At the Speak Up For Public Services rally back in January, I heard an interesting point made in a speech by Doug Nichols of the CYWU. He said we often forget that the reason we have public services, run by the state, is that most of these originally started as voluntary efforts. After a while, …
Well, I must have made it in some way, as I’ve had my first blog visit from an actual union leader! Interestingly though it’s from Patrick Harrington, President of the new ‘British Workers’ Union’, Solidarity. Patrick (very politely) takes issue with three of my posts, which refer to his union, and has left me some …
The Register have an interesting piece about the current breakdown in negotiations at Vodafone, where the union Connect have a member base of over half the Northern technical bargaining unit, and are trying for recognition by the statutory route (or as the employer prefers to call it, the ‘over my dead body route’). Interesting to …
Move over Ming… Facebook is *so* 2006. John Edwards is letting us know what’s he’s up to minute by minute (or at least a couple times a day) at Twitter. Not sure of the *exact* point of this but, man, it’s current! He seems to be trying for the ‘internet candidate’ vote that Howard Dean …
Better weather for the Zimbabwe demonstration than Septemeber’s ZCTU one! Many of the protestors seemed to be expats and involved with MDC (who have borne the brunt of the latest crackdown), but there was at least one Amicus “Solidarity with the ZCTU” placard on display, after the raid on their offices. A core group of …
As if things couldn’t be bad enough in Zimbabwe, we’ve just had reports this morning that plain-clothes police have raided the offices of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (9.45 Zim time), demanding they hand over publicity materials for the planned strike on 3/4 April or face a beating. Staff at the top of the …
Today it was the turn of new lecturers’ union, UCU, to announce their ballot for their first General Secretary, and this one was a bit closer run than yesterday’s T&G/Amicus merger vote. Sally Hunt, the General Secretary of AUT won with 52% of the vote under a new Single Transferable Vote system, which saw the …
At the merger announcement today, where T&G and Amicus revealed a very high in-favour vote (from a pretty high turnout) in both unions for the formation of a new super-union. Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley had a strong message about how the merger made industrial, financial and political sense. Derek Simpson said this had made …
Have you had a go at LabourSpace yet? It’s a sort of Big Brother for NGO campaigns. Every month there’s a new theme, and relevant lobby groups add their favourite campaigns. Users to the site vote on the campaigns, and the winner gets to have tea with Tony and Hazel and bend their ears a …
Barrie Clement (right) trips the light fantastic at a union reception Yesterday’s Media Guardian carried a very interesting article by Peter Wilby, which gave a number of clues as to the way work and union issues are reported in the UK. It concerned the apparently rapidly approaching extinction of the last of the UK’s labour …