22 January 2015
By Professor Keith Ewing and John Hendy QC
Plans to place restrict the extreme restrictions on the right to strike are not consistent with international legal standards, write Keith…Read more…
Article 14: Prohibition of discriminaiton
17 January 2015
By Aileen McColgan, Matrix Chambers and King’s College London
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The EU’s giant and secretive deregulation blitz
16 January 2015
By Linda Kaucher
It is not just TTIP, across the board the EU is bowing to business pressure to do away with ‘burdensome’ regulation – regulation that tends to…Read more…
Fresh start or same old story? Three resolutions for a wage-led recovery in 2015
George Osborne’s Autumn Statement [has] opened up a “huge choice in British politics,” according to the TUC’s Frances O’Grady, “between radical cuts and pay freezes versus investment for the…Read more…
Double whammy for the underpaid and underemployed
Despite talk of economic recovery, more people than ever are looking for extra hours to make ends meet, and the trend towards underemployment shows little sign of slowing. To make matters worse, the…Read more…
Decent Jobs Week: one to watch, two to do
Millions of people in the UK are trapped in low-paid, insecure work. Right now, Decent Jobs Week (15-21 December) is coming to the end of 7 days of shining a light on our growing jobs crisis. If…Read more…
‘Flexible’ employment: the winners and the losers
Government and industry often argue that the flexibility of casualised ‘zero hours’ jobs benefits both employers and workers. The advantages for employers are abundantly clear. But what’s in it for…Read more…
Zero hours and the changing face of employment
A new TUC report to mark Decent Jobs Week (15-21 December) reveals that, far from limited to low paid, low skilled jobs, ‘zero hours contracts’ and other insecure forms of employment are on the rise…Read more…
Why I Back The Bill
My name is Andrew Anderson and I am a Health Trainer working at an NHS Foundation trust; I have now been working in the NHS for 4 years and I’m backing the bill!
I am supporting the NHS: Condition…Read more…
Workplace injuries cost billions and ruin lives, but this government is determined to rollback vital health and safety laws
The ground-breaking Health and Safety at Work Act is 40 years old and there has been a lot of progress over the years which should be celebrated. Britain is one of the safest countries in the world…Read more…
Winchester Needs a Pay Rise
I was looking forwards to making an occasion of the TUC’s Britain Needs a Pay Rise march and rally in October until we had to back out when my son caught a tummy bug. I had experienced TUC marches…Read more…
What did the EU ever do for working people?
The UK’s often turbulent relationship with the European Union seems to be getting stormier by the day. With UKIP support rising to record levels, the Conservatives have been pushed into an…Read more…
Labour Party special conference secures Ed Miliband’s status as one of the great reforming leaders in Labour’s history
Fourteen years ago this week I was at a small gathering in Farringdon Street to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of the modern day Labour Party. It’s a treasured memory that has stayed with…Read more…
Unions21 unions and the Lobbying Bill
Unions21 is a trade union network that shares best practice and new ideas between its members. For the first time, its steering committee have decided that Unions21 should put forward a position on…Read more…
Zero power for workers on zero hours contracts
The Thompsons Solicitors Union Home blog Following an informal information gathering exercise last year, the government recently announced a consultation on zero hours contracts to investigate…Read more…
11% pay increase for MP’s- sounds reasonable to me!
It appears that MP’s truly get a bad press and when they get some good news we cannot help but knock them for six. Take the 11% increase in pay announced by the independent parliamentary…Read more…
Handling small-scale redundancies
The regular Thompsons Solicitors blog British workers are feeling less secure than at any time in the past 20 years. Below-inflation pay cuts are creating a cost of living crisis whilst…Read more…
‘Making a killing’ or protecting Royal Mail workers’ rights?
Most of the media focus has been on the government’s ‘hugely successful’ sale of our 400+ year-old Royal Mail at a knockdown price to their chums in the City. Over at the postal…Read more…
Straws in the wind?
At the Labour Conference fringe in Brighton, there was a distinct change of mood. It wasn’t just Ed Miliband’s one hour ‘tour de force’ but also the warm reception given to…Read more…
Government advice to interns fails to address the root cause of their exploitation
The Thompsons Solicitors UnionHome blog Internships have become a way for unscrupulous employers to undermine and evade the National Minimum Wage (NMW) and the government has recently…Read more…