STRONGER UNIONS

Tim Costello, Trucker-Author Who Fought Globalization, Dies at 64
Sad news that Tim Costello – who was at the forefront of thinking about how trade unions can organise globally – has passed away over the Christmas break.
(tags: Tim Costello, organising, globalisation)

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61 building service workers at the Toronto Dominion Centre in Toronto were locked-out and then fired by their employer when they refused to agree to the gutting of their collective agreement. They were forced to celebrate Christmas on a picket line almost 6 months after being forced off the job. Their union, CEP, is asking [...]

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Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year! We hope you have a good break and look forward to working with you again in 2010.
If you’ve been following our Union Advent postings, here’s a download present for you. “The Union Advantage” contains all the factoids we ran this month, and more. You can download it [...]

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Trade unions are the most effective tool for ensuring good health and safety at work. Put simply unionised workplaces are safer workplaces.
That is one of the main reasons that people join and stay in a union. When asked, 70% of new trade union
members considered health and safety a ‘very important’ union issue – more [...]

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Union Learning Reps increase the impact of training.
73% of Union Learning Reps and one-half of managers reported that ULRs have had a positive impact on either employer-funded or non-employer-funded training. Three out of the five managers stated that ULRs help to address employee skills gaps.
Both ULRs and managers report that ULRs are more likely [...]

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Unions work to secure jobs in the recession.
At the car manufacturers Toyota, Unite union representative Peter Tsouvallaris says “members are reminded daily of the tremendous insecurity the recession has brought to our industry”. After negotiations with management at Toyota, and faced with cuts in jobs and wages, the union has been able to recommend measures [...]

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Legal expertise and advice.
Through the union’s own legal officers or through specialist solicitors, union full time officers and representatives have access to advice on legal aspects of working life from employment contracts, harassment, redundancy, pensions or equalities issues.
Through the union, members have an access to justice which may otherwise have been denied to them [...]

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Unions were the first to raise major concerns over levels of violence in the workplace, and RSI, and the effects of passive smoking.
When unions first raised the issue of stress, employers and the media argued it was nonsense. It is now recognised that workplace stress affects half a million people. Even today it is [...]

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There is a fairly obscure part of BIS called the National Contact Point for the OECD multinational enterprises guidelines (catchy name, huh?) At the end of October, it created 200 permanent jobs for previously temporary agency workers at a Unilever factory in Pakistan. Ron Oswald, the head of the global union federation IUF, described it [...]

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Research shows that union recognition has a consistently positive effect, not only to the extent to which employees are provided with training, but also on the amount of training.
Drawing from the WERS survey, the research found that where unions are recognised and negotiate over training, employees are 23.9 per cent more likely to report having [...]

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