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.

Model motion for run-up to 30 November

Model motion for use in TU branches and Trades Councils in the run-up to the 30 November strike. Click here to download the motion as a PDF. If you've passed the motion, please let us know by emailing skillz_999@hotmail.com (you can also email if you want help advise on implementing the decisions, or help with anything else). This branch believes: 1) To win the pensions battle, the labour movement will need to mobilise on a scale not seen for a generation. 2) It will take more than isolated, one-day protest strikes to beat the government. Sustained strike action as well as rolling and...

Construction workers' fight: "unofficial or official, legal or illegal, we need to get work on the big sites stopped"

The latest in the series of weekly, early-morning demonstrations at prominent London construction sites saw hundreds of construction workers and their supporters take over Oxford Street, bringing traffic to a standstill. The workers are fighting the attempt by seven of the industry's biggest contractors to leave the Joint Industry Board and impose their own national agreement, which would see some electricians take a 35% pay cut. The demonstrations have been inspiring, drawing hundreds each week and defying police to occupy roads or invade parts of building sites. Today, two activists were...

Construction workers fight bosses' attacks

200 construction workers protested at the Stratford Westfield shopping centre on Wednesday 31 August as part of an ongoing campaign against the proposal by 8 major construction contractors to rip up the national agreement and leave the Joint Industry Board (JIB) in March 2012. All 8 companies are accused of blacklisting union activists; their plans are nothing short of an attempt to union-bust on a grand scale in the construction industry. Rank-and-file platform 'Site Worker' writes: “The employers propose 3 new grades for electricians: metalworker £10.50 per hour, Wiring £12 [and] Terminating...

Industrial news in brief

6,500 workers at Tory-controlled Shropshire Council face the sack as their employer becomes the latest local authority to use the threat of mass redundancies as a way to undermine collective bargaining and bully workers into accepting worse conditions. Workers must agree to a 5.4% pay cut by 30 September if they want to keep their jobs, as the council seeks to make £76 million of cuts. Unfortunately the response from Unison, which represents 40% of all workers at the authority, has been less than stirring. “We are advising our members to do nothing”, Unison spokesman Alan James said. City...

30 June round-up

Public sector pensions strikers will be joined on June 30 by workers taking action in a number of local disputes. In south London, journalists continue to strike over job losses at Newsquest. 33 workers took to the picket line in Sutton on 27 June, the second strike in a month. Teachers’ unions NUT and ATL will be striking at Strode’s College in Egham. Students from Royal Holloway will be going to the pickets, and students in the college will be walking out of classes. Then in the afternoon, hundreds of strikers from across Surrey, including representatives from Save Our Services in Surrey...

The battle after 30 June: how to win

Some recent disputes have, to great effect, employed the sorts of tactics and strategies that can turn an industrial dispute into a real weapon, used to force concessions from bosses rather than just to register a protest. A dispute on London Underground to win the reinstatement of sacked union reps, strikes at Rawmarsh school in Rotherham against job cuts, and the Southampton council workers’ strikes, are proving that there is an alternative way of conceiving of and running industrial disputes . In the case of London Underground and Rawmarsh they have already won. What are they doing...

Seize the loot - or be looted!

Ed Miliband says the unions should not strike on 30 June because they risk alienating public opinion. Thousands of teachers, civil servants and lecturers know he is wrong. Striking on 30 June — and organising for further strikes— is right and necessary. Striking is the most effective way to stop the government from destroying public sector pensions, reducing health and social services to a “death's door only” minimum and condemning millions to a “choice” between penury or becoming cheap labour for multi-millionaires. Striking is necessary because the government wants to negotiate only on...

New lessons in online campaigning

What makes some online campaigns popular, while others are not? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because LabourStart is today running a large number of campaigns at the same time. Some are wildly successful (in terms of the number of messages sent). Others, less so. A campaign we’re currently running in support of Canadian postal workers has become the largest one we ever ran. After only four days online, it already had over 10,000 supporters. But it could not really be called the most important or urgent campaign. We are campaigning, for example, in support of two jailed trade...

"Facility" clampdown is anti-union

“Ministers are threatening to end the practice of part-time and full-time union officials working in Whitehall departments and quangos”, reports the Financial Times (27 June). The threatened attack is on “facility time”, the arrangement by which employers release union reps from part or all of their regular work to do union duties. The purpose is to weaken unions. The basis of “facility time” is the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1992, which mandates employers to allow union reps time off for such things as representing members on individual grievances. In larger public sector workplaces...

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