I’ve been the Head of the TUC’s European Union and International Relations Department since 2003 and have worked at the TUC since 1984. I’ve been a member of the Health and Safety Commission, the Civil Justice Council, the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council and now I’m on the Wilton Park Advisory Council. I’m particularly interested in the trade union movements of Australia, Iran and Iraq, the Middle East and the USA, and I’m interested in migration, trade, and building trade union capacity. I’m the Secretary of TUC Aid, the TUC’s charitable union development arm and on the Robin Hood Tax campaign steering committee.
Here’s something to raise a few smiles this weekend. Right-wing US Fox ‘news’ has come under a tweeting assault from US unions this week after one of their presenters suggested that union members couldn’t have built the Apple i-phone (as one comment said, union members do make the Apple i-phone: just Chinese union members, not [...]
On 7 September, the TUC and Action for Southern Africa will be joining trade unionists around the world to show solidarity with unions in Swaziland who are fighting poverty and feudalism. You can help by promoting an ACTSA e-action and by writing to the Swazi High Commissioner. Find out more.
Asylum-seeking Cameroonian journalist and NUJ member Charles Atangana has a bail hearing on Thursday in London – please come along and support him. Details and further ideas about action you and your colleagues can take is on the NUJ website.
Veteran journalist John Lloyd has written a commentary in today’s FT on the prospects for trade unionism east and west. As a former labour editor and Moscow correspondent, he is well-placed and sympathetic. John has often been pessimistic about the future of British trade unionism, but not with the sense of glee that you often [...]
The TUC publishes guidance on workplace rights for migrant workers, which can help unions to organise them. They have recently been updated, and are available on the TUC website in:
Bulgarian
Czech
English
Estonian
French
Hungarian
Latvian
Lithuanian
Polish
Russian
Slovak
Spanish
The TUC has joined US and international colleagues to support the struggle being waged by Bangladeshi textile trade unions for a minimum wage of just £45 a month. Colleagues from Unite have been to Bangladesh with their US counterparts in the USW, and have supported the strikers with adverts in the local media demonstrating solidarity [...]
Charles Atangana is a journalist from the Cameroon. When he lived there, he wrote an article critical of the Government, and was arrested, tortured and eventually managed to bribe his way out of the country, seeking asylum in Glasgow. His life has been threatened, as have his family, by a regime in whose custody newspaper [...]
President Obama spoke to the AFLCIO Executive Council (the equivalent of the TUC General Council) this week, and he gave a ringing endorsement of union membership, starting off by quoting his predecessor Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He said:
“So FDR I think said—he was asked once what he thought about unions. He said, “If I was a worker [...]
It’s good news for once, but it’s not all good news. Saeed Torabian, the Publicity Director of the Vahed Bus Workers’ Union in Tehran, has been freed after 42 days in jail on trumped up charges of acting against national security and making public expressions against the regime. Here’s where we reported on his arrest [...]
The laws that Saddam Hussein used to repress Iraqi trade unions are still being used today to prevent working people defending and promoting their rights. On 21 July, the new Electricity Minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, ordered his Ministry’s police force to storm union offices, list and seize all their property, and close them down – the [...]
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