Good thing I won’t have to take David Cameron up on his stupid idea of bringing the kids into the office when teachers go on strike next Wednesday. I can just picture the chaos that would inevitably result. The 11 year old would sulk in a corner all day long, telling anyone who politely introduced themselves […]
Posts Tagged ‘Strikes’
Twenty-six unions preparing to strike
Nov 18th, 2011 by Jon Lansman.Twenty-fivesix unions are now preparing to strike on November 30, RMT being the latest union to announce a ballot result. Full details of their balloting reslts are set out below.Only the Prisoners Officers Association who are balloting secure psychiatric workers employed in the health service, has not yet announced its ballot result – due on […]
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Why Labour people should back “the Great Strike”
Nov 18th, 2011 by Owen Jones.The Great Strike is less than two weeks away. From headteachers to lollipop ladies, care assistants to university lecturers, hundreds of thousands of workers are set to take part in the biggest co-ordinated industrial action since the 1926 General Strike. The Labour leadership is highly unlikely to back the strike: the best that can be […]
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Unions in the movies: Ken Loach’s Big Flame
Sep 24th, 2011 by Andy Newman.There are not many TV dramas that inspire the name of a group of revolutionary socialists, but the 1969 BBC Wednesday Play does have that distinction. In these days of YouTube, DVDs and Catch Up TV, it is hard to recall how different the social context of broadcasting was back in 1969. There were just three […]
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Labour Conference to agree Balls line on strikes
Sep 22nd, 2011 by Jon Lansman.There is little doubt that Labour Party conference will agree to back the line argued by Ed Balls on the public sector pension strikes – representing the union case as reasonable and pinning al the blame on the government for the threat of strike acton. The clear implication is that, if strikes happen because of […]
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Talks start to avert November strikes
Sep 21st, 2011 by Andy Newman.GMB will attend talks tomorrow with council leaders on the dispute about the future of Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) which covers two million workers in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. These are the first talks since unions announced plans to ballot members for strike action if Government press ahead with changes to public […]
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Labour leaders and strikes: the lesson of Wilson and the Miners
Jul 12th, 2011 by Andy Newman.Ed Miliband’s lack of backing for trade unions on strike on 30th June disappointed some, but in fact no Labour leader has ever backed strikes. It is worth looking at how Harold Wilson handled the miners’ strike of 1974, where Labour won a general election against all expectations. Wilson was a politician with extraordinary talent, who won […]
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Thursday was a catastrophe for the Labour leadership
Jul 2nd, 2011 by Owen Jones.Thursday’s strike by teachers and front-line public sector staff was a triumph for the trade union movement. I joined the demonstration through central London, and it was as inspirational as the game-changing initial student protest in November. These were young workers (I would estimate the majority were under 35); and the mood was both cheerful […]
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Ed needs to do so much better than this
Jul 1st, 2011 by Andy Newman.Ed Miliband’s interview with the BBC yesterday afternoon about the strikes has to rate as one of the worst performances, if not the very worst performance, by a British politician in my memory. Mark Ferguson rightly slammed it: It evoked the clumsy attempts of the Brown years. It’s a video nasty to rival Brown on expenses and Cameron’s […]
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The government is to blame for the pension strikes
Jun 30th, 2011 by Ken Livingstone.Nurses and teachers did not create the global economic crisis, yet public servants and the wider public are being forced to pay not only through these pensions changes but higher VAT, student fees and transport fares, cuts to EMA and vital services that millions rely on. The Tory-led Government has mishandled the pension issue. Cameron […]
