy Robin Hood Tax campaign merry men and women braving the 4am chill and nocturnal traffic wardens to beam a message ten metres high onto the side of Bank of England.

If you haven’t yet added your voice to the campaign, go do so now at the Robin Hood Tax website, where you can sign up and vote your support for the tax proposal.

TUC General Secretary, Brendan Barber, speaking on what trade unions want from a Copenhagen deal, and how the transition to a low carbon economy would benefit British workers. From the Government’s ACT ON COPENHAGEN website.

The ITUC and Sustainlabour just released this short video showing commitment of unions around the world to fight against climate change in the run up to the Copenhagen climate change conference.

Sustainlabor is an independent train union foundation that aims to bring trade unions into the climate change challenge. They have produced this jointly with the ITUC, as part of a series of videos for Copenhagen made up of trade union voices, North and South, on what climate change means for those taking part, what we want to achieve in Copenhagen, and above all, the actions that Governments must commit to if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change in the years to come.

You can see more from Sustainlabour at their YouTube channel.

If you know anyone who likes online video, why not download a copy and send it on to them? They might be in line for one of three great prizes of £250 of video making kit, and a chance to have their work seen by the wider movement at Congress 2009!