Unions in 2014 - big chance or no chance?

In a Guardian interview over the holiday period TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady was upbeat on union prospects next year: ‘Our big chance will be in 2014 because we are going to see confidence return as unemployment dips and the economy recovers’. Not for the first time the TUC is looking to the USA for a campaign model - where unions such as SEIU have formed impressive worker led coalitions of civic groups and local politicians in support of workers’ rights in fast food chains.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/26/tuc-frances-ogrady-rebuild-union-membership

UN report calls for end to Israeli settlements

A UN fact finding mission into illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory has called for Israel to end all settlement activity without preconditions and is recommending tough measures against Israel as well as private companies involved in settlements:
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/
HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session22/A-HRC-22-63_en.pdf
  Last week leaders of seven UK trade unions, including UNISON, called for urgent action by the British Government and large retailers to stop imports from the illegal Israeli settlements:

TUC support for Palestine provokes predictable backlash

Iraq war apologist and professional iconoclast Nick Cohen fulminates in the Jewish Chronicle against the near unanimous decision of last month’s TUC Congress to call for an end to NATO bombing in Libya and for the TUC to review relations with Histadrut, the Israeli union federation:
http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/columnists/56132/a-foul-smell-britains-unions

Mentioned in Dispatches – Wikileaks Cables & UK Unions

The latest cachet of US diplomatic cables published on line by Wikileaks includes several references to UK unions including UNISON. In particular they reveal that the highly effective union boycott of Hilton hotels in 2007 led to concern by the hotel group that ‘a conflict between US sanctions on Cuba and UK law banning discrimination, has instructed its employees not to violate local UK law, putting them on a potential collision course with US law’ http://wikileaks.org/cable/2007/02/07LONDON780.html

Israel anti-boycott law an attack on freedom of expression

A law passed by the Israeli Knesset (parliament) making it an offence to call for a boycott against the state of Israel or its West Bank settlements will have a chilling effect on freedom of expression in Israel, Amnesty International said yesterday. http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/israel-anti-boycott-law-attack-freedom-expression-2011-07-12

South African Media Watchdog Says Israel Can Be Called An Apartheid State

A ruling by South Africa’s Advertising Standards Authority gives hope to those facing spurious attacks of anti-Semitism by the Israeli lobby when legitimately criticising Israeli political and military attacks on Palestinians. In a report from Australians for Palestine, Sonja Karkar said “That this decision was reached in South Africa is significant because that country more than any other would know exactly what are the conditions that constitute apartheid.”