USDAW

Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers

USDAW calls off Primark strike

A strike by shop-floor staff at Northern Irish branches of discount clothing retailer Primark on Friday 16 March was called off after their union USDAW received “an eleventh-hour offer” from Primark bosses to resolve a pay dispute. The offer would increase the hourly rate of pay for shop-floor workers at Primark from the current £6.84 an hour to £7.14 an hour from April this year. USDAW will now put the offer to ballot. The offer represents significant movement from Primark’s previous imposition of a two-year pay freeze, which workers voted by 88% to strike against. However, USDAW’s decision...

Unilever workers prepared to take further action

Workers at food and cleaning products manufacturer Unilever have begun an 11-day programme of rolling strike action at sites across the UK in an attempt to defeat bosses’ plans to scrap their final-salary pension schemes. It is the joint strategy of the three unions involved: Unite, USDAW and the GMB. The plan is a bold move from workers at a company that had never seen strike action until December 2011. Bob Sutton from Merseyside AWL reports on his visit to a local picket line: “The picket on the production side of the Unilever plant at Port Sunlight [Merseyside] was around 25 strong on the...

Unilever strike over pensions

Unilever workers struck for a day on Friday 9 December as part of their battle to defend their pensions. Members of the Unite, GMB and USDAW unions took action, with the strike being reported solid in most Unilever facilities. Unite said that no engineer had gone to work at Unilever’s Burton site, and USDAW reported the strike 100% solid at the Port Sunlight research and development facility. According to workers, management had been bullying and intimidating people into going to work, including by holding meetings threatening people with losing their jobs, particularly construction workers...

Unilever workers take pensions fight to private sector

A strike by thousands of workers at Unilever (which manufactures well-known food products including Marmite and other household goods) could be the first major set-piece pensions battle in the private sector, after Unite, GMB and USDAW all returned massive majorities for strike action. Workers are attempting to prevent the abolition of their final-salary pension schemes, for both new and existing members. Existing scheme members will retain accrued benefits, but will not receive their full final-salary pensions and will instead be transferred onto career-average pensions on 1 January 2012...

March? Good. But it’s only a start

There were some definite positives to the 16 May “March for Jobs” organised by Unite in central Birmingham. The turnout — up to 8,000 people, mostly rank-and-file workers — was bigger than many marchers were expecting. Unite seeming to have done a decent job of mobilising in workplaces. There were contingents from the Longbridge plant in Birmingham, as well as from steelworkers in Teesside, Visteon workers and Latin American cleaners from London. Other unions, most notably Unison, were also visibly present. The very fact that the demonstration took place at all is encouraging. A contrast to...

TU News in brief

LOCAL GOVERNMENT: The decision by members of Unison’s Local Government National Joint Council to agree to binding arbitration effectively brings this year’s pay dispute to an end. It is a failure for the union and the leftists who lead the sector and will be a bitter disappointment to the members who supported action but wanted a better deal. Arbitration is unlikely to lead to any offer that meets the union’s demands (6%) and may actually include small victories for the bosses — further increases in productivity for perhaps one half of a percentage point increase in this year’s offer. All this...

The Unions after Bournemouth

Even in 2005, Tony Blair’s Labour must have seemed to most voters at least marginally less illiberal and less rigidly attached to inequality than the Tory party of the old Thatcher minister Michael Howard. But what about now? Younger people, looking at the parties afresh, have nothing presented to them which makes Labour seem even demagogically more on the side of the “common people” than the Tories. Sometimes, indeed, the opposite. It has not always been so. The 1959 Labour Party manifesto was issued at a high point of “Butskellism” (the term was coined in 1954) and of the drive by the then...

USDAW elections - vote Broad Left!

By Gerry Bates From 23 January members of the shop and distribution workers' union USDAW will be receiving ballot papers for the election of our union executive and president. This is one of the most important trade union elections in years. USDAW is perhaps the least effective union in the British labour movement. Its leadership have signed away the right to vote on their pay and conditions for nearly a third of its total membership in Tesco. They have blocked a united front with the TGWU against low pay in Sainsbury's, and throughout the industry USDAW officials are happy to stay warm and...

Taming Tesco

Tesco is not a popular company. Not popular with its rivals, who envy its dominance of the grocery trade and are leading a campaign to slow down its expansion and stop its below-cost pricing of certain goods. Not popular with small farmers, who feel ripped off by the company. Not popular with people who have lost Post Offices and other small shops as Tesco’s supermarket building programme transforms Britain’s high streets. It is sometimes not even popular with its customers, when they find the promise of cheap food does not hold good beyond a small number of items. Above all, Tesco is not...

Tesco Workers Fight Back

At the session on partnership Mick Duncan of the T&G described how British bosses today feel they can get away with super-exploitation and this makes the quietism of trade unions today — which goes under the heading of “partnership” so dangerous. USDAW members from Tesco described their experience of “partnership” — it is not good… The Tesco “partnership” deal has been in place for eight years. At first 70 reps were involved in negotiating the wage deal. Then, after those reps refused to acquiesce to a pay deal, the negotiating team shrunk to four. Now ordinary union reps have no say in...

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