Unite

Setback in local government

The ballot by the public services union Unison of its local government members for industrial action for an improvement on the real-wage-cut 1.75% offer on 2021 pay closed on 14 January in England and Wales. Unison has not published the results yet, but they are widely available. 70.2% voted for strikes, 29.8% no, on a turnout of 14.5%, far short of the 50% turnout required under the Tories’ Trade Union Act 2016. The GMB, another union with members in local government, is doing an indicative ballot. Unite is currently balloting members for industrial action, with closing dates from 17 February...

Jack Dromey and the Grunwick strike

Birmingham Erdington Labour MP Jack Dromey has died unexpectedly aged 73. Long a Transport and General Workers’ Union full-timer before he became an MP in 2010, before that Dromey played a central and generally positive role in one of the most important working-class struggles in British history – the 1976-8 Grunwick strike . The book about the strike Dromey co-authored, Grunwick: the Workers’ Story , is very much worth reading. In the 1970s he had CP-type politics and was close to the CP, but was a genuine class-struggle militant. Subsequently he moved a long way to the right. As a T&G...

Workers’ battles can beat bosses

A number of countries, including the US and France, are seeing waves or flurries of strikes as workers try to gain or make up ground as economies revive after lockdowns. Here, pay in the private sector is rising but inflation is rising faster, with the left-Blairite Resolution Foundation noting that "real wages are already falling and are likely to continue to do so for the next six months”. In the public sector the government is seeking to impose even more real-terms cuts after more than a decade of huge cumulative losses. There is a wave of attacks on pay, terms and conditions as bosses try...

Unison local government: vote yes for action

Unison members in schools and local government will be receiving their ballot papers in the week starting 5 December. The union has started balloting 370,000 council and school staff for strike action over the “inadequate” pay offer. It is calling on its members to vote for strike action. Unison, GMB, and Unite have called for a 10% pay rise for council workers. Members in all three unions have voted to reject the offer. Unite are due to ballot soon, and the GMB has gone back to members for further consultation. Unison head of local government Mike Short said: “This inadequate pay offer shows...

Building organisation at Barnoldswick

Workers at the Rolls Royce site in Barnoldswick have voted to accept a new offer from the company in their dispute over staffing at the site. Ross Quinn, a Unite officer involved in the dispute, spoke to Solidarity . The key concession in the settlement is the extension of the no-compulsory-redundancies guarantee to five years. That’s a three-year extension on what was on the table previously. The deal also includes an agreement for a company furlough scheme for up to 70 workers, which is a kind of baseline insurance policy if work streams dry up in future. But that’s not something either...

Barnoldswick workers to vote

Workers at the Rolls Royce plant in Barnoldswick, Lancashire, will vote on a new settlement that includes a five-year no compulsory redundancies guarantee, and a commitment to 10 years’ viable manufacturing at the plant. The settlement emerges from lengthy negotiations, following renewed strikes by engineers at the plant in July and August, and a subsequent vote by the rest of the plant’s workforce to take further action. Strikes in 2020 appeared to have won guarantees to protect jobs, but the dispute resumed in spring 2021 when Rolls Royce bosses announced they were reneging on commitments...

Unite strengthens policy on anti-union laws

At the Policy Conference in Liverpool (18-22 October) of Unite the Union, one of the most important composites passed was about the anti-union laws. Previous policy conferences decided for repeal of all the anti-union laws including the Thatcher ones. This conference passed some concrete policy about a campaign on those laws and on the threatened further “minimum service” legislation attacking transport workers. The composite referred to breaking these laws if necessary, and a special conference if and when the Tories introduce the “minimum service” legislation. It commits Unite to push the...

Local government and health pay: build the campaigns!

Members of GMB and Unite have voted to reject the local government pay offer, with similar percentages to Unison members, who voted by 79% to reject a 1.75% pay increase (2.75% for those on pay point 1). Ballot papers are scheduled to go out to Unison members in early December, asking whether they want to strike to secure an improved pay offer. The union will be asking members to vote yes. Meanwhile, the Joint Trade Union Side have written to the Employers’ Side, asking them to return to the negotiations and make an improved pay offer. Since 2010 the value of local government pay has fallen by...

Negotiations at Barnoldswick

Negotiations between Unite union reps and bosses at the Rolls Royce plant in Barnoldswick, Lancashire, continue, following workers’ rejection of management’s latest proposal for ending the dispute against job cuts. After strikes in 2020 against job cuts and offshoring secured an agreement to retain work at the site, the dispute was sparked back into life this year after management reneged on their commitments. After a small section of the workforce launched new strikes, the rest of the workforce also voted to take industrial action. Union officers say they are cautiously optimistic about the...

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