NEWS

Last May the Department for Business and Trade reported that the proportion of British employees who were Trade Union members had fallen to 22.3% in 2022  – down from 23.1% in 2021. This was the second successive year where the proportion had declined, and these years represented the lowest two British union membership rates on…

September’s Trades Council meeting received a report on the progress being made by the Government in implementing the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023. For the provisions of the Act to take effect there will need to be a proclamation, by regulation, of what “Minimum Service Levels” will mean in specific sectors, plus publication of…

If the railway wants to attract the new users and be as inclusive as possible, then the “purchase from a person” choice should remain.  A far more important priority is to reform the hideously complex charging system on the railway with its enormous variations in price, and to get back a sense that it is a public service which needs to take account of public views in the matter of its delivery.  The scale of the response to the ticket office consultation is an indication of the extent to which the rail industry lacks the confidence of the public it is supposed to serve.

The coincidence of the 75th “birthday” of the NHS with acute public awareness of ways in which our health system is currently under stress has pushed the issue of healthcare up the political agenda and prompted a wide range of reflection on what the future holds. Millions are on waiting lists or long-term sick. In…

June’s Trades Council meeting decided that we should write to our three local MPs on Tuesday 20th June to express our support for the “Save Our Schools” Lobby of the House of Commons. Here is the text of the letter sent: “We are writing to record our support for the Lobby of Parliament that has…

Workers’ Memorial Day this year coincided with the release of a report from PROSPECT, the Union for Health and Safety Inspectors, which revealed that:                • funding for the Health and Safety Executive in 2021-22 was 43% down on 2009-10 in real terms on a comparative basis;                • The level of cancelled mandatory investigations…

The April Annual General Meeting of Blackburn and District Trades Union Council was addressed by a guest speaker, Professor Ralph Darlington, who has just published a new book “Labour Revolt in Britain 1910-14”. His book may seem to have come out at a very apposite time, given that its appearance corresponds with a contemporary upsurge…

“It is like having a law on burglary that simply decrees burglars should not make a mess”

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has noted that “UK workers are currently enduring the longest pay squeeze in more than 200 years – with average pay still worth £85 a month less than in 2008. And in the public sector average pay is down by £204 a month in real terms compared to 2008″. We…

The British Government, through H.M.Treasury, asserted to the public sector pay review bodies in December 2021 that satisfying public sector pay claims in 2022 would be “inflationary”, and it has stuck to that position ever since. The argument it put forward, however, was not that such settlements would be inflationary in themselves.  The proposition, instead,…