Unions & politics

Trade Unions and politics

Unison Labour Link suspends support for Labour

"Unison Labour Link", the structure by which the giant public services union Unison deals with its relations with the Labour Party, has suspended its support for Labour. Its statement reads: In the circumstances of the union taking national industrial action against the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, named as Regulator and decision maker regarding the LGPS, in is felt that it is not appropriate or politically sensible to be organising, on one hand, for industrial action by the union while sending out letters and leaflets to many of the same members asking them to vote Labour. The...

Some french news – 22 march 2006

To say it shortly ! 1)The attack by French Prime Minister De Villepin on the CPE (First Job Contract) is not only an attack on the youth, it is completed by the CNE (New Job Contract for all workers in the companies under 20 wage-workers ). When De Villepin issued the CNE last summer, the top officials of trade unions said nothing or nothing loud and didn’t nothing to mobilise. But it must be clear that the stake of the dispute is something like the issue of the miners’ strike in Britain in 1984-85. Either the right government and the bosses inflict a big and historical defeat to French...

CWU members say: no shoo-in for Brown!

The London Region of the post and telecom region CWU is putting the following motion to the 2006 CWU conference: "That the CWU will only nominate,support or encourage members to vote for, candidates in the next Labour party leadership election who support the principles of trade union rights as outlined in the proposed Trade Union Freedom Bill and are also committed to keeping the Post Office in 100% public ownership".

Trade unions:clear out the rot - Labour: evict the fat cats!

by Gerry Bates Is Tessa Jowell guilty of personal corruption? She is not, it seems. But what a courrpt, vile bourgeois world this affair highlights — a world a million miles from the lives of working people. Jowell is a “Labour” government minister. Her husband, David Mills, is an international lawyer. He specialises in helping rich people find loop holes in tax laws and any other laws they find inconvenient. One of his clients is Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, who is by some accounts, the richest man in Italy. Berlusconi is on the extreme right in politics. Berlusconi is, allegedly, the...

An open letter to Neil Kinnock

Paul Whetton wrote this as a delegate to Labour Party conference in September 1984 Mrs Thatcher is tough, nasty, brutal, spiteful, single-minded and very hostile to the labour movement — but a good, tough, committed fighter for her own cause and capable of being an inspiring leader for her own side. Mrs Thatcher knows how to lead. There is no double-talk from Thatcher about the miners’ strike. She is out to beat us down and crush the NUM. She leaves her supporters in no doubt about that. When Thatcher denounced “violence” she doesn't feel obliged to be “impartial” and denounce the police as...

A BNP union?

According to the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight the British National Party has launched a trade union which they have, unfortunately, chosen to call Solidarity. “The Union for British Workers” was registered with the trade unions Certification Office at the end of last year. If it gets off the ground — and that is a big if — it will of course be a scab union. The stated aims of the “union” is to “improve the relations between employers and employees throughout all industries served by the union”. For years they BNP have got their members to infiltrate existing unions. There have been many...

Big crowd at RMT conference

By Chris Ford and Pat Markey Over 300 people attended the conference on working-class political representation sponsored by the rail union RMT on 21 January, and another 100 or so were unable to get in because the hall at Friends Meeting House in London was full. The large attendance — despite the lack of publicity for the event even inside the RMT — shows the interest in the question among activists. RMT General Secretary Bob Crow opened the conference by stating there “needs to be a debate about whether the Labour Party can be changed. I think it can’t”. There is no prospect of convincing...

What the unions should fight for

The unions should fight for an alternative of democratic social provision. They should fight for a workers’ government — a government based on and accountable to the labour movement. A workers’ government should take all the pension funds into public ownership — without compensation to the financiers — and put them under the democratic control of the workers who pay into them and the pensioners who depend on them. It should tax the rich and big business as much as is necessary to level up pension provision with a proper guaranteed minimum. Strategically, the best way to do that would be...

Use union link to force change

Alan Johnson, the Blairites’ favourite ex union leader, has made a call for the unions’ influence in the Labour Party to be curtailed. Johnson, once general secretary of the post and telecom union CWU, and now Industry Minister, has proposed that the union vote at Labour Party Conference be cut from 50% to 15% (Times, 14 November). As Tony Woodley, general secretary of the TGWU, put it: “It is no coincidence that the Blairites want to change the make-up of the conference and party since they’ve been losing votes.” Labour’s affiliated unions should rise to the challenge. Ideological arguments...

Labour conference says scrap anti-union laws, stop NHS privatisation, defend pensions/ MAKE THE UNION LEADERS FIGHT

Tensions between the Labour Party leaders and the trade unions are being forced centre stage by events. The Labour Government has declared war on public services. They are set to massively increase private sector involvement in the health service. They want an expansion of “independent” Academy schools. They are attacking public sector pensions. They look set to privatise the Post Office. But at this year’s Labour Party conference the four motions submitted by the trade unions to the conference opposed large parts of the Government’s agenda. The Labour leaders tried to see off the trade union...

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