Striking workers at the IT giant Fujitsu are to step up their industrial action with a further two days of strike action on Friday, March 24 and Monday, March 27 as they battle to defend their jobs,…Read more…
Save Bromley libraries
The Bromley public has been asked ‘to rise up and make their voice heard’, otherwise the borough’s 14 libraries will be privatised, with expected severe cutbacks in services. The call to…Read more…
Stress – time to stop blaming the workers
Yesterday I attended the HSE stress summit in London for the launch of their new stress campaign. The conference went well and the main thrust of the conference was on the importance of prevention,…Read more…
Ageing members and reps: the demographics that threaten the future of unions
Most of the commentary on trade union decline concentrates on the fall in overall union membership and density (the proportion of workers who carry a union card). This is obviously cause for great…Read more…
Drop the MIC
Yesterday the TUC responded to the European Commission’s consultation on its plans to develop a global version of the notorious Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). ISDS is the court system found in thousands of trade and investment agreements that foreign investors have used to sue…Read more…
‘End iniquitous practises’ plea
Lorry drivers across Europe and the UK have spoken out about exploitative working conditions and wage cutting in the industry, with some being forced to live in their cabs for months on end. A…Read more…
Emergency Brexit conference
With now daily reminders that a ‘hard’ Brexit will prove extremely challenging for the UK’s car manufacturing industry, Unite is building an alliance between the workforce and the industry to secure…Read more…
Sweet deal
Unite, the foremost experts on negotiating pay in Scotland have launched a blueprint for boosting workers’ pay amid rising inflation and slow pay growth in 2017. Unite negotiated an 8.7 per…Read more…
End ‘Brexit confusion’
Unite general secretary Len McCluskey warned that employers and workers would be left ‘reeling’ by yesterday’s (March 15) evidence given by the Brexit minister David Davis MP to the select…Read more…
Toyota confirms investment
Unite welcomed Toyota’s confirmation of a platform upgrade at its Burnaston plant today (March 16), but urged the government to state now, that it will secure tariff free access to the European…Read more…
‘Vanity project’
David Cameron’s National Citizen Service (NCS) was always an ill-conceived ‘vanity project’, now that it’s been shown to be a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money, it needs a radical re-think if it’s…Read more…
NHS report claims ‘inappropriate rationing’
Patients are being left to die in pain because NHS treatment is being rationed, a shocking new report has found. Palliative care patients are being left for hours without treatment due to…Read more…
North East is England’s insecure work hot spot
The North East is becoming England’s hot spot for insecure work with two out of three new jobs in the last five years falling into this category. One in nine workers in the region are now in insecure jobs: seasonal, casual, temporary or agency work, including zero-hours contracts and low-paid…Read more…
One in ten
Once thought to be a passing trend born of the financial crisis 10 years ago, zero hours contracts — where workers don’t know when or even if they’ll be working from one day to the next — now look…Read more…
‘Outlaw zero hours now’
Exploitative zero-hour contracts have rocketed in the north east of England in recent years, new TUC research reveals. Two thirds of all the new jobs created in the region since 2011 have been…Read more…
‘Stuck in a twilight zone’
Earlier this week, Unite helped uncover an all-too common practice in the restaurant industry at exclusive restaurant chain the Ivy Collection – management charging customers “service charges” that…Read more…
Double whammy means biggest monthly hit to real pay growth since financial crisis
Pay growth down and inflation up means the lowest real pay growth for more than two years, and the sharpest decline on the month since the global recession in 2009. Average earnings growth slowed to 2.3% in January 2017 from 2.6 % in December Inflation…Read more…
Freedom of movement isn’t the only answer to skill shortages
This morning the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) reported the findings of a survey that 8% of the construction workforce – about 175,000 people – could be lost to the UK economy as a result of Britain leaving the European Union. That could interfere seriously with the…Read more…
London calling: the capital dominates jobs growth
Employment is at record levels but despite much talk of economic rebalancing and regional powerhouses, TUC analysis has found that employment growth in London has rocketed ahead of the rest of England since the recession. We also conclude that London has had: the highest growth in employee jobs the…Read more…
The health visitor vanishes?
After the government launched a concerted drive to recruit more health visitors – whose numbers had over the years become dangerously low – a disaster was averted, as targets set in 2011 to train…Read more…