16 years is too long. Justice for the Miami 5 Now!

Tonight many UNISON members and other trade unionists will attend the annual Candlelight Vigil for the Miami Five outside the US Embassy starting at 6pm. Speakers include a special guest from Cuba Aleida Guevara, daughter of Ché, and UNISON AGS Roger McKenzie. Aleida attended Saturday’s Latin America 2014 conference where she spoke at a packed session on Cuban internationalism. She graduated as a doctor whilst on a medical mission in Nicaragua, served in Ecuador and Angola and recently volunteered to go to Africa as part of the Ebola mission.

Giving Scotland a reason to back Labour for social justice

As the dust still swirls after the referendum, the challenge is to bring the focus back to the Scotland we want to see now. Of course the ‘neverendum’ campaign will continue but at some point we will have to address what we do with the powers we have now and will gain soon.

If, as advertised, it has all been about getting the powers to deliver on social justice, some have raised the question as to whether it really matters which party is in power in Scotland so long as it uses those powers to deliver.

Recovery bypassing workers in low-paid Britain

The LRD's annual earnings survey finds that average earnings growth is on the floor with little improvement in pay settlements over the past 12 months: 'Since the 2008-09 recession, the UK has experienced a “historically unprecedented” fall in the value of earnings compared with consumer price (CPI) inflation, even more compared with retail price (RPI) inflation. The latest figures show average weekly earnings growth of just 0.7%. The Bank of England’s chief economist Andy Haldane described the current position as “an extended period of agony [that] is virtually unprecedented”.
    Part of the problem is that the minority of workers who’ve not been in continuous employment since the recession have seen little or no growth in their earnings, but that seems to be dampening down the wider labour market. As the TUC put it, the economy is proving to be “very good at creating low-paid jobs, but struggling to create the better-paid work”.'
http://www.lrdpublications.org.uk/publications.php?pub=WR&iss=1742&id=idp2055280

Plight of a migrant worker by Khalid Hameed

wake up in the morning
head out to look
for work
stand in the corner of
the street
waiting for cars passing by
to pick you up
and take you to veg
gardens
as a day labor,
I am that forgiven one
that you need me
when you can’t find
anyone
as I fulfill your greed
of cheap labor
when I am not required
anymore,
then you blame me
that I am a thief
stealing all the jobs
from a mythical
breed of workers
that no one has seen,