This year (15 June) we’ll mark the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta. The commemorations will include a TV documentary, a Magna Carta cycle trail, a visit by 800 American lawyers and, I kid you not, a new roundabout on the A308. A lot of the people I usually agree with will be…Read more…
Wages fell £500 last year – 2015 needs a pay rise
Despite the recovery, 2014 has been another miserable year for living standards. The average wage is now worth £50 a week less than when the government came to power. And current policies offer little relief. The Office for Budgetary Responsibility forecast, released with the Autumn Statement,…Read more…
Fast-food workers scent justice in fight with franchises
In a ruling that has given US unions a significant boost, the US National Labor Relations Board has ruled that McDonald’s (and other fast food outlets) are a “joint employer” of workers at its…Read more…
Review of the year
The major educational event of 2014 was the sacking of Michael Gove. Joy was unalloyed among the vast majority of teachers and school leaders as this most ideological of politicians was shown the…Read more…
Don’t let UKIP panto take the spotlight off low pay and exploitation
In the last few weeks we all seem to have been given tickets to an extended UKIP panto complete with a string of offensive racist/sexist/homophobic/fill in the blank one-liners and a gay donkey. While the papers are having a field day with this silly season, it shouldn’t distract us from the…Read more…
A quarter of a million jobseekers approaching their second Christmas in a row on the dole
Silver bells ringing through the city are as sure a sign as any—Christmas is nearly upon us yet again. For some of us, it is a time of delightful food, visits with family, and colourful packages nestled ‘neath the tree. Yet, for too many of our neighbours, it is stark reminder of just how…Read more…
A national curriculum should help children flourish
By Michael J. Reiss A school curriculum is not an end in itself, but a vehicle to realise further purposes. You would think, therefore, that those who devise a national curriculum would start by…Read more…
#DecentJobsWeek: “I’m the last mother standing”
If you listen to the government, you could be forgiven for believing that women’s labour market position is better than ever before. It’s certainly true that women’s employment rate is up, and women’s unemployment rate is down. But what this positive picture of women at work doesn’t show us…Read more…
#DecentJobsWeek: Unions are scoring successes against casualisation
The fall in the numbers of workers covered by agreements negotiated by trade unions is the key reason for the rise in low-paid and casual jobs in the UK. In 2013, 29 per cent of working people in the…Read more…
#DecentJobsWeek: This exploitation of agency workers must end
Tina is a qualified further education lecturer employed through an agency which forced her to sign a permanent contract of employment. She is only paid for the time she spends teaching but not for planning or attending meetings. Because she only teaches 24 hours a week she can’t claim working tax…Read more…
MEPs fight to save Europe’s air quality, women’s rights and recycling plans
Europe’s “fresh start” under the Juncker Presidency has already run into opposition from MEPs. A draft document leaked to the press last week shows that key EU environmental proposals on clean air, waste and recycling (the so-called ‘circular economy’), and stronger protection for…Read more…
Who’s really in favour of #ISDS?
The investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions in the proposed trade deal between the EU and the USA (TTIP) are the most controversial part of the deal. And they appear in all new trade negotiations, like the one between the EU and Canada (CET…Read more…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: cruelty to people who are weak and poor is the most important fact of all
This is my last Fact of the Week until the New Year, and I want finish 2014 by thinking about the human costs of benefit cuts. The other facts have been the sort you can put a £ sign in front of or a % sign after, or which you measure in millions. Here I…Read more…
CBI on TTIP: a policy based on faith and avoiding their critics
The CBI’s top leaders were in Brussels today along with the Prime Minister to help him put ‘rocket boosters’ under the increasingly unpopular Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the USA. They gathered a range of business organisations across…Read more…
TUC Green Christmas newsletter – some bright, some sobering news
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: £6 an hour pay and no security – life in a zero-hours college
When people think about poverty pay and zero-hours contracts, universities and colleges aren’t usually the first workplaces that spring to mind. So it may come as a surprise to learn that 46% of…Read more…