The Swazi people experience some of the most horrid living conditions on the planet. Under King Mswati II’s absolute rule, very low living standards have become even lower, very high AIDS/HIV prevalence has become even higher. Poverty is widespread, and the rule of law a distant ideal. We…Read more…
Disabled workers in Great Britain: What now?
The TUC released a comprehensive report today revealing just how little progress for disabled people in the workforce was achieved under the 2010-15 government. The headline employment and unemployment rate figures paint a picture of essential stagnati…Read more…
Promising little, delivering less: Qatar fails its migrant workers
It’s a resounding defeat for the workers. In five areas there has been limited progress. In four areas there’s been … nothing at all. After all the promises.
The post Promising little, delivering less: Qatar fails its migrant workers appeared first on ToUChstone blog.Read more…
The TUC’s 2015 election post-mortem poll
When the TUC commissioned a poll to go straight into the field the day after the election, we had no idea what the result would be. Now it has a painful relevance to Labour’s post mortem, and emerging leadership debate. As the TUC is making the poll’s findings public – and it is available…Read more…
Ireland and marriage: stepping out of the darkness
Tomorrow, Friday 21st of May, Ireland will have a referendum on whether two people of the same gender can marry. It’s the first country in the world to do so, and a long journey from 1995, when it was forced by Europe to decriminalise “male homosexual acts”. Why a referendum?…Read more…
Will VISA statement prove costly for Sepp Blatter’s FIFA?
The World Cup’s major sponsors will be paying huge amounts to be associated with the tournament, and the unfolding human rights scandal has the potential to be sponsorship kryptonite.
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The deflation debate and austerity – how policymakers may be severely misjudging capacity
There is a sense in the discussion surrounding the latest inflation figures that those who are less-than-sanguine about the threat of deflation are somehow ignorant or even reckless. Here’s Robert Peston yesterday: However many of those who define themselves as “serious economists”…Read more…
Lawyers consider further action against unjust legal aid cuts
Lawyers fear that further cuts to criminal legal aid under the new Conservative government will lead to a dramatic decline in the quality of legal representation as well as to miscarriages of justice. The Guardian reported last week that the Criminal B…Read more…
Ending global fossil fuel subsidies would cut carbon emissions by a fifth
Using new evidence of the damage to the environment and to human health, the IMF reports that the fossil fuel industries received $4.2 trillion in subsidies in 2011, the latest available figure. The subsidy represents 5.8% of global GDP – more than double the amount from previous reports….Read more…
Negative CPI inflation and falling core inflation, the Chancellor is right to “remain vigilant to deflationary risks”
In April 2015 CPI inflation was minus -0.1 per cent, after two months of zero per cent inflation. ONS have constructed historic data which suggest the last time CPI inflation fell was in March 1960, 55 years ago. The Chancellor first stressed the beneficial cost of living effects that some…Read more…
Britain now most unequal EU country, says official report
The UK is now the most unequal country in Europe, in terms of wages and income distribution, according to a new report by the Dublin Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, which is the EU’s official think tank on life at work*. Not only that, but the rise in…Read more…
Temporary migration in Australia: a cautionary tale
Australia is known as a settler nation (although the Australian unions are careful to acknowledge their debt to the people who cared for the land before Europeans arrived.) But more recently, what started as a way to plug short-term recruitment and ski…Read more…
What’s happening to pay?
Bringing back to real pay growth is a necessary condition for achieving sustained and balanced economic growth that gives people at work both a fair reward and the spending power necessary to keep business growing. CPI inflation is currently at zero, which at least gives some employees a temporary…Read more…
Only a minority of voters are feeling an economic recovery, and only a minority support continued cuts in government spending
Lord Ashcroft’s poll of 12,000 voters the day after the election gives some indications on the role of the economy in peoples’ decisions. Responses to question 9 support the view that in spite of recent positive economic news, the majority of the population are not feeling the recovery. Only 25 per…Read more…
Where is the UK Parliament on the EU-US trade agreement?
This soon after a General Election, the short answer is that we don’t know. The Conservative majority, narrow though it is, suggests that the new House of Commons is more likely to support EU trade deals like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the US and the…Read more…
Wealth inequality is even more extreme than income inequality
Sometimes it can be hard to get a handle on just how important wealth is and the difference it makes to have a lot or a little. As union activists, we work for higher pay and those of us whose main political concern is poverty know that the lived reality of poverty is an inadequate…
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Mark Carney agrees: poor productivity not migrants fuel low pay
This morning the Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney argued that migration was not to blame for low wages and living standards. Interviewed on the Today programme, he said that low productivity and lack of investment by employers, not migrant workers were to blame for the lack of wage…Read more…
TTIP – after US Senate blow, European Parliament is next up
The shock decision by the US Senate on Tuesday not to deliver ‘Trade Promotion Authority’ to the President for negotiating a trans-Pacific trade deal dealt a serious blow to the EU-US Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) that is currently being negotiated. It now seems…Read more…
Bank of England shows jobs gains are concentrated in lower-paid work
ONS released today another upbeat set of employment numbers, as well as an underlying nominal earnings figure above 2 per cent for the first time in approaching four years (see my colleague Richard Exell’s post). But in the meantime the Bank of England issued a sobering analysis of the nature of…Read more…
Conservative strike plans are an aggressive assault on our rights and our democracy
That one of the first priorities of the new government has been to push ahead with punitive new plans for strike ballots is not just a blow for union members, but a blow for UK democracy.
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