All the union news that's fit to blog...
Picture collage from yesterday of West Hammers (and a East Ham comrade) “on the knocker” for John Biggs as Labour Mayor for Tower Hamlets.
West Ham Labour Chair, Charlene McLean, led our team “assisted” by her campaign hardened 9 month old baby daught…Read more…
Left: monument to fascist and Nazi collaborator that stands in Lviv, Ukraine. Right: a statue of V.I. Lenin in Kharkov, Ukraine is brought down, September 28, 2014. (RIAN) On May 15, a bill honouring…Read more…
– DPRK Permanent Mission to UN – Failure teaches a lot — this is an axiom that often trips off Obama’s tongue. Then what is the lesson the incumbent U.S. President must learn…Read more…
The importance of manufacturing for a modern economy cannot be overstated. The home economy requires means of production and articles of consumption without interruption. This can be accomplished…Read more…
From 2004 to 2008, more than one in seven manufacturing jobs, nearly 322,000, disappeared in Canada. At the same time, job growth in other industries has been relatively strong. In fact, from 2004 to…Read more…
This week Members of the European Parliament have condemned Africa’s last feudal dictatorship in Swaziland for its repression of trade union and human rights. One of the authors of their…Read more…
The Swazi people experience some of the most horrid living conditions on the planet. Under King Mswati II’s absolute rule, very low living standards have become even lower, very high AIDS/HIV prevalence has become even higher. Poverty is widespread, and the rule of law a distant ideal. We…Read more…
Some more thoughts on May 7th and the aftermath.
First check out this post in TouchStone by Newham’s finest, Nigel Stanley, on the post election day TUC survey.
Nigel argues that this evidence (of voters who considered Labour but ended up votin…Read more…
Sun 24 May 2015
UNISON today calls for Angela Constance, Cabinet
Secretary for Education, to intervene in national pay negotiations for
further education staff, which have all but broken down.
UNISON leaders are astonished at the responses they have recovered from further education employers.
UNISON lodged its pay claim on 3 February 2015. The
union is looking to agree a newRead more…
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2014/4/part/3/enacted
Trade unionists are often complaining about the number of jobs which have been eliminated as a result of the savage spending cuts of the previous Government, now set to be accelerated.So we should probably celebrate the creation of some…Read more…
President Obama may have got his way on ‘fast track’, the legislation he needs to drive through approval of a new generation of free trade agreements but US unions have vowed to continue to fight on…Read more…
The European Convention on Human Rights came into effect in 1953. In the aftermath of the Second World War it sought to set standards on human decency. The convention established the European Court…Read more…
The Example of Audi Flossenbürg concentration camp. All 18,000 prisoners from the camp were used as slave labour in Auto Union plants. The German car manufacturer Audi’s predecessor company…Read more…
The picture collage is from last night’s fundraiser at the South African High Commission in Trafalgar Square for Community HEART and the “Children of a Rainbow Nation”. The development charity Community HEART was founded by former…Read more…
Call to Arms in Defence of the Motherland Stalin’s Spirit, Sound and Strong, Our Army and Our Country! (1939); Motherland Is Calling! (1941) Fight Bravely, Sons of Suvorov and Chapayev (1941)…Read more…
There’s a very telling quote early on in this piece by Jill Treanor on Fidelity’s views on exec pay.
“If you approach executive pay from the point of quantum, you are setting yourself up to fail,” he said.I think this encapsulates why there will continue to be controversy around exec pay. A lot of…Read more…
Ben Chacko has been appointed the editor of the Morning Star making him the youngest editor of the co-operatively owned socialist daily newspaper since the legendary William Rust in 1930. Ben, who…Read more…
Trade unions face a crisis like no other as 5 years of Tory rule beckon. We need a new vision — and we need it now, by Keith Ewing. Shortly after the general election in 2010, I wrote in these…Read more…
300 Unite engineering staff employed by the Finnish company Kone across the UK will be taking strike action over the next two week. Unite engineers at Kone service lifts, doors and escalators across…Read more…
UNISON members employed in the Probation Service will be taking strike action on Thursday 11 June in a dispute over pay following near-unanimous rejection of a “zero per cent” pay offer and a decisive “yes” vote in a national strike ballot. This will be the first national UNISON strike action…Read more…