The European Parliament will vote at last on Wednesday (unless the vote is postponed again, until the autumn) on the most toxic element of modern trade deals: investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). Like the rest of the European trade union movement, we’re calling on MEPs to exclude ISDS,…Read more…
Cameron’s EU renegotiation strategy matters to everyone in Europe
Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous poem about Nazi persecution begins (in its most quoted version): “first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist”. It eventually ends up “Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up…Read more…
A learning and teaching toolkit for vocational education
Professor Bill Lucas will be giving a keynote speech at the ATL’s FE conference 2015 in London on Friday 10 July. Elsewhere in the world, they talk about pedagogy when discussing vocational…Read more…
Tolpuddle in Tuscany: talking Brexit & Grexit
Last night I was sat in a tent for a couple of hours on top of a hill in Tuscany, alongside the current and future Presidents of the European Trade Union Confederation (Ignacio Toxo from…Read more…
MEPs must listen to the people and vote down #ISDS compromise in #TTIP debate
Our MEPs look set at last to debate and vote later this week on the promised resolution on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal between the EU and USA. The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) is calling on MEPs to vote a…Read more…
A workplace savings strategy is a good idea – but tread carefully
New Pensions Minister Ros Altmann has caused a stir with the publication this week of her pre-Election musings about the possible desirability of extending workplace savings beyond pensions. This is a useful and important development because a strategy…Read more…
Ground-breaking agreement
Dock workers working for Blue Arrow at the Port of Liverpool have agreed to a ground-breaking three-year pay deal that lifts the threat of strike action, Unite announced today (July 3). …Read more…
Being on the right side of history
Paloma Faith’s political warm-up act, Fox News’ “braying jackal” and The Sun’s “camera-chasing Guardian goblin”. Owen Jones provokes many descriptions but for many he is Britain’s leading left-wing…Read more…
Farming – even less safe
Crushed by bales of hay, trampled by a bull or run over by a reversing tractor – these are just a handful of the gruesome causes of death in farming, the most peril-fraught sector in the economy….Read more…
Unions are partners in productivity
Unite general secretary Len McCluskey today (July 3) urged the Chancellor to change gear in order to work with the UK’s unions and their six million plus members to renew the country’s…Read more…
Protect our futures
A call for a new asbestos eradication law requiring the safe, planned removal of all the asbestos that still remains in place was made by Unite at a conference in London today (July 3) to mark…Read more…
New MoJ figures reveal assault on access to justice, as spending cuts caused huge drop in legal aid work
The implementation of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) has resulted in “large reductions in legal help workload and expenditure”, reveal new Ministry of Justice (MoJ) statistics. The statistics reveal that government reforms and spending cuts have led directly…Read more…
Iain Duncan Smith tears up the Child Poverty Act – and tells us he’s going to “improve” it
Well, after David Cameron prepared us for savage cuts to Child Tax Credit, lots of people expected that the government was going to change the Child Poverty Act substantially. After all, the last five years of cuts led the Institute for Fiscal Studies …Read more…
‘Act of betrayal’
Unite and the GMB union accused Nestlé UK of acting in ‘bad faith’ today (July 2) as the company announced plans to close its career average pension scheme in a move that unpicks pension changes…Read more…
The ever widening gap
The gap between low income family budgets and what they need for a decent standard of living is now much wider than before the start of the global recession which followed the 2008 banking collapse….Read more…
Could CDC hatch from NEST?
Legislation paving the way for new-style collective pensions was one of several achievements in Steve Webb’s tenure as the Coalition government’s Pensions Minister. Collective Defined Contribution (CDC) pensions are a mainstay of the Dutch pensions system and have been used in other…Read more…
Living Wage demand
A 12-hour strike by Croydon drivers and escorts, who transport clients such as disabled children, will be staged tomorrow (July 3) against the tight-fisted Impact Group which refuses to pay the…Read more…
#TTIP news: 10 reasons why the latest #ISDS compromise is a bad deal
Yesterday the Socialists & Democrats Group in the European Parliament voted 56-34 to endorse a compromise amendment to the Parliament’s draft resolution on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP, the EU-US trade deal), covering the controversial issue of Investor-State…Read more…
Regional CCS clusters needed – UK is approaching a carbon policy black hole
I went to the launch of the Teesside Collective report today in London, on the case for an industrial CCS pipeline in the North East. So did a new DECC Minister (see below). The four ‘anchor’ companies leading the project are steel producer SSI, fertiliser producer GrowHow, plastics firm Lotte…Read more…
Poorest hit hardest by tax
The poorest pay a greater percentage of their income in tax than the richest people in the UK according to new figures from the Office for National Statistics. And by far the biggest drain on the…Read more…