My call for civil disobedience around the time of the Olympic Games caused a media storm last week. Nick Clegg was “gobsmacked”. David Cameron called me “unpatriotic”. I couldn’t care less about their criticism. Clegg is busy dismantling the legacy of those great Liberals Keynes and Beveridge, the architects of the welfare state and full […]
Posts Tagged ‘Unite’
If trade unions don’t fight the workers’ corner – others will
Mar 3rd, 2012 by Owen Jones.Our Prime Minister certainly has few doubts about who’s orchestrating the backlash against workfare. “Trotskyites!” Cameron boomed during Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions; if he’d thrown in “wreckers”, it wouldn’t have been a bad impression of Andrej Vyshinsky, Stalin’s semi-hysterical prosecutor during the 1930s Show Trials.
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Len McCluskey on the union ‘block vote’
Mar 1st, 2012 by Jon Lansman.Len McCluskey’s interview in yesterday’s Guardian makes interesting reading. Most focus has been on what he said about the Olympics about which David Osler has already commented. There is also some very good stuff about the class composition of the parliamentary Labour Party. However, there may also be some concern about what he said about […]
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Leftwing disruption of sporting events: a proud tradition
Feb 29th, 2012 by David Osler.Emily Wilding Davison famously threw herself under the King’s horse at the 1913 Derby, in order to publicise the suffragette cause. She died in hospital a few days later. I truly hope her bravery will be suitably commemorated on its centenary next year.
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Andrew Fisher on Trade Unions: Wrong, wrong, wrong
Jan 22nd, 2012 by Andy Newman.It is hard to imagine a more ill-judged intervention into the debates about the public sector pensions dispute than that of Andrew Fisher, joint secretary of the Labour Representation Committee, and I was therefore surprised to see it reproduced at Left Futures, and praised by Gregor Gall, who is usually an astute commentator on trade union affairs.
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Unilever – not as clean as it claims
Jan 20th, 2012 by Jon Lansman.This video reveals the truth behind the ‘dirty’ tactics being used to undermine the pensions of the Unilever workforce. Unilever workers in GMB, Unite and Usdaw are today on the third of ten days rolling strike action at Purfleet in Essex, Trafford Park in Manchester, Port Sunlight on Merseyside and Seacroft in Leeds in defence of their pension scheme. Amongst […]
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The Pensions dispute and the way forward for trade unions
Jan 19th, 2012 by Andrew Fisher.The November 30 strikes saw unprecedented unity in the union movement but the speed of its collapse illustrates just how tenuous it was. Despite claims to have extracted significant concessions from the government, unions that sign up to the government’s offer are really guilty of selling short not only their members but millions more whose […]
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Is it time to review the Bridlington agreement?
Jan 11th, 2012 by Andy Newman.The dispute over recognition for GMB with Carillion Facilities Management at Great Western Hospital (GWH) in Swindon raises important issues related to privatisation of services in the NHS, and the relationship between sister trade unions. GMB is a general union that organises all grades in the NHS, and has a national recognition agreement with the NHS. […]
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Trade unions: the big task ahead in 2012
Dec 29th, 2011 by Owen Jones.It was the year that sticking it to the status quo re-entered the mainstream after an all-too-long long hiatus. And yet 2011 showed just how far that resistance remains from mounting a serious challenge to the Tories, let alone giving capitalism much to worry about, four years into its worst crisis since the Great Depression. […]
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The future of the left
Nov 28th, 2011 by Len McCluskey.Unite meets in Brighton this week in most troubling times for our country. Faith in the institutions forming the pillars of national life – from the political class to the press – has collapsed. Fear stalks the global markets, and yet our political leaders seem incapable of steering a course out of the despair.
