Today the House of Lords debated regulations to cut tax credits, scheduled to be introduced next April. They voted to delay this introduction until an independent assessment of their likely impact has been carried out. In this post I want to look at wh…Read more…
No justification
Unite has challenged the justification for 3M’s announcement of thirty-four job losses, after it informed the workforce compulsory redundancies are likely at its Bangor (Northern Ireland) site….Read more…
Save NHS from trade deal
David Cameron has so far refused to sign up to a historic pledge to protect the NHS from the EU/US trade deal that could spell the irreversible sale of our NHS. Politicians across England,…Read more…
A ‘good time to lose your job’
As the UK steel industry teeters on the brink of collapse – devastating entire communities after more than 5,000 jobs have been shed in the last month alone – former deputy prime minister Lord…Read more…
No one is fooled, Chancellor
Cuts to tax credits – which will amount to a £4.4bn raid on the country’s poorest working families – are in the spotlight again today (October 26), as peers are set to vote on motions that may stop…Read more…
Remember Redcar
Next time you hear the Chancellor, George Osborne, talk about the ‘march of the makers’, the Northern powerhouse or that the Conservatives were now the party of the workers – remember Redcar….Read more…
Re-inventing the wheel of well-being: NEF’s new measures of ‘national success’
GDP was not originally devised (in the 1930s) as a barometer of economic health, more as a means to that end. Yet as we anticipate tomorrow’s first estimate for the third quarter of 2015, it is undeniable that GDP growth is now used as shorthand for the success or otherwise of the economy (and…Read more…
Solar industry fears “systematic dismantling of UK renewable energy policy”
The solar power industry has challenged the government to support a three year survival plan which will add just £1 a year to consumers’ energy bills and save most of the 27,000 jobs now at risk from government cuts. It rejects the government’s claim to be helping “hard working…Read more…
Episode 11: ‘Hotels love scared workers’
Sounds familiar? If you work in the hospitality industry you can join www.unitetheunion.org – if you earn less than the Living Wage (£9.15ph in London, £7.85 outside) for just £2.10 per week….Read more…
Understanding opens the door
As a black child in a predominately white village in the 1950s, former Unite national secretary for equalities, Bob Purkiss, occasionally encountered instances of racism. Those situations could…Read more…
Cameron’s EU renegotiation strategy: a virus infecting the European social model
On Friday I spoke at an event in Dublin organised by the Charter Group – Irish trade unionists supporting the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights – about the United Kingdom’s EU referendum. This is an edited version of the speech I gave. Ever since Jacques Delors came to our Congress…Read more…
Teachers form new Arab trade union bloc
Seventeen education unions and associations representing sixteen Arab countries from the Middle East and North Africa met on 7-8 October in Beirut in Lebanon to establish a new Arab teachers’ trade…Read more…
Food on credit
As UNITElive reported last week, unsecured debt – such as credit cards and payday loans – has grown exponentially in austerity Britain. A new survey released this week (October 22) has shown just…Read more…
‘We don’t come here to steal’
If the newspapers are to be believed, nearly all of the country’s ills can be attributed to migrants – they steal our jobs, yet at the same time they rely on benefits. And they’re making it…Read more…
Woefully inadequate
The government’s announcement of just £6m in new funding to support the steel town of Scunthorpe is ‘woefully inadequate’ and only deals with the symptoms not the causes of the crisis engulfing the…Read more…
Tax credit cuts: Lords’ battle
Former chancellor Nigel Lawson is the latest among a growing group of senior Tory statesmen who have come out against the government’s plans to slash tax credits next April, which would decimate…Read more…
Episode 10: ‘Everyone is welcome’
Sounds familiar? If you work in the hospitality industry you can join www.unitetheunion.org – if you earn less than the Living Wage (£9.15ph in London, £7.85 outside) for just £2.10 per week….Read more…
‘Do not shut the door on steel’
Not long after the minister Sajid Javid sat down in the Commons, having announced what he was planning to do for our steel industry, one Tata’s UK bosses spoke. The real question the Tata…Read more…
The great backdoor package ‘steal’
The Tories have carried out a ‘smash and grab’ raid on the £80m package promised for retraining and supporting sacked Redcar steelworkers and boosting the local economy. It has just emerged that the…Read more…
Tip tip hooray!
Like pulling at a loose thread, once the tipping abuse scandal broke it wasn’t long before it all started to unravel for some of the UK’s biggest restaurant chains. Unite’s campaign,…Read more…