Trade union issues

Issues for workers and our trade unions - opposing victimisation, fighting for better pay and conditions, health & safety, rank-and-file organising, and more.

Were the University of London outsourced workers right to leave Unison?

This article was written in response to a piece in Socialist Review. The author has also requested that it be published there. We host it in our website in the interests of furthering the debate. The move of Senate House cleaners, other outsourced staff, and their supporters to leave Unison en masse and form a University of London branch of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB), after the annulment of their elections, has sparked heated debate within trade union circles, especially among Unison activists. Sandy Nicoll, branch secretary of SOAS Unison, contributed to this debate...

Industrial news in brief

East Midlands Trains workers to ballot The Rail, Maritime, and Transport workers union (RMT) is balloting train manager, conductor, and stations grades members working for East Midlands Trains for strikes over a variety of issues, including the victimisation of RMT rep Ruth Strong. The union says the company has taken a “deliberately aggressive attitude” to negotiations over ongoing engineering work at Nottingham station, and accuses East Midlands Trains of “unilaterally ripping up” a number of procedural and conditions-of-service agreements. RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: “The...

Appeal fund for injured activist

Salford TUC has launched an appeal fund for George Tapp, a retired construction worker who suffered head injuries and two broken legs when he was run over during an anti-blacklisting action in Manchester. Police claim George climbed onto the car’s bonnet, but witnesses say the driver was “driving like a lunatic”, and that his actions seemed obviously deliberate. Activists from the Blacklist Support Group and the Unite Construction Rank-and-File have been organising a series of actions around the country to highlight the issue of blacklisting in the construction industry. To support George’s...

Outsourced workers launch online campaign

Outsourced workers at the University of London have joined forces with trade union campaigning website LabourStart to demand sick pay, holidays, and pensions. The online petition is coordinated in conjunction with the "3 Cosas" ("3 Things") campaign, as well as Unison branches at Birkbeck and SOAS. Click here to support the campaign. The "3 Cosas" workers' union branch, the Independent Workers union of Great Britain (IWGB) University of London branch, is working with the University of London students' union ULU to coordinate a "summer of action", involving protests, rallies, and other direct...

Leading trade unionist Steve Hedley accused of domestic violence

Caroline Leneghan, an RMT member, has publicly accused her former partner Steve Hedley, who is Assistant General Secretary of the RMT, of serious domestic violence. She says: “I have decided to make a public statement about this because of his public position in the union and because I want to encourage other women to come forward who have faced similar abuse”. Her statement also contains detailed criticisms of her union’s handling of an investigation into complaints against Hedley: “I was distressed and astonished at the questions I was asked and the investigating officer displayed a total...

Workers' solidarity in Australia

Solidarity spoke to Emma Kerin, Communications Officer of the National Union of Workers in Australia, about class struggle down under. Emma has been involved in the campaign to defend victimised trade unionist Bob Carnegie. While there are obviously industry specific issues such as public sector cuts and privatisation, or health and safety for truck drivers and care workers, or being able to earn a living wage for minimum wage earners: there are two key issues affecting Australian workers across industries. The first is insecure employment models; whether it’s labour hire and other third party...

How workers' action freed the Pentonville Five

Vic Turner carried aloft as the Pentonville Five are released From Workers' Liberty magazine 41, July 1997 Part two, on the role of the left, here It is July 1972. With the union leaders safely in talks with Tory Prime Minister] Heath and knuckling under to his Industrial Relations Act (IRA), the Tories now went for the real union power on the docks: the rank and file. They were going to make an example of five dockers from east London to cauterise resistance to the long-term running down of the docks, to stop the unofficial blacking (refusal to unload) of lorries and picketing at the...

Close the detention centres!

Immigrants facing deportation staged protests in late December at the Morton Hall detention centre in Lincolnshire. Some detention centre staff were injured. Morton Hall is used to detain “illegal” migrants before they are deported. Around 50 were involved in a protest about conditions in the centre on Christmas Day, while 40 were involved in a further incident on 30 December. Initial reports, including from the Prison Officers Association (POA), which represents detention centre staff, spoke of a “riot”, but an independent inquiry has since suggested that the POA’s version of events was...

Tories attempt to bully low-paid out of striking

Low-paid striking workers will have their tax credits reduced as part of the Tories’ reforms. Workers paid less than £13,000 per year can currently get a bit more tax credit if their income drops because they’re on strike, as well as if it drops for any other reason. Tory minister Iain Duncan Smith said that, in future, low-paid workers would have to “pay the price” for choosing to take strike action. Unions have condemned the move as a deliberate attempt to intimidate lower-paid workers out of taking industrial action. They have also pointed out that, if the pay increases workers often strike...

Police against Tories

On 10 May 20,000 coppers joined a Police Federation demonstration against cuts and reforms. On the same day just 500 public sector workers joined London’s strike day rally against pension cuts. Trade unionists should take note here — the police mobilisation put that of the labour movement to shame. In 2010 Tom Winsor, former government advisor on rail regulation under New Labour, was commissioned by Home Secretary Theresa May to review police pay and conditions. His report proposes a fundamental overhaul of recruitment and promotion structures, pay and conditions of service — including...

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