STRONGER UNIONS

The TUC ‘has launched a ‘Join a Union’ Line which will provide callers with information on the appropriate trade union for them to join based on where they work, the job they do and if a union is recognised by their employer.

The number for the line is 0870 600 4882

Opening hours for the line will be; Monday to Friday – 8am to 9pm  and Saturday – 9am to 5pm.

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Guest post by Marc Bélanger, Radio Labour presenter and labour educator

The labour movement has created a new tool in its efforts to build national and international solidarity: an audio news show on the Internet.  The show, called Solidarity News, is available on RadioLabour at www.radiolabour.net.  It is 20 minutes of news about workers and their organizations from all around the world. The newscast is made available every Sunday morning and is kept on the RadioLabour website throughout its current week

Solidarity news is both a journalistic and educational project.

In terms of labour journalism, it reports news about unions using its own team of reporters.  But, also, it encourages anybody related to the labour movement to contribute audio reports. These reports could cover particular events, such as a strike or convention, or the point of view of labour organizations on particular issues.  People wanting to contribute audio reports can do so by using inexpensive recording equipment (usually just a headset) and editing software that is available free of charge.  Even more easily, people can supply reports by leaving a message on RadioLabour’s voicemail box on Skype, a voice-over-Internet service.

RadioLabour’s educational aims are met in a number of ways. First, reporting on events and issues about the labour movement internationally is, in itself, an educational activity. People learn about the events and issues of unions around the world. But RadioLabour has features more directly focused on labour education. For example, it provides all the scripts of its audio presentations on its web site. In this way, unionists studying English as an Additional Language (EAL) are able to study the scripts while listening to the audio presentations. In the second phase of its development RadioLabour will supply English language lessons in conjunction with the audiocasts. The main goal of all this is to help the thousands of unionists who are trying to better participate in the international labour movement by studying one of its main operating languages.  But also the service could be used to promote literacy programs in unions.  Additionally, as RadioLabour develops, it will be using the newscasts as sources of information for online classes about the global labour movement.

The audio service will also help bring the operations of the global movement closer to unionists around the world. For example, RadioLabour will be audiocasting a daily report from the convention of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) to be held in Canada in June.  For the first time unionists will be able to follow closely the activities of their representatives at the global level as they prepare their policies and plans of action.

RadioLabour could become a very important vehicle for presenting labour’s voices to the world.

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It’s official. We’ve sold out. Of tickets, that is, for the Concert for Haiti next week, which Cuba Solidarity Campaign have organised for us. Five hundred people will be cramming into Congress House on Wednesday night to raise funds for Haitian trade unionists, but we can’t take any more. But there are still things you can do to help.

You or your union can donate online to the TUC Aid Haiti Earthquake Appeal – or send cheques to TUC headquarters made out to “TUC Aid Haiti Appeal”. Remember to ask work colleagues, family, friends – even your employer – to do the same.

And you can be there in spirit with us by buying this commemorative t-shirt from Philosophy Football – all profits to the TUC Aid appeal, which is helping Haitian trade unionists survive and rebuild.

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Just read the sad news that Howard Zinn, the author of the seminal ‘A People’s History of the United States’ has passed away.

I met Howard Zinn briefly five years ago, when he gave he led a seminar at the HTUP, and he was a genuine, inspiring bloke – a working class intellectual, who worked in a warehouse to fund his degree.

Howard Zinn wasn’t only a leading progressive intellectual – he was also an activist. According to the Boston News,

‘On his last day at BU, Dr. Zinn ended class 30 minutes early so he could join a picket line and urged the 500 students attending his lecture to come along. A hundred did.’

Howard will be sadly missed by hundreds of thousands of people around the world inspired by his writing and teaching.

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The actors who played them* have all been honoured with lifetime achievement awards by the US union SAG – the screen actors’ guild – in what the AFL-CIO almost certainly correctly describes as “the only nationally televised awards show of any kind that honors the work of union members”. Congratulations to all this year’s winners, and to every union member in the creative industries. Not all stars are union members, but all union members are stars in our eyes!

* Clint Eastwood, Julie Andrews and James Earl Jones.

Pedant’s footnote – ok, ok, James Earl Jones only provided the voice for Darth Vader, but you get the point…..

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The recession has hit US unions, in the same way as it has in other developed nations. But while union membership has fallen faster in the private sector than employment, union density has risen in the public sector. And for the first time ever in the US there are now more trade unionists in the public than private sector. The gains of last year have been more than wiped out by the recession, strengthening the call for an Employee Free Choice Act to make joining a union less of a career-killer. Read more »

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News from the International Trade Union Confederation: in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti, the ITUC launched a trade union appeal for humanitarian support for the victims in cooperation with its regional organisation for the Americas, TUCA.  Funds raised under the appeal are primarily being used to supply humanitarian assistance to the ITUC’s Haitian affiliate, the CTH, via its affiliates in the Dominican Republic, CASC, CNTD and CNUS. Read more »

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Nice piece in the Society section of today’s Guardian on the women behind the Grunwick strike. In particular the article flags up a new exhibition ‘Striking Women: Voices of South Asian Workers from Grunwick and Gate Gourmet.

The exhibition is at the Women’s Library, London E1 7NT and runs until March 31st.

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One of the findings in the recently published survey of trade union Equality Reps was that 63 per cent of the Equality Reps surveyed who had no previous reps experience were women.

If my memory is correct similar findings are (or were) to be found in surveys of Union Learning Reps.

This has me wondering about whether it is the focus of these particular roles that (in somehow being more attractive to women) helps them bring more women into trade union activity, or simply that a new reps role can create a vacancy that a women just wanting to become more active in the union takes advantage of?

I’m pretty certain that women are attracted to many forms of union activity but it may be that for many (and for many reasons) they don’t have the opportunity to take on either what we might call ‘traditional’ reps roles or get involved at any level whatsoever.

If this were true, it poses questions for the trade union movement as to how, via day to day activity in supporting members and campaigning with and for them, we create opprtunities for activity and participation that will give us an activist base that reflects more closely the profile of union members.

Any thoughts?

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Those of us thinking through worst case scenarios following the next general election would do well to look across the Irish Sea at the events taking place in the Irish Republic.

I had the pleasure of spending a couple of days last week with David Begg and Jack O’Connor of ICTU who did a brilliant job in illustrating the devastating impact that Brian Cowen’s government is inflicting on working people and trade unions through its policy of immediate and severe cuts in public spending.

The current Irish government has wedded itself to deep public sector cuts, largely funded through attacks on public sector workers’ pay and pensions.   A move motivated, it seems, as much by an attempt to cut workers pay as a devaluation strategy as by deficit reduction.  All of this implemented with blanket support from a compliant media, implacably hostile to trade unions. 

According to ICTU this amounts to nothing less than “a savage attack on working people” which will “only stimulate unemployment”.

Through turning its back on dialogue with the Irish trade unions, the government has effectively brought to an end over 20 years of social partnership arrangements.   In the absence of partnership, ICTU’s strength must now be drawn exclusively from its campaigning and organising work.

Grim times but the ICTU leadership see opportunity in the situation, with campaigns there to be won.  We wish David and his colleagues all the best and hope that we continue to learn from each other as we potentially face similar challenges in coming years.

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