Anti-union laws

Facts and figures of the election

The Tories have condemned Labour’s plans as “eye-watering”, “wild”, “reckless”, “unaffordable” and set to “bankrupt the country”, with much of the press singing in tune. Just after Labour’s 2017 election manifesto came out, Solidarity estimated that its proposals would “take some tens of billions of pounds — John McDonnell estimates £50-odd billion — out of the £1,000 billion a year which currently goes to the rich and the very well-off, or to enterprises under their control”. The 2019 manifesto isn’t out until Thursday 21 November, but the indications are it will be a similar document to 2017...

Industrial news thumbnail reports

UCL, LouLou’s, St Mary’s Outsourced workers at University College London struck on 19 November, after voting for industrial action by a 98% majority. The workers, who include cleaners, porters, and security guards, are members of the Independent Workers’ union of Great Britain (IWGB), and are striking to demand equality with directly-employed staff. IWGB members at “LouLou’s”, the exclusive celebrity members’ club in Mayfair, have also voted to strike. Their threat of industrial action has already secured two of their three demands – the reversal of outsourcing and the London living wage...

Repeal all anti-union laws!

The High Court injunction won by Royal Mail to block strikes by postal workers in the Communication Workers Union (CWU) highlights the undemocratic nature of Britain’s anti-trade union laws, and the urgent need for the whole labour movement to renew our fight for their abolition. Royal Mail claimed that the union’s social media campaign, and its encouragement for members to bring ballot papers to work and write their votes there, breached the 1984 Trade Union Act, which requires that members be able to vote in ballots without “interference” from the union. The 1984 Act was one of a succession...

Free our unions!

As long as there have been capitalists (employers running business for private profit) and workers, there has been a struggle between them. About how long the working day is. About how much we’re paid. About how hard we’re made to work. As bosses squeezed workers to get more profit out of us, workers organised to fight back. An individual worker has little power, but when we organise collectively into trade unions we can force concessions from the bosses. When workers in a workplace, an industry, or a trade group together in an organisation (with regular meetings, subscriptions, elected...

Labour Campaigns Together

A coalition of grassroots Labour Party campaigns has launched a website, Labour Campaigns Together . Its aim is to press the Labour leadership to include left-wing policies voted through at the 21-25 September Labour conference in Brighton in its manifesto and in the actions of a Labour government. The key policies are: • A just transition to a decarbonised economy by 2030 • Build 100,000 social rented council homes a year • Transition to a 32-hour working week with no loss of pay • Protect and extend the rights of migrants • End all forms of criminalisation of rough sleeping • Free our unions...

Sixth form colleges strike

We’ll be striking in 25 colleges on 17 October, and then again on 5 and 20 November. The feeling I pick up is that oversized classes, workload, management bullying, interpretation of directed time agreements are the big issues, exacerbated by issues of funding and pay. Sixth Form teachers’ pay has fallen behind school teachers’ pay. We probably need a 15% rise to get us back to the relative level of 2008. There’s been a general pay freeze, but that has been eased in schools and continued in the Sixth Form sector. The government is trumpeting the end of austerity, but the Sixth Form sector is...

Going forward from 20 September

The momentum of the Climate Strike on 20 September should tell the labour movement that now is the time to take climate change seriously as a class issue seriously. Capitalism sees the environment and natural resources as commodities to be exploited, the same way it see human labour. Just 100 major companies have been responsible for over 70% of all greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. Climate change is, in short, caused by the drive for profit. It is caused by capitalism. For the first time in this wave of school-student climate strikes, a number of workplaces organised some forms of action —...

Schools dispute shows effect of anti-union laws

What effect have the anti-union laws had on the campaign to boycott high-stakes testing in primary schools? As the mover of the successful motion at National Education Union (NEU) conference which called for the union to ballot for a boycott of high-stakes testing in primary schools, I was invited to the national working group on the indicative ballot. At the first meeting of the working group, we had a session addressed by the union lawyer. She pointed out that we could not ballot our members to boycott the tests on the grounds that they do harm to children. That would make the action...

Spread the action for 20 September!

On 20 September, date of the next global school student climate strike, workers at a school in Lewisham will do a photo-shoot with their union group after school, and supporters of Solidarity will then try to persuade as many of them as possible to join a local demo. Cambridge UCU activists and Solidarity readers are organising a mass lunchtime photo-shoot. There will have been school student walk outs and rallies that morning, and another rally that evening. In the same city, some schools are having early “Power-downs” that afternoon – initiated by staff. Stevenage looks set to see their...

Industrial news in brief

UCU ballot opens University staff belonging to UCU are being balloted for strike action this autumn over pay equality, job security, workload and pay deflation. Working conditions in higher education have been deteriorating. The gender pay gap is over 15%; over 100,000 staff across the sector are on fixed-term contracts; academic staff work over 50 hours in a typical week; and in the past ten years pay has declined by 20% in real terms. In 2018 an impressive strike forced pre-92 universities to back down on massive pension cuts, but since then employers have refused to compromise and now they...

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