The Prime Minister has argued that, when it comes to Britain’s relationship with the EU after Brexit, no deal would be better than a bad deal (I’m worried that some Conservative MPs actually think no deal would be better than a good deal, too!) It is frequently argued that holding out…Read more…
Stopping the Government tinkering with workers’ rights
We’ve welcomed the Prime Minister’s promise to protect and enhance the rights of working people that the EU has underpinned over the last forty years, but we’ve stressed the need for a cast-iron mechanism to guarantee those rights aren’t watered down, and ensure the rights…Read more…
#Right2Remain gains wider support: so what’s the problem?
On Sunday morning, the House of Commons Select Committee on Exiting the European Union (the ‘Brexit Committee’ chaired by Hilary Benn MP) released a report urging the government to unilaterally grant the right to remain to EU citizens living and working in the UK. The cross-party group…Read more…
Unions must be at the heart of industrial strategy
Two bits of news caught my eye today. The first was new figures showing the number of workers on zero hour contacts has hit an all time high – with over 900,000 people now working on contracts which leave them wondering how much they will be earning from day to day, week to week. This…
The…Read more…
Action is what is needed to tackle race at work
This week the government published the findings of the McGregor-Smith review. The aim of the review is to report on the barriers BME people face when in work. This report is seen as an opportunity for the government to finally take action and tackle th…Read more…
Women’s Pay Day: 66 days before you start getting paid?
Spring is in the air, the blossom is on the trees, and we’re nearly a fifth of the way through 2017. So you might be surprised to learn that the average woman still hasn’t been paid for her work this year. Yes, you read that right. New analysis we’re publishing today shows that the average…Read more…
Statutory sex and relationships education: About time
The announcement this week by Justine Greening that the teaching of sex and relationships education will soon be statutory in all schools across the UK is truly welcome, so I apologise if my first response was “About time.” This is something we have been campaigning for over decades and it is great…Read more…
The government takes a wrong turn on workplace pensions
On a day when official statistics revealed another welcome hike in the number of people saving in pensions, the government has just made it harder for savers when they reach retirement. Now, 68 per cent of employees are in a workplace pension scheme. T…Read more…
Four reasons why we have more than two choices on the State Pension
Pensions can be a complex subject. So it is tempting to make the subject into a series of straightforward binary choices. The latest effort in this direction is the publication of research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies for the Work and Pensions Select Committee. This places the public…Read more…
Free trade: what would it take to get union backing?
Today I was asked to give a speech at the Foreign Office by Liam Fox, Secretary of State for International Trade, about free trade. This is an edited version of my remarks. The debate over free trade is a timely one, given that those who advocate prote…Read more…
Lords begin voting on the Brexit Bill: our view
Today and Wednesday, the Article 50 Brexit bill – known formally as the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill 2016-17 – will get its committee stage in the House of Lords. This is the stage where most of the voting will take place on specific amendments (although there may be…Read more…
UK 103rd out of 112 in global ranking for real wage growth since the crisis
Over 2008 to 2015, UK real wages fell by 1% a year. This puts the UK 103rd out of 112 countries for wage growth over the post-crisis period, on the basis of International Labour Organisation figures. The average wage growth across all countries was +2.3% a year and the median +1.6%. There were…Read more…
Brexit priorities: rights, living standards and jobs
Brexit is the defining issue of British politics. Our over-riding concern is to ensure that working people don’t pay the price for Brexit, and we are making progress. But there is a lot more to do to protect people’s rights at work, and we also need to tackle the impact on living…Read more…
£33.6bn of unpaid overtime: Free work is costing us a lot
5.3 million employees worked a grand total of 2.1 billion hours of unpaid overtime last year, putting in an average of 7.7 extra hours each week. If they had been paid for all their free work, on average they would have each received an extra £6,301. Try out the TUC’s unpaid overtime calculator…Read more…
Working people need robust opposition to the drive for hard Brexit
I’ve been speaking at the Party of European Socialists’ Road To Brexit conference today. PES is the European political grouping that includes the UK’s Labour Party and their counterparts from around Europe. This has been a particularly important event as Brexit will be a process with real dangers…Read more…
Why decommissioning nuclear workers’ pensions could be hazardous to us all
Government plans to bail on a pension promise to 11,000 nuclear decommissioning workers could end up establishing a dangerous precedent for pensions that many more of us rely on. There are many different ways of looking at the pension scheme your emplo…Read more…
Investment decline + reliance on consumers = bad news for the economy
The new official GDP figures out today paint a worrying picture for the longer term, despite many of the headlines. Our economy is severely imbalanced – totally reliant on consumer spending to stay afloat, with no sign of the Chancellor’s promised rally in investment. That’s…Read more…
Digitisation and the future of work: what it means for unions
Will robots take all the jobs? This dystopian question, prompted by the so-called ‘fourth industrial revolution’ – an umbrella term encompassing Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and the ‘Internet of Things’ – has prompted a lively debate in recent years. Digitisation is seen by some as simply the…Read more…
A greener shade of vague: where are defined benefit pensions headed?
If dog resemble their owners, do government documents resemble their Ministers? Since entering office less than a year ago Pensions Minister Richard Harrington has appeared to be non-dogmatic, willing to engage with a wide range of voices and generally…Read more…
Can a workforce strategy solve the NHS’ staffing crisis?
Staff shortages in the NHS are nothing new. It has been a chronic issue affecting the NHS since cuts made to training budgets in 2010 and 2011; heightened by existing pay restraint, staff morale and workload issues. But recent events and detrimental go…Read more…