Seasonally daft and seasonally sobering news from the TUC’s latest Greenworkplaces newsletter. First up is Prospect’s new A-Z Guide to a Sustainable Christmas, a light hearted look at Christmas through a sustainability lens…..and with a fair amount of poetic licence. It’s full of…Read more…
OBR projections confirm five years of the coalition leaves households poorer
If the government are looking for reasons why the public are not sharing their enthusiasm for the condition of the economy (eg ‘Optimism about the economic recovery is in freefall’, from yesterday’s Evening Standard ), they need look little further than the Office for Budgetary Responsibility’s…Read more…
Precarious recovery: Restoring decent jobs at the European level
Zero hour contracts have hit the headlines in the UK, and rightly so there are 1.4 million British workers on these contracts. But they are not just an issue here, they’re increasingly an problem across the whole of Europe too. With unemployment rates perilously high across the European Union,…Read more…
Supreme Court ruling on conscientious objection and abortion
Yesterday, the Supreme Court made an important ruling on the issue of the scope of conscientious objection for healthcare professionals. The case (Greater Glasgow Health Board v Doogan and Wood) was taken by two Labour Ward co-ordinators in the Souther…Read more…
International Migrants Day: overstaying and exploitation
It’s ironic that the Daily Mirror should run a story on International Migrants Day about the discovery that there are nearly twice as many people who have overstayed their visas in the country than expected – over a third of a million. Trade unionists will be concerned that those…Read more…
#DecentJobsWeek: Time to end the two-tier workforce
If the government is to be believed we should all be feeling more secure because the numbers in employment are rising. However, the reality is very different for many in precarious work, where exploitation is the norm and there is no prospect of escape or hope that things will improve. Employers…Read more…
#DecentJobsWeek: I love being a home care worker, but I hate the insecurity
Oh joy! Today I received a letter from HMRC stating I have been overpaid tax credits in relation to my childcare costs. I will have to pay back any money owed and may face a penalty for failure to inform them of a change in my circumstances. I would never knowingly claim money fraudulently, and…Read more…
Charges rip-off: the pensions industry puts on its best innocent face
Sometimes the financial services industry resembles those feckless miscreants with a car boot full of swag who are the mainstay of the sorts of fly-on-the-wall police programmes that fill the further reaches of the Freeview spectrum. We knew there were…Read more…
#DecentJobsWeek: 12 changes that will make a difference – for the 12 days of Christmas
Decent hours On the first day in a new job, all workers should be given a written statement setting out their terms and conditions, including their expected hours of work. Employers must give workers adequate notice of when they will be required to wor…Read more…
Mind the gap – has George Osborne got a plan for funding the NHS?
One of the big ticket items coming out of the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement was additional funding for the NHS. £2bn extra for 2015/16 and a new £300m a year fund for kick-starting GP innovation, derived from fines imposed on the banks’ shady foreign exchange dealings. There was plenty of…Read more…
UK Statistics Authority validates TUC concerns over sloppy figures at HM Treasury
This week, Sir Andrew Dilnot, chair of the UK Statistics Authority, issued a written response to TUC’s concerns about poor data practices at HM Treasury. This was a reply to the formal complaint lodged by TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady last October. We are pleased with the seriousness with…Read more…
Zero-hours shop workers need some Christmas cheer too
With Christmas bargains on offer and the January sales around the corner, this is the busiest time of the year on the high street. It’s also the time when those working in shops are under enormous pressure to keep the shelves stacked and to share the Christmas cheer. But how often do we spare…Read more…
Migration: putting tackling exploitation first
Labour leader Ed Miliband announced today that he wants to address a concern that unions have been raising about migration: its use by unscrupulous employers (and, indeed, any employer who thinks they can get away with it) to cut their labour costs by undermining previous terms and conditions. The…Read more…
The Benefit Cap: is it worthwhile?
The Department for Work and Pensions has just published their evaluation of the impact of the Benefit Cap in its first year. The Cap is a limit to the maximum amount of working age benefits a family can receive – for families with children, £500 a month. How has the policy fared? The…Read more…
Lima blog #6: Unions must influence country commitments
In solidarity and shared purpose, the international trade union delegation and its Peruvian hosts worked their socks off inside the Lima climate conference. Outside it, the Peoples Summit enriched the city centre, and 20,000 marched on the UN for climate justice. But the conference itself largely…Read more…
#DecentJobsWeek: Too poor to be off sick
Until recently all of us assumed that when we are off sick we would still be paid, whether through a sick pay scheme negotiated by a trade union, through a company sick pay policy or, in the absence of these, through statutory sick pay (SSP). This seem…Read more…
Women who flee sexual violence abroad need rights in the UK
This week sees the start of a campaign by the Women’s Asylum Charter whose 350 supporters include the TUC, ASLEF Women’s Committee, GMB, NAPO, NASUWT, NUT, PCS Women’s Forum and Unison. In supporting this Charter, the TUC and its member unions are standing up for the rights of women who come to…Read more…
Italian unions strike: #stopjobsact
Italian unions, led by the TUC’s sister organisation the CGIL, have been taking to the streets – including a general strike on Friday – to oppose reforms of the labour market being proposed by the centre-left government of Matteo Renzi. They say they are defending workers’…Read more…
Misleading claims of four per cent earnings growth
It is of limited relevance to the population as a whole that some people are lucky enough to be enjoying stable employment with rises in earnings of four per cent. The figure on earnings growth for employees in full-time work for over a year issued by …Read more…
Today is #flexiworkday. Here’s why we should support flexible working
It isn’t always possible to stick to traditional 9-to-5 working hours – childcare, caring for friends and family, and looking after your own personal health can clash with rigid, fixed hours. In these circumstances, having a bit of flexibility in how, when and where you work can make a big…Read more…