Tackling child poverty - What kind of society do we want?

If you can judge a society by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens, you have to wonder what it says about ours that nearly four million of our children – one in three - are living in poverty.

I Speak of Palestine by Robert Green

I speak of your insistence
on believing what you’re told
to be so blind:
you must have learned
what not to know
to be so cold that you can say
“These people do belong
inside this tomb.”

'No to public service cuts which harm women' - Angela Lynes, UNISON President

The UNISON 2011 Women’s Conference, meeting in Harrogate Yorkshire, yesterday heard a fighting speech from UNISON President Angela Lynes.

If you are a public sector pensioner, read this and weep then get angry

While the Government U turn on the privatisation of forestry caused much hilarity yesterday, matters probably of a much deeper concern to UNISON members were being debated.

Bankers Continue to Feast

While pay for workers who actually contribute to society, public service and manufacturing is cut back, pay at Europe’s four largest investment banks rose by a total of nearly £2.4bn ($3.8bn) in 2010, as more employees were taken on and fixed salaries largely wiped out any savings from lower bonuses. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/da9928a8-3abc-11e0-9c1a-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss&ftcamp=crm/email/2011218/nbe/GlobalBusiness/product#axzz1EIGDkmwY

US Public Sector Trade Unions Take a Stand - Show Solidarity with our sister Union AFSCME

Wisconsin is the birthplace of AFSCME. They have a long and proud history in the state. In a matter of days, all they have built there over the past 75 years could be profoundly jeopardised. But more importantly, the very existence of public employee unionism is now on the line across the country.

Egyptian unions continue the fight for lasting political change

In today’s Guardian Seumas Milne gives a superb analysis of the political situation in Egypt in the wake of Mubarak’s removal as President:

Austerity budgets – made in Brussels

Italian economics minister Giulio Tremonti emerged from a meeting of EU finance ministers, which included Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, last December to announce that "budget policies in European countries cannot be national policies any more".

NHS safe? Tories now cutting births!

Staff at St Georges Hospital, South London have acted with growing shock and anger at the announcement that 500 posts ( almost 10% of the workforce) at the hospital are to be axed as part of the Governments £20 billion NHS cuts programme.

UNISON Active analysis: Inflation Up Again? That‘ll Be Public Sector Pay Cuts All Round

The inflation figures released by the Bank of England on Tuesday are a grim warning for all public sector workers. UNISONActive still believes that the only figure that counts is that for the retail price index, and the RPI has now hit 5.1 %. This figure is the measure of how much the prices of the goods that we all rely on are increasing- the increase in the price of housing, the price of food, the price of energy, the price of transport, whether in the increased costs for petrol or diesel or the increase in the price of public transport.