Union organising

Since 15 January, Higher Education (HE) members of the University and College Union (UCU) have been voting in the pay and equality ballot. The ballot covers 143 universities and will close on 22 February. In last term’s ballots (counted university by university) on this same issue, most UCU branches failed to meet the 50% turnout requirement imposed by the Trade Union Act 2016. This time, the ballot is aggregated, so all results will be counted together. Although UCU activists are working energetically to get the vote out, members face considerable difficulties meeting the turnout threshold...

Deliveroo riders in Bristol will strike on Friday 18 January, demanding higher pay and other demands which managers have repeatedly ignored. This follows a national courier strike on October 4, and a spontaneous strike in Bristol on December 11, which brought Bristol Deliveroo to a standstill. Riders are only paid per delivery, not guaranteed a minimum wage per hour or any workers rights. Hourly and weekly pay have steadily reduced. They plan repeated and escalating strikes until they win their demands. Many struggle financially to participate. They're planning to build a strike fund — watch...

A potentially very positive consequence of the ATL/NUT merger for the National Education Union (NEU) is that it removed the barrier that the National Union of Teachers imposed on itself not to recruit non¬teaching staff in schools. By doing so the possibility has been created of much more effective workplace organisation in schools. The NEU now claims over 450,000 members, including a significant and growing number of non-teaching staff. The task now is to build an integrated, united and militant union that works for all its members. Unfortunately, led by the dominant and misnamed Socialist...

A review of Stan Weir's writings, 'Singlejack Solidarity'. "The term singlejack... On-the-job organisers for the Western Federation of Miners and the Industrial Workers of the World... used it to describe that method of organising where dedicated advocates are developed one at a time on a highly personalised basis..." The leading Minneapolis Trotskyist Ray Dunne was a prime example. An IWW shop steward met Dunne, aged 15, in a lumberjack camp. He identified Dunne as willing to stand up against the boss, and also thoughtful. The IWWer (according to a later interview by Dunne with Harry Ring)...

On Thursday 1 November, thousands of Google workers staged an international walk-out to protest against the company’s handling of sexual harassment. Thousand of workers from cities as far apart as New York, London, Berlin, Zurich, Singapore, Tokyo and more, took part. Many of them took to the streets, or gathered in squares and parks holding placards with slogans like “O.K. Google, really?”. The action followed revelations that Google had paid millions of dollars in exit packages to male executives found to have committed sexual harassment and had covered up the incidents. Most notably Google...

On Saturday 29 September 2018, Labor Notes, an organisation of US-based trade union activists held its annual Troublemakers’ School in New York City. Established in 1979, Labor Notes is famous for its publications and workshops on rank-and-file activism. In their own words, they are “the voice of union activists who want to put the movement back in the labor movement”. With over 350 attendees, this year’s school was the largest yet. The opening plenary, featuring Alexandra Bradbury of Labor Notes, Mark Cohen of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, and Jia Lee of the Movement of Rank-and-File...

Workers from McDonalds, Wetherspoons and TGI Fridays all took part in an international co-ordinated day of action for £10 per hour and union rights on Thursday 4 October. In London they were joined by Deliveroo and Uber Eats riders, and supporters from across the labour movement. At their rally and demonstration in Leicester Square they were joined by traffic wardens in Camden Unison, who are also currently on strike for a £11.15 an hour. Solidarity action took place in cities across the UK. The first Wetherspoons strike was also coordinated from two sites in Brighton. Around 250 people made...

Pic: The Warehouse Workers' Resource Centre marches with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights on May Day 2018 in Southern California Review of "Choke Points: Logistics Workers Disrupting the Global Supply Chain", edited by Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Immanuel Ness The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach employ about 14,000 dockworkers, with the number fairly static as throughput has risen. The whole logistics industry around those ports employs over 500,000, with the number increasing. Over 100,000 work in some 300 warehouses in one of the world's biggest centres of warehousing, the Inland...

PCS, the largest civil service union is in the middle of an industrial ballot on pay. which is running from June 18 to July 23. Over 130,000 members of the union working for government departments and their agencies and responsible bodies have been balloted in the wake of the government's refusal to lift the cap on pay or even enter into negotiations with the unions. This is the first national statutory ballot PCS have run since the new 50% turnout threshold for union ballots came into force. The decision to ballot on pay, voted on almost unanimously at the union’s conference in May follows a...

Workers at five McDonalds restaurants (in Crayford, Cambridge, Manchester, and two in Watford) will strike on Tuesday 1 May. Richard, a Bakers’ Food and Allied Workers’ Union (BFAWU) activist from Watford, spoke to Solidarity. I first got involved through one of our organisers, Gareth. I’ve been a member of the union since before the September strike but we didn’t have the numbers in Watford at that point to ballot, but I attended the strike committee meeting in Crayford. I helped build up the campaign with workers from the other stores. I joined the BFAWU online when I started working at...