Half a work manifesto is better than none

On Monday Labour launches its 2015 General Election manifesto but the 'work manifesto' A Better Plan for Britain’s Workplaces published on 1st April, provides an early insight into the party's proposals for employment rights. Strong commitments include an apprenticeship guarantee, outlawing the use of agency workers to undercut permanent employees (but not removing the 12 week qualifying period for equal rights), banning 'exploitative' zero hours contracts and raising the national minimum wage hourly rate to £8 within the next five years.
http://b.3cdn.net/labouruk/0d7eac1a5ecd182f46_e8m6ivtck.pdf

ISDS - a corporate power grab

#NoTTIP One of the most pernicious measures in the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) which empowers corporations to go to secret tribunals to attack the laws we rely on for public services, a clean environment, safe food and decent jobs etc.

A new resource has been launched for campaigning on ISDS -www.ISDSCorporateAttacks.org – a website that outlines the basic facts/threats of ISDS; provides summaries of ISDS cases organized by issue area: health, environment, financial stability, etc.; gives stories of inspiration of governments and government officials that opposing ISDS; and includes a basic petition.

Why TTIP is bad for workers

#NoTTIP The recent War on Want Manchester conference - ‘TTIP: Building the Fightback’ - included a presentation by Jeronim Capaldo of TUFTS University in the USA. Capaldo’s study, ‘The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership: European Disintegration, Unemployment and Instability’, provides conclusive evidence that contrary to official assessments, TTIP's intensification of market competition and deregulation will have negative effects on European workers including falling levels of employment, lower incomes and a reduced labour share of national wealth. A summary of the study can be read here:
http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/wp/14-03CapaldoTTIP.pdf

Why Workers Won't Unite: That is the question

In her review of two US books on the decline of unions in the States, Kim Philips Fein of NYU takes us through a hop, skip and a jump of US Union history and then dives into a complex seeming summary of the current state of the American Trade Unions. It's a familiar journey, 100 years ago unions were oppressed but we worked in occupations that lumped us together and now this has disappeared and is being replaced by jobs that are almost wholly precarious and involves mainly service workers in solo occupations.
   So far, so familiar. But let us pause. US union density now stands at about 12%. In the private sector it is 7%. Any explanation for this will have to include the play of certain factors that may not apply in the UK. Or anywhere else in the world. So an examination of the US labour movement is not necessarily very useful when looking at the UK.
http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/why-workers-wont-unite/386228/

Will conference words of unity translate to reality?

Calls for unity from both platform and floor were welcome after a sometimes bitter special local government conference in London on Tuesday - and unity is essential if anything positive is to come out of this costly exercise.

Really important stuff about how we organise, how we consult clearly and transparently and how we engage members, was battered through with little debate as the conference voted time after time to move the business on.

But it did back the motions. Sound and considered templates from Scotland, Northern Ireland, The Service Group and others on strategies for consultation, including using electronic communication, more political lobbying and developing union wide strategies on pay. All very positive, although tying negotiators’ hands when it comes to consulting on last minute offers may yet come back to bite us.

The real challenge for the lay and full time leadership is how they implement the mandate to re-open the pay claim in England, Wales and Northern Ireland – which was clearly what it was all really about for most delegates. The technicalities of that are not simple; members will no doubt be a bit confused as will the whole bargaining structure, so it will test the pronouncements on unity to the full.

Public services - more austerity carnage ahead

#Budget2015 The cuts to public services projected in yesterday's Budget speech by Tory Chancellor George Osborne are unprecedented and a timely TUC analysis confirms that 'departmental spending is set to fall by 5.4 per cent in 2016-17 and 5.1 per cent in 2017-18. That’s a rate of spending cuts that is 2.4 percentage points more severe than in any year of austerity to date. Even in 2011-12, when service cuts were at their most significant, spending fell by 3 per cent of GDP.
   The cuts the Chancellor has planned for 2016/17 and 2017/28 are 80% greater than those we have seen before.' Rather than embrace austerity-continuity in 2015/16 and austerity-lite thereafter, Labour must offer a clear alternative to the destruction of public services. And all UNISON branches must get behind the union's strategy of encouraging members to vote out the current Government on May 7:
http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2015/03/the-worst-public-spending-cuts-are-still-to-come/

Prof Prem Sikka on 'How to Defeat Austerity?' Video now online

'There was absolutely no need for anything to do with austerity. It is really a political project which has been carried out in the UK for the last 30 or 40 years. It has eroded the purchasing power in the hands of ordinary people... it has resulted in concentration of wealth.. there has been an organised humiliation of normal people.' says Prem Sikka, Professor of Accountancy at Essex University, in a video from a recent Morning Star conference in Glasgow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqAtj3ZsFRM

Northern Ireland says NO to Austerity

#M13 Over 50,000 public service workers, including UNISON members, across Northern Ireland took 24 hour all out strike action against austerity cuts yesterday. Education, health, transport and council services were brought to a halt in response to the cross-party Stormont House agreement which will cut 20,000 public sector jobs over the next 4 years. A well supported march and lunchtime rally was held in Belfast and 10 other towns.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-31858483

Joined up public services - how do we unscramble marketisation?

Progressive, people centred reforms of public services by an incoming Labour Government will require more than good intentions writes Eunice Goes on the LSE blog. Decades of funding cuts, marketisation and the embedding of 'thousands of private sector providers' present an enormous challenge yet to be addressed by Labour party and trade union policy makers. Is it time to end the contracting out culture?
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/labours-public-services-reform-cannot-yet-undo-effect-of-privatisation/

Rising inequality caused by weaker unions

A new study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has tracked three decades of income (1980 to 2010) and found that as unionisation declined, the wealth of the richest 10% in advanced countries showed a continuous increase. The decline in unionisation explained about half of the rise in incomes for the richest 10% and half of the increase in the Gini coefficient (a measure of income inequality).
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2015/03/jaumotte.htm