The announcement yesterday of the forthcoming retirement of Dave Prentis, UNISON General Secretary for the past twenty years, will be the occasion for much praise. You won’t be reading this blog expecting to see more of that. Those who want to consider…Read more…
‘We must demand better’
Chancellor’s £10 a head ‘meal deal’, VAT cut and £1,000 bonus is a gift to hospitality bosses. Now they need to stop the sackings and invest in staff to address the sector’s long term future. The…Read more…
The struggles of rural poverty
Every year, or at least every normal year, the annual Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival takes place in the village of Tolpuddle, in Dorset, where trade unionists from across the UK gather to commemorate…Read more…
UNISONdirect re-opens
UNISONdirect’s member support team has returned to the office as phone lines reopen
The article UNISONdirect re-opens first appeared on the UNISON National site.Read more…
UNISON reports 40,000 calls to members during lockdown
In three months, UNISON has already reached over 40% of the record numbers of people who have joined during lockdown
The article UNISON reports 40,000 calls to members during lockdown first appeared…Read more…
Dave Prentis – A personal message
This morning UNISON NEC members received this email from our General Secretary, Dave Prentis, announcing his retirement.
“Dear Colleague
I’ve been so proud to serve as your General Secretary for 20 years. It has been the honour and privilege of my li…Read more…
Dave Prentis retires – how should we elect his successor?
It is official then. Having served four terms as UNISON General Secretary, Dave Prentis, now in his 70s, will not seek a fifth. There’s a fair bit to be said about Dave’s time at the helm, but that is not the purpose of this post. Nor do I intend …Read more…
Review: The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin
Rightly considered a classic, this short book was published in the year of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. We should have been able to read…Read more…
‘A disaster waiting to happen’
For many months Unite’s food and agriculture activists have been extremely concerned over the way workers are being packed into factories and field, many of them migrant workers often living in…Read more…
Immigration changes “a disastrous mistake”, says UNISON
Christina McAnea warns hiring staff will become harder in a sector already ‘desperately’ short of workers
The article Immigration changes “a disastrous mistake”, says UNISON first appeared on the…Read more…
Universal Credit ‘should be safety net people rely on’
Ahead of Unite Community’s national online #UniversalDisCredit day of action on Wednesday (July 15), we are calling for an end to the most punitive measures of the Universal Credit system…Read more…
Universal ‘discredit’
The continued use of benefit sanctions just as the country is entering a period of heavy and sustained job losses is ‘unnecessary and particularly cruel’ and must be stopped, Unite said today (July…Read more…
Dave Prentis to stand down as UNISON general secretary
Serving public service workers for two decades has been ‘honour and privilege’
The article Dave Prentis to stand down as UNISON general secretary first appeared on the UNISON National site.Read more…
A meal out at Aromas (at long last)
Last night Gill and I went for a meal out in our favourite local restaurant. “Aromas” in Forest Gate, (opposite the station). This was our first meal out since lock down. It was a little surreal but the food and service was as usual excellent (we have …Read more…
A College with Little Interest in its History
Dear Colleagues,
Apologies (as usual) for sparse commentary here. I remain having problems accessing this blog, and Google provides no support in overcoming the access problem. I am considering moving my blog to WordPress – more detail to follow.
An …Read more…
It is happening…why is this more likely when men are in charge?
Anonymity in political disagreement
Having spent many years as a socialist activist in our movement (all of them as a Labour Party member) I have encountered from time to time those who do not appear to agree with the view, which I have seen attributed to Lenin, that “spitefulness in gen…Read more…
Review: Hitler’s Third Reich in 100 Objects, by Roger Moorhouse
The danger of a book like this one is that it could encourage the fetishistic collection of Nazi memorabilia. There is already a fairly large community of people who collect such things, and some…Read more…
Post-democratic ESG
A theme I keep returning to is the lack or decline of democracy in the small corner of world I inhabit. A long time ago, unions in the UK ran an initiative called the Campaign for Pension Fund Democracy which sought to give pension scheme members great…Read more…
#Srebrenica25
Newham Council is flying Remembering Srebrenica flags from its town halls in East Ham and Stratford to mark the 25th anniversary on 11 July of what the United Nations said is the single greatest atrocity on European soil since the Second World War.#Sre…Read more…