One in four people suffer with mental health issues but 75 per cent get no help at all. And if that’s not bad enough, mental health patients are dying 15 to 20 years earlier than others and…Read more…
Children’s charity set to strike
Senior executives at Action for Children were being urged to resolve a long-running pay dispute through the conciliation service Acas today (February 15), as members of Unite overwhelmingly backed…Read more…
Public sector jobs cuts hit the hardest in areas that can at least afford it
The TUC has commented before on how London has disproportionately benefitted from employment growth; this post discusses how the position has been exacerbated by public sector job cuts. Public and private sector contributions to employment growth, 2010…Read more…
Shoulder to shoulder for steel
Thousands of steel workers were joined by their bosses as they marched in Brussels today (15 February) demanding action to stop the dumping of cheap Chinese steel. About 5,000 protestors,…Read more…
Earning your own poverty
More working people in the UK are living in poverty than when the global financial meltdown reached its apex nearly eight years ago. Despite an unemployment rate that continues to drop – it is…Read more…
TUC Economic Quarterly 8
This quarterly TUC report provides an analysis of UK economic and labour market developments over recent months. The growth rate of the UK economy slowed in 2015, following a more rapid expansion in 2014. This slowdown was common to a number of countri…Read more…
The Government’s latest assault: Access to legal representation for injured people
The Government wants to increase the small claims limit in road traffic cases from £1,000 to £5,000. This will mean that someone injured in road traffic accident with a claim at less than £5,000 would not be able to recover the cost of having a solicitor advise them. Consumers injured through no…Read more…
Mandatory gender pay gap reporting – just two more years to wait!
Today the government has finally published draft regulations that will require large private sector employers to publish their gender pay gap. It is intending to commence these regulations from 1 October 2016 but companies will have until 30 April 2018…Read more…
I heart my union
In Part 5 of our Heart Unions series, we speak to an engineer who knows that it’s not just workers who heart unions – businesses do, too. The present government has styled trade unions…Read more…
Stop the cheap steel flood march
Unite members working for Tata Steel in the UK will join thousands of steelworkers from across Europe in Brussels on Monday (February 15) demanding urgent action to stop the flood of cheap imports…Read more…
‘A very small step’
Nearly 50 after the Ford Dagenham sewing machinists strike, when heroic women (pictured above) walked out and paved the way for legislation that made unequal pay between men and women unlawful, the…Read more…
Fighting for fair pay at Express Newspapers
On the face of it, a shop steward negotiating with Richard Desmond is about as superfluous a role as Donald Trump’s equality and diversity advisor. The media mogul, labelled Britain’s greediest…Read more…
Counting the other costs of baseline assessment
Who knew that a test for four-year-olds could be so expensive? The “basic” cost of administering the baseline assessment has been reimbursed by the DfE in this academic year 2015/2016…Read more…
All that is rotten and rancid
‘Tweet in haste, repent at leisure.’ When he tapped out his boast – #Google tax bill is a victory for the action we’ve taken – that fateful Saturday morning last month little did…Read more…
Support defence jobs plea
Growing frustrations with the government’s short term political decision-making have led Unite defence sector members to join with leading industry figures to discuss the growing frustrations at a…Read more…
Sports Direct: Unite’s ‘have a heart’ plea
Unite campaigners will be handing in a giant Valentine’s card and a 20,000 strong petition at Sport Direct’s headquarters tomorrow (February 13), calling on the retailer to ‘have a heart’ by putting…Read more…
Patients will suffer most
Jeremy Hunt’s announcement today (February 11) that he intends to impose new contracts on junior doctors is the ‘nuclear option’ that will do nothing to improve patient safety. Unite said that…Read more…
Tipping practices crack-down call
Labour MP Paula Sherriff called for a debate on the business department’s consultation on tips and gratuities in a parliamentary question today (February 11), in light of the most recent service…Read more…
Tories’ volte-face steel shame
The UK has been haemorrhaging steel jobs over the last seven months – by the latest count, more than 5,000 posts have been axed as the steel industry teeters on the brink of total collapse. …Read more…
Travelling public safety fight
An estimated 8,000 black cab drivers clogged the streets around Whitehall in London yesterday (February 10) in demonstration against light-touch regulation of private hire apps such as Uber. Unite…Read more…