The Trade Union Bill published by the Conservative government today (Wednesday 14 July) is designed to damage the Labour Party financially and will poison relations between workers and managers, according to the GMB union. The Bill introduces turnout threshold of 50% for strike ballots, and requires unions in the health, education, fire, transport, water, security...
Orgreave and the Struggle for Justice
A series of meetings, talks and workshops on trade union struggles for justice are being held at Durham Miners’ Hall in the week leading up to this year's Durham Miners’ Gala on Saturday 11 July....
TUC Attacks Tax Credit Reforms
Trade Union Congress general secretary Frances O’Grady this week attacked the Conservative government for consigning millions of working families to poverty thanks to its proposed welfare reforms....
Celebrating the History of the Derbyshire Miners
A series of events celebrating the history of the Derbyshire miners are being held in Chesterfield this June, culminating with a ceremony to mark the centenary of the town’s statues of founding miners’ leaders and Labour MPs, James Haslam and William Harvey....
Bring Your May Day Banners to Chesterfield
Chesterfield boasts that it hosts ‘the biggest and most prestigious’ May Day gala in the country’ and this year's event on Monday 4 May looks set to rival any from its past....
GMB Slams Tory ‘Right to Buy’ Plans
The GMB union has slammed the Conservative Party’s plans to extend the ‘right to buy’ to housing association tenants as creating a “rich harvest” for private landlords at the expense of the nation’s social housing stock....
Unbalanced Britain: The Living Wage and Labour’s Future
The Rose Bowl at Leeds Beckett University was the venue for the ILP’s second Unbalanced Britain seminar on 14 March, examining the campaign for a living wage and Labour’s response. The recession and its lop-sided recovery have left millions of working people in poverty, claimed Tom Chigbo of Leeds Citizens. Addressing the latest ILP seminar...
Reasons for Hope?
HARRY BARNES picks apart the Labour Party’s policy process and finds a raft of positive proposals. He just wishes they were being delivered in a less piecemeal way....
Unions at the Heart of the Welfare State
GERRY LAVERY, JOE ROLLIN and CALLUM STANLAND report from ‘Unions at the heart of the welfare state’, a national conference called by the TUC National Consultative Committee for Unemployed Workers’ Centres....
Unbalanced Britain: Nearly 700,000 on Zero-Hours Contracts
The GMB has pointed out that nearly 700,000 workers are on zero-hours contracts despite working on average 25 hours per week, and called on the Labour Party “to deal with exploitation and harassment of workers which it has ignored for too long”. ...
Class Set Out What’s at Stake at Election 2015
The Centre for Labour and Social Studies has published a new election guide on the issues of work, pay and unions as part of a series of pamphlets highlighting what’s at stake in the parties’ policies for working people....
Greece Must Not Stand Alone
Support for the new Greek government is vital and in Labour’s interests, argues MIKE DAVIS. Hope, dignity, bread could summarise the slogans of the newly elected Syriza party in Greece. It has been an historic victory, the first radical left party to be democratically elected in Europe since the Second World war. Expectations of the...