All the union news that's fit to blog...
Unite is inviting everyone to head to Barnsley this weekend to mark 100 years since the General Strike. The strike that brought the country to a stand still in 1926 is a moment in working history that still echoes in today’s fights for fair pay, secure work, and dignity on the job. Organisers have pulled […]
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Unite activists joined thousands of trade unionists from across the world in a day of action supporting US baristas, and telling Starbucks to wake up and smell the coffee. In Glasgow, Norwich and London Unite activists gathered in solidarity with US workers as part of the Starbucks Global Day of Action on Wednesday (10 Dec). […]
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I last visited Georgia a bit more than a year ago. National elections were just days away, and despite aggressive campaigning by the ruling Georgian Dream party, everyone I spoke to was convinced that the…Read more…
Last week I was contacted by the Brussels-based European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF) about a possible campaign in the Netherlands. A local leader of the FNV, the national trade union centre, had been sacked after…Read more…
Two leaders of the union representing Serbian air traffic controllers were recently sacked as part of a union-busting campaign. Ranko Radovanovic (president) and Igor Hajderpašić (secretary), leaders of the Sindikat kontrole letenja (SKL), were dismissed…Read more…
Unite members have sent a message of solidarity to the Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI), who this year has been celebrating its 20th-anniversary, marking two decades of unwavering dedication to workers’ rights and global solidarity. The BWI was founded on 9 December 2005 and has evolved into a global workers’ voice and united force, […]
The post BWI celebrates 20 years appeared first on Unite Live.
I learned two things this morning that came as a surprise. The first is that there are 1,700 primary schools in England that do not have a library. And second, under the law, every single…Read more…
Do street protests matter? Many people in the UK are still stung by how gigantic demonstrations two decades ago could not stop Tony Blair from joining the US-led invasion of Iraq. And today in Israel,…Read more…
For many years, people in the U.K. could comfortably boast that unlike continental European countries, we didn’t have Nazis. We had a far Right, of course, but even that struggled to win seats in Parliament. …Read more…
A little more than a century ago, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya left their two-room apartment at Spiegelgasse 14 in Zurich, never to return. They travelled to Russia through Germany at the…Read more…
A festival celebrating trade union solidarity took place in Leyton on Sunday, and Unite Community members were at the heart of it. Unions East took place in Coronation Gardens under the banner of “Celebrating solidarity in our community and our workplaces” and pulled in a big crowd. Despite the heatwave hitting the area there was […]
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Dan Gallin, the former general secretary of the International Union of Foodworkers (IUF) passed away at his home in Geneva at the end of last month at the age of 94. He was to me,…Read more…
Unite branches across North London, joined with Trades Councils, unions and campaign groups in a show of solidarity with striking Birmingham bin workers last night (Wednesday 21), at a time when the Birmingham Bin Strike is escalating. Unite branches including the London Building Workers Branch (LE UG005), Haringey Craft Workers (LE/UG130) Wood Green Bus Garage […]
The post Backing bin workers appeared first on Unite Live.
Construction workers and activists gathered at the Building Worker statue at Tower Hill in central London this Monday (April 28) for an International Workers Memorial Day commemoration. The annual Unite event is sadly still as relevant this year as ever, with the latest statistics showing that construction is the most dangerous sector to have a […]
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Public opinion polls in Israel consistently show that Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government cannot win the next election. The parties of the centre and left are consistently polling higher than those of the right. And it’s…Read more…
The Left has a long and proud history of anti-militarism. One cannot help but look back in admiration at the American Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs who went to prison after making an anti-war speech…Read more…
Last week I interviewed Lizaveta Merliak, who runs Salidarnast, a group campaigning in support of the embattled independent trade union movement in Belarus. Liza was an activist in the Belarusian unions who was forced to…Read more…
Unite activists have been telling Veolia shareholders across Europe that they will not go away and will continue to fight for recognition at the French waste giant’s Sheffield waste depot. As Veolia continues to refuse union recognition for workers at the depot in Yorkshire, Unite has continued to escalate the dispute. This week activists travelled […]
The post Unite takes its message across Europe appeared first on Unite Live.
At the start of the Cold War, in 1952, a book came out in the USA and Britain entitled “The Russian Menace to Europe”. The authors were listed as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A…Read more…
As Karl Marx famously wrote in 1852, “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as…Read more…