Global unions and textiles brands have announced a new version of the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Safety to continue the original Accord’s work when its remit ends next year. Speaking to delegates to the OECD’s Responsible Business Conduct Forum, IndustriALL and UNIGlobal, represented…Read more…
‘Housing emergency’
Council houses are being sold off nearly three times as quickly as news ones are built, new figures reveal. Under the Tories’ right-to-buy scheme more than 12,000 council houses – worth more…Read more…
Paying the price of ‘bung parliament’
Shameless Tory MPs cheered as they blocked a bid to scrap the pay cap for struggling public sector workers including nurses, firefighters and police. The Conservatives managed to scrape…Read more…
Austerity’s end days?
Public support for austerity has collapsed, according to a new survey which found that Britons are overwhelmingly in favour of increasing health, education and policing budgets. The survey was…Read more…
True cost of gig work
Trade unions have rebutted claims by a government appointed chairman of a review into insecure work – including zero-hour, gig economy and agency roles – that most people “want to work that way.”…Read more…
How do we ensure labour rights are taken seriously in future UK trade policy?
The UK has triggered Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and is negotiating its departure from the European Union. We will have to wait and see what the UK’s future relationship with the EU will look like. But the UK government has repeatedly stated that it wants to leave the EU’s Single Market and…Read more…
Bank warns consumer credit is a “pocket of risk that warrants vigilance”
Tackling the symptoms of the consumer credit boom without addressing the causes risks exacerbating the living standards crisis. Consumer credit was prominent in the yesterday’s assessment of financial stability by the Bank of England. Up front a chart shows the accelerating growth in various…Read more…
‘Why are we waiting?’
Unite accused the government of dragging its feet over its failure to release its report into tips for restaurant staff, as the consultation closed for submissions a year ago today, Tuesday June 27….Read more…
The food we eat
Politicians are being urged to develop a progressive food policy for England that includes improved labour rights in advance of leaving the EU. A coalition of grassroots food and farming…Read more…
I’m being exploited in the gaming industry
My company is exploiting contracted workers and I am one of them. I’m a self-employed Digital marketer for a multinational corporation in the gaming industry. I’ve worked here for two years and I’ve…Read more…
#InsecureWork in modern day Britain: Precarious by name, precarious by nature
Low pay; zero-hours contracts; the gig economy; the introduction of employment tribunal fees. We are living in an age in which the agency, rights and dignity of a significant part of Britain’s workforce are being stripped away. Just last week, we had headlines telling us that the plight of today’s…Read more…
Public cash for future energy works
The report on the financing of the new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point reinforces the case for public money to be committed to future large-scale energy projects, Unite, the country’s largest…Read more…
M&S ‘equal pay for equal work’ row
Deliveries to Marks and Spencer food stores in London and the south east will be disrupted if a strike over ‘equal pay for equal work’ at Hemel Hempstead goes ahead, Unite, the country’s largest…Read more…
End pay restraint call
Public sector workers in the UK were calling for the lifting of seven years’ of pay restraint as part of the European Federation of Public Service Unions’ (EPSU) campaign to mark public services day…Read more…
Stop BA ‘wet lease’ call
Unite today (June 23) is calling on the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to turn down an application by British Airways to charter or ‘wet lease’ nine Qatari registered Airbus that it wants to provide…Read more…
Cruel cap ruled unlawful
In a damning judgement the Tories’ cruel benefit cap has been ruled unlawful by the High Court because it discriminates against single parent families with children under two. Delivering the…Read more…
Facing the sack for being sick: Life in insecure work
A few weeks’ holiday each year and some time off when you’re sick aren’t big asks. Most of us take them for granted. Too often, insecure workers, however, are forced to work while sick and avoid taking holidays. Hundreds of people recently told us about their daily experiences of insecure work. The…Read more…
Unions aren’t to blame for the Southern Rail situation. They’re trying to help.
After much delay (it was completed in December) the DfT have finally published the Gibb Report into the causes of and solutions to the problems that beset the Southern Rail franchise. The report is complex and covers a huge amount of territory in its 1…Read more…
A new deal for women in engineering
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4 reasons to dismiss the Chancellor’s claim of ‘good progress’ on deficit reduction
Philip Hammond has been out and about this week looking for praise for deficit reduction. At his Mansion House speech he claimed: “the deficit is down by three-quarters – and below 3% of GDP”. He tweeted the same line in response to Office for National Statistics figures yesterday (my…Read more…