Communication Workers’ Union branch backs independence
The CWU Scotland No 2 Branch has voted to back a yes vote in the independence referendum next year. The union, which covers postal workers in the Stirling, Edinburgh, Fife and Falkirk, has voted to play an active role in the campaign for Scottish independence. The vote is symbolic because it is the first union [...]
Fighting for the Public University
Luke Martell Jérémie Bédard-Wien from the Quebec students’ union CLASSE has been on tour in England, telling his story about the movement at home against fees and for public education. The Quebec mobilisation has been large, radical and sustained. It’s combined students from the bottom up and reached out to unions. It was confronted by [...]
Are the strikes in South Africa good for platinum producers?
As the dispute continues in Marikana, and appears, if anything, to be spreading to both other platinum mines and to more and more workers at Lonmin, perhaps it’s worth taking a step back from the immediate actions and considering the broader economic effect of the strikes. Before we do, however, a brief overview of the [...]
Driving people to self-immolation: pour encourager les autres
Yes, it has come to this – an unemployed man in Birmingham has set fire to himself outside a job centre. The exact context of his self-immolation is not yet known, and no doubt the government, if they say anything, will talk about tragic personal circumstances, about how they shouldn’t comment on individual cases. And [...]
Scott Walker vs Ed Miliband – lessons from Wisconsin
The analogy is obvious. I suppose it isn’t surprising: when an official opposition is visionless, it is the grassroots who lead. But when it comes to elections, it is still the visionless opposition on the ballot. This morning, we woke up to the news that Scott Walker has clung onto his job in Wisconsin. The [...]
Dave Prentis: A Credible Union Leader?
A few days ago, I was disappointed to hear that Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison – my trade union – has been appointed as a non-executive director of the Bank of England. As the leader of one of the UK’s largest trade unions, Prentis is involved in ongoing negotiations over proposed changes to [...]
UCU votes to suspend action over pensions.
Yesterday the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) held a special conference to determine where we go next in our pensions dispute. For those who haven’t been following the intricacies of it all I’ll attempt to briefly lay out where we were going into this meeting. UCU represents academic and what’s known as academic related staff [...]
Dick of the Year – Scott Walker
It took me a while to think of who to nominate for 2011′s Dick of the Year award; there have been a lot of good candidates: Jeremy Clarkson, David Starkey, Jean Quan, Johann Hari, everyone who scabbed on N30, Occupy Glasgow,… But in the end I settled on (Governor of the Year) Scott Walker. Scott, for [...]
Don’t give up the pensions fight
Today Unison signed a heads of agreement with the government over changes to NHS pensions. The agreement still needs approval from Unison’s health committee (and potentially the membership directly) and the full details aren’t yet public, but the guardian report: Unison’s head of health, Christine McAnea, said the offer contained some concessions from the government, [...]
Which Side Are You On
In two weeks time the UK will see the biggest coordinated day of strike action in decades; as many as 26 different unions representing everyone from chiropodists to teachers to tax inspectors may be out on strike in reaction to the government’s plans to slash public sector pensions. Even the headteachers union (the NAHT) will [...]
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