Employment levels may be rising to record levels; however, this is partly a result of the rising numbers in the working population. The employment rate at 73.0 per cent only recently returned to its pre-crisis peak; whereas the 6.0 per cent unemploymen…Read more…
Use your vote!
Mark Baker is president of ATL. 99% of ATL’s members cast their vote in this year’s National Presidential election! That would be a nice headline and I encourage everyone who can to make it…Read more…
What more will it take to get corporate courts out of the EU-US trade deal?
This week, the European Commission finally released the results of the consultation forced on it nearly a year ago about Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the EU-US trade deal. While …Read more…
IMF: looking on the bright side, or the ‘right side’?
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) doesn’t have a fantastic reputation around the world for the damage it did to developing and Asian economies during the years of the neoliberal ‘Washington consensus’. Confessing to getting its analysis of the Greek economy catastrophically…Read more…
Growing funding crisis in local government threatens public services
A growing funding crisis in local government is threatening the future of local public services in England. According to new analysis published today in Austerity Uncovered significant cuts have already been made to statutory adult social care and children’s services – with more cuts to come….Read more…
Union-busting at the heart of this government?
We’ve long been used to the hostility towards trade unions exhibited by some of the more excitable elements on the fringes of the Tory right. From Aiden Burley and the Trade Union Reform Campaign to…Read more…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: Most Remploy workers never got another job
In 2012 the government closed down the subsidy for the disabled workers in more than fifty Remploy factories around the country. By September 2013 all but three had closed; the GMB estimates that 2,700 workers lost their jobs. Some of those weren’t disabled; the House of Commons library estimates…Read more…
Employers named and shamed for not paying – a warning for retail.
The government has today named another 37 employers who have failed to pay the proper minimum wage. Between them they owed £177,000 to their workers* This brings the total named this year to 92. It is good to see those who don’t meet the legal minimum requirement being publicly named in this…Read more…
Unions join condemnations of Thai prison labour plans
The TUC has joined a coalition of 43 union and human rights organisations condemning the regime in Thailand for a planned pilot project recruiting prisoners to fill labour shortages in the…Read more…
Core inflation is very far from “relatively stable”
There’s a lot of “good deflation” stories in the media today. (‘Almost certainly’ so, according to the FT.) One of the common themes sets the large fall in headline inflation against a rise on the month in ‘core’ inflation (i.e. inflation excluding energy,…Read more…
Wall Street or Main Street? US Democrats plan ‘high-roller fee’
For years we’ve been told that a Robin Hood Tax in Europe or the UK won’t work because the US will never implement one. That day is, admittedly, still a way off. But this week, senior Democrats in the House of Representatives took a massive step forward, with the senior Democrat on the…Read more…
Deutsche Bank U-turn on deflation
At 0.5%, CPI inflation in December fell below the consensus forecast (0.7%) and way below the Bank of England’s November Inflation Report forecast for 1.0%. This is approaching deflationary territory, and I set out my own views yesterday. Understandably the government is desperately trying to…Read more…
Time for energy democracy
How much more coal, oil and gas including shale gas can we continue to burn and still have a 50:50 chance of keeping the rise in global average temperatures below 2 degrees C? The Coalition’s Infrastructure Bill would make it legally binding on government to “Maximise the economic…Read more…
Teachers want for themselves what they give their pupils – frequent opportunities to learn
Dr Mary Bousted is general secretary of ATL and AMiE. Michael Barber recently opined that teachers are ‘semi-professional’. He argued that the profession remains heavily unionised (obviously a bad…Read more…
TUC Aid Appeal for Gaza
Before last years conflict, TUC Aid had supported a project in Gaza at the Beit Lahia Plant Nursery. The idea behind the initiative was to grow fresh food both to enhance the diet of people in…Read more…
19 days pay a year lost through missed lunch breaks
Long live the lunch break – its under pressure and its worth defending. Work would be a more stressful and boring place without it and less productive too. Yet a new study* commissioned by a well-known cheese manufacturer published today suggested that UK workers skipping their lunch break…Read more…
Nous sommes Charlie: Journalists show solidarity in Paris
Visiting the site close to the Charlie Hebdo offices along with NUJ assistant general secretary Seamus Dooley, it was impossible not to be instantly moved by the mounting tributes and memorials to…Read more…
Mark Carney’s letter to George Osborne: What might it say?
When the British economy misses the inflation targets set by the Chancellor, the Governor of the Bank of England has to write him a letter explaining the reasons. It looks like we’re on course to miss tomorrow – for the first time below rather than above target. Here’s what I’ve imagined Mark…Read more…
Hadi Saleh’s legacy, ten years on
Today is the tenth anniversary of martyrdom of Hadi Saleh, international officer of the Iraqi trade union movement and my close friend. The union centre he represented, now known as the GFITU, is…Read more…
Underpaying the minimum wage & exploiting migrants
The shocking news that the number of bad bosses who underpay the minimum wage to young workers has risen dramatically in the last few years has implications for the continuing debate about migration in the UK: here’s why. One of the main concerns that working people have about immigration…Read more…