Bromley residents are being urged to take a stand against the mass privatisation of their local council services at the People and Services First march on Saturday (June 13), assembling at noon at…Read more…
George’s economic mind-bender
If the Tories were not already planning new laws to prohibit mind bending legal highs then Osborne’s speech to the London banker’s dinner last night would force their hand. It seems as if more…Read more…
From the ground up
Unite members at the Port of Immingham are leading a global charge to drastically increase the power of trade unions. A new “hub” office has been opened at Immingham, the…Read more…
£13bn taxpayer rip-off
By selling off the public stake in the Royal Bank of Scotland, George Osborne is short-changing the public and wasting a historic chance to bring needed change to Britain’s banks, warned Unite….Read more…
HSBC: adding insult to injury
The massive jobs cull announced by HSBC on Tuesday (June 9), in which 8,000 posts will be axed over the next two years, is only the latest instance of the bank’s blatant disregard for its most…Read more…
Cameron’s new migration plans: skills gaps & undercutting need to be divorced from fantasy targets
Yesterday David Cameron announced that he had written to the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), the independent body which advises the Home Office on migration policy, asking them to look into ways of reducing non-EU migration for work to the UK in the following ways: restricting work visas to…Read more…
Dear Andy Burnham
I have a lot of time for Andy Burnham. He’s from Liverpool, I’m from Liverpool. He supports Everton, so do I. supports Everton, so do I. I feel like I know him. So I was sad and disappointed when I…Read more…
If you mean it, put it in writing: unions to Cameron on NHS & #TTIP
At Prime Minister’s Questions this afternoon, David Cameron repeated – yet again – his claim that we should trust him that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP – the EU-US trade deal) would have no impact on the NHS. Under fire from Labour Leader Harriet…Read more…
Cameron must come clean about his plans to renegotiate our rights from Europe
When he was asked during Prime Minster’s Questions today about his plans for re-negotiating rights for working people set out originally under the European Social Chapter, David Cameron gave the ominous answer that it would include: “some of the issues under what was called the social…Read more…
Workers are wealth creators too – Give them a fairer deal
Good reputations are hard to build and all too easy to lose. Of course business isn’t the only institution in Britain facing a crisis of trust. But unlike others, business can end up paying a high price in lost profit, productivity and jobs. Unions argue that no one has a greater interest in the…Read more…
Budget surplus target plays politics with economic growth
Is it possible that anybody thinks the budget surplus law apparently to be announced in the Mansion House speech is about anything other than politics? It’s definitely stupid economics. Inevitably spending was higher and taxes were lower in the UK after the financial crash, and we had a small…Read more…
“Government should put us on track for a low-carbon world.”
Business Green is running an online poll showing that 84 per cent of respondents believe that the low carbon economy “will not prosper under a Conservative government.” Such anxieties may help explain why, so early in this administration, 80 businesses have paid for a full page letter in the FT….Read more…
Opening salvo in latest battle
Within 72 hours of the Tories forming a majority in Parliament it became crystal clear they were salivating at the opportunity to further impose their political austerity agenda for another five…Read more…
Home threat hotspots
New research from the Ministry of Justice shows that more than 8,300 people face losing their home every week in England. Londoners face the highest risk of losing their home because of…Read more…
#TTIP vote postponed: blow to G7 hopes of an early EU-US trade deal
This afternoon, we heard that the votes in the European Parliament due for Wednesday lunchtime on the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) had been postponed. Various reasons for the postponement have been given, and there are different explanations of what the postponement means…Read more…
Graduates’ pay still lower than seven years ago
This morning the government released the quarterly Graduate Labour Market Statistics for England, which allow us to look at post-graduate, graduate and non-graduate employment rates and salaries since 2006. You wouldn’t know it from the government’s spin, but graduate pay has been slipping for two…Read more…
Surrey buses: strike action suspended
Over 100 bus workers working for Abellio Surrey have suspended strike action following a breakthrough in talks at the conciliation service Acas, Unite announced today (June 9). The drivers had…Read more…
Update: Vital TTIP vote postponed
UPDATE [09/06, 16:23]: The European Parliament debate and vote has been postponed due to more than 200 amendments being tabled. Campaigners have said this indicates that mounting public pressure…Read more…
G7 starts to address workplace safety
Although most of the publicity around the G7 Summit in Germany has been around the relationship with Russia and the problems in the Middle East, there have been a lot of other discussions taking…Read more…
Paying for others’ mistakes
The announcement by HSBC that up to 8,000 UK jobs are to be cut from the bank by 2017, is the latest example of the workforce being punished for the misconduct of senior and investment bankers says…Read more…