STRONGER UNIONS

Just spent a great afternoon with 40 NAPO (the union for family court and probation staff) membership secretaries as part of event looking at the unions approach to organising and recruitment.
Part of this process invoves redefining the role of membership secretaries within branches and helping them to plan their future activity.
I went along to give [...]

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Hat-tip to Ian, who reports on UNITE’s success at securing recognition at Procter & Gamble.
“I’m on cloud nine. It’s given the company the right message and our job is to knuckle down and achieve the morale that’s necessary on the site through proper representation.”
Ken Chapman, UNITE activist
Despite the recession and despite the employer’s strong-arm tactics (as [...]

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Just on my way back from Germany where I’ve been attending an event organised by IG Metal held at their huge training centre near Dusseldorf.
Around 250 union organisers, offfcers, activists and academics to consider aspects of organising and general union work.
It’s nearly 5 years since the Organising Academy hosted a visit from the [...]

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1. On average, union members receive higher pay, better sickness and pension benefits, more holiday and more flexible working hours than non-members. Union members earn more than 12.5% more per hour than non-union members (with average hourly earnings £13.07 for members and £11.62 for non-members).
2. Unions can also play a key role in reducing pay [...]

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A few stats from this month’s TUC Recession Report raise more concerns about the potential impact of the recession on union membership.

The number of people in involuntary temporary jobs – meaning that they’re doing these jobs because they can’t find permanent ones – is increasing, as is the number of people in involuntary part-time work.
Also, [...]

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Yesterday’s excellent TUC and Union Ideas Seminar on China, its impact on the world economy and the trade union response, was slightly marred by how few trade unions were represented.
The clear message from the seminar was that to view China as a monolithic state, with a dreadful record on human rights, was over-simplistic. China, and [...]

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Yesterday evening I was in the East End of London speaking at a seminar organised by the Young Foundation on Organising, unions and social movements.
The Young Foundation is an organisation set up to ‘tackle major social needs through combining creativity and entrepreneurship’ and is currently running Uprising – a new leadership programme aimed at training [...]

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Ten years ago the Government passed legislation on ‘blacklisting’ – legislation designed to prevent union activists being victimised by potential employers. Unfortunately the legislation was never implemented because….
 ”there was no hard evidence that blacklisting was occurring”
Today, as reported in The Guardian, the information commisioner has published a list of companies he believes may have been ’misusing’ data to ‘blacklist’ [...]

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Last Saturday and Sunday 10 young members from TSSA, Unison, PCS and NUT as well as a representative of Westminster Uni Students Union attended the TUC Activist Academy special ‘GET ON THE BUS’ to the G20 weekend school at Ruskin College.
The school was designed to maximise trade union participation in the PUT PEOPLE FIRST march which [...]

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The TUC is pleased to announce the following new dates for Activist Academy courses;

LIVERPOOL at Wirral Met College
March 11 & 12, April 1 & 2, April 29 & 30
Contact Bob Kelly on 0151 237 2751 or at bob.kelly@wmc.ac.uk

BRIDGEND at Bridgend College
April 29 & 30, June 3 & 4, July 1 & 2
Contact Richard Young on [...]

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