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,

NHS Pay Dispute - Where Next?

On Monday thousands of NHS workers took to the picket lines for the second time in six weeks. Following the huge success of the action on 13th October, 9 health unions called their members out for a further 4 hours strike on 24th November.
    The action demonstrated a few important things.
     Firstly the public still remains supportive of the health workers case. Picket lines across the country received messages of support from the public with representatives of non health unions turning up in solidarity. Secondly the mood among members is still angry and determined, and thirdly the government does not yet feel sufficiently worried to try and resolve the dispute.

LGBT conference builds fight against austerity

#ulgbt14 UNISON's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender members met this weekend in Blackpool for hopefully the last time under this Tory led Government.
   As always LGBT Conference debated a wide variety of motions, with austerity and cuts being a recurring theme. Housing, where young LGBT members are particularly suffering from attacks on their rights to housing benefit, risking them being in hostile private shared housing. Gender Services, where Trans members are struggling for support as services are cut. Of particular note this year was a number of motions around supporting older LGBT people, with the shocking state of our fragmented and mostly privatised social care where there is huge fear of discrimination.

Not too late to abandon austerity

'If Labour now repudiated austerity in favour of the far more effective way of cutting the deficit through public investment to expand the economy out of stagnation, generate real jobs, increase household incomes after a decade of steep decline, it would be a game changer at the election' writes Labour MP Michael Meacher.
http://www.michaelmeacher.info/weblog/2014/11/the-case-for-abandoning-austerity-is-a-no-brainer-mathematically-financially-and-politically/
    Trade unionists desperate to see the back of a Con Dem coalition which has slaughtered services and social security on the altar of austerity need to wake up to the economic prospectus being offered by Labour. 'Having rejected the option of extra borrowing, Labour will now need to meet all its promises through tax rises or spending cuts elsewhere. Austerity really is here to stay' wrote George Eaton in the New Statesman in response to this year's conference speech by Ed Balls in which he did a U-turn on borrowing to fund capital spending on housing, roads and other infrastructure projects.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/09/balls-binds-labour-austerity-promise-no-extra-borrowing
   Meacher is right about the abject failure of austerity economics and UNISON should support for his call for Labour to abandon austerity. It is not too late.

Aiberdeen Street by Alastair Mackie

Ye were hyne awa fae Nuremberg o the flags,
the death-crap o the purges; Il Duce's
black-sarked legions heistin eagles…
Woolie's guns and gairden canes airmed oor wars
focht on your cassies, oor granite battle-field.
Paper planes whitent the gloamin-faa,
earth-bund swallas the scaffies sweepit up.
And quines were bobbin corks aneth the tow brigs
o their skippin ropes. Cairt horses snochert
and the shod wheels girned and dirded.
Here in this play-grun atween the tenements
– sea gulls on the lums – I breathed in Scots.
Years later I howkit up the street's kist
o memories and found amon the mools, deid words,
the affcasts o history, teuch as granite setts,
the foonds o my world.

Half measures will not stop TTIP from destroying the NHS

Today the Commons will debate Labour MP Clive Efford’s worthy bill to save the NHS from irreversible privatisation, which will aim to reverse the Health & Social Care Act 2012 and seek to exempt the NHS from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
   However, John Hilary of War on Want points out that ‘such national legislation would not be enough to save the NHS from TTIP. If health services are included in the deal, any future UK government will be bound by its treaty obligations as an EU member state over and above unilateral declarations such as the one envisaged in the bill. Even if the UK were to take the extreme option of leaving the European Union altogether, TTIP would still enable US health corporations to sue future governments for reversing NHS privatisation, thanks to the ‘survival clauses’ that ensure free trade agreements remain in force for years after a state has ceased to be a party to them’.
     Only outright rejection of TTIP will save the NHS.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/john-hilary/cameron-faces-ttip-showdown-over-nhs

Gaping gaps in Labour's proposals for enhanced workers' rights

#workplacepledge As next May's General Election draws closer, the outlines are emerging of Labour's proposals on workers' rights. Announcements on raising the minimum wage and the banning 'exploitative' zero hours contracts are welcome but fall far short of what is necessary. The least we should expect in Labour's 2015 manifesto is the reinstatement of collective and individual rights removed by the Coalition government, in particular a reduced qualifying period for unfair dismissal and other rights, the abolition of employment tribunal fees and a reversal of the reduction in redundancy consultation periods.
    A new campaign called 'a Pledge for every worker' sets out a useful framework for Labour enhancing workplace rights but, as any lawyer will tell you, precision matters in drafting offers and now is the time for specific commitments on fairness at work from Labour rather than abstractions or aspirations.
http://www.workplacepledge.org/blog/british-workers-trapped-climate-insecurity-writes-stephen-cavalier