The North Sea oil workforce suffered another blow this week (May 25) after Shell announced it would cut 475 jobs in the UK and Ireland. The latest announcement is part of a wider raft of Shell…Read more…
Who’s bankrolling the Tory Party?
Greedy Conservatives have received more donations this year than all the other political parties combined, new figures from the Electoral Commission show. Of the almost £12m reported to the…Read more…
Probation companies tell staff not to report sentence breaches, finds watchdog
A new report by the probation watchdog (HMI Probation) has found that the new private Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) are telling staff not to take action against offenders who breach sentence terms, due to the risk of being fined. The findin…Read more…
GDP figures show both investment and profits in negative territory: the first time for six years
Behind today’s headline GDP figures are signs of corporate stress, with both investment and profits showing negative growth on the year – the last time this happened was in 2010Q1, at the end of the global recession. Headline figures confirm the ongoing slowdown. GDP growth was unrevised at…Read more…
‘Ticking time bomb’ for NHS
Nurses form the backbone of the NHS – they’re often the first person you have contact with in the health service when you’re born and the last member of staff who attends to you when you die. …Read more…
Let women be heard
Women’s voices are being drowned out of the EU referendum debate and must be heard, senior Labour women have said. The call, made on the same day as the TUC published a report highlighting the…Read more…
Solid support for UK steel
Hundreds of Unite steelworkers from across the UK joined their colleagues from steel unions GMB and Community in a march in London today (May 25) to press on with their fight to save the industry….Read more…
The time is now: we need a European Robin Hood Tax
Next month, on 17 June, European Finance Ministers will gather for a crunch meeting for the European financial transactions tax (the Robin Hood Tax, or FTT). Campaigners across Europe are urging the…Read more…
Holiday flights action backed
Unite cabin crew members working for Thomas Cook Airlines have backed strike action by three-to-one in a dispute over health and safety concerns and ‘dangerous’ changes to rest breaks it was…Read more…
Unions on the march & uniting across Europe, USA and Canada to say no to Market Economy Status for China
Today Unite, GMB and Community held a March of Steelmakers in London which brought steel workers from across the country to Westminster to demand the government ensure the responsible sale of Tata Steel’s UK assets and deliver a sustainable industrial strategy. A key cause of the crisis currently…Read more…
Cancel all sell-offs call
Tory efforts to privatise Whitehall back office functions to save £500m a year have instead cost taxpayers an extra £4m – and are riddled with problems that will be expensive to fix, the National…Read more…
‘As reckless as it is ruthless’
More than 800 HSBC workers will lose their jobs today (May 25) to cheap labour abroad, in a move which Unite said “was as reckless as it is ruthless.” The banking giant announced 840 IT jobs…Read more…
The government must rethink its plans for the NHS bursary
Today hundreds of healthcare students are descending on Parliament to lobby their MPs to protect the NHS bursary. The government decision in December’s spending review to scrap bursaries will leave student nurses, midwives and allied health professionals with huge levels of debt. And this fear of…Read more…
Where racism fears to tread
One evening more than 20 years ago, Newcastle United goalkeeper Shaka Hislop was putting petrol in his car at a local garage, when four teenage boys across the street began shouting racist abuse at…Read more…
‘Their fight is our fight’
Unite sent a message of “solidarity” to university staff planning to strike tomorrow (May 25) amid warnings its members could take action if university bosses failed to make an improved pay offer….Read more…
Pay us our due
Workers at the 2 Sisters owned Pizza Factory in Nottingham started voting yesterday (May 23) on possible strike action in a dispute over an outstanding pay claim for 2015. Unite which is…Read more…
Prison reform will fail unless safety and staff retention addressed, says Justice Committee
An action plan is “urgently needed to reverse…[the]…rapid deterioration” in prison safety, concludes a new report by the House of Commons Justice Committee. Published just prior to the government’s Queen’s Speech announcement of a major overhaul of prison services, the report issues a serious…Read more…
Bus stop
Tomorrow (Tuesday May 24) hundreds of Unite bus driver members, working for First Manchester Ltd will stage a one day strike over a series of serious breaches of longstanding industrial agreements….Read more…
Academisation: lessons from further education
Those interested in how the government’s academies programme might impact the school education system in years to come should take a look at the recent history of the FE sector for some clues. Over…Read more…
Does Steve Hilton’s ‘blue sky thinking’ give the game away on Brexit and pregnancy rights?
Today Steve Hilton, the PM’s friend and former adviser, is making the headlines for declaring his support for Britain to leave the EU. In an article in the Daily Mail he makes his case for Brexit claiming that Britain’s membership of the EU makes the country “literally ungovernable”. He complains:…Read more…