It is a source of great pride to be working with the General Federation of Trade Unions as a key partner in a ground-breaking initiative to put people’s everyday priorities, like their jobs, family, safety, community, neighbourhoods, at the heart of research. Our new ‘Centre for People’s Justice’ is the result of a £5.8 million investment, including £4.1m from the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council. It is designed in response to the public’s sense of disconnection from legal process and systems, concerned about citizens’ rights and about the state of justice across society.

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Our aim is to connect the public more strongly with the ways in which law is made, how law is performed in everyday life and how law is understood and applied by the public. The Centre for People’s Justice will work with people who have first-hand experience of challenges that are commonly experienced and urgently need to be addressed: challenges such as poor-quality housing or being without a place to call home; insecure employment and low wages; violence at home or in the community; or missing out on school. It represents a unique opportunity to test and embed new ways for local communities across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to work in partnership with academics, private sector, philanthropic, legal, creative, cultural, charitable, civic and public sector organisations in support of change in law and legal systems that will improve lives.  

In a radical departure from the status quo, researchers will explore new ways to learn from the grassroots up. The Centre will use arts and creative methods to build research projects in collaboration with the public, projects that enable participants to feel respected, to express their views in their own way, and reduce fears such as ‘oversharing’ or ‘saying the wrong thing’.

Centre funding will be used to support and train communities to gather data, to review the research while it is in progress, and to help research findings to be put into practice for positive, lasting impacts.

GFTU is one of 44 other partners organisations, including the Bakers and Allied Food Workers Union, the Marx Memorial Library and household names such as Big Issue, Royal Shakespeare Company, Citizens Advice and Costain Construction.

The Centre for People’s Justice is anchored at University of Liverpool and has partner Universities across across all four parts of the UK.

—

Lydia Hayes Professor of Labour Rights, University of Liverpool and Principal Convenor of the Centre for People’s Justice.

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N.B. This article was first published in May 2025, as part of the re-launch of our Federation News tabloid newspaper, available here.

If you need up-to-date information on the Employment Rights Bill (ERB) – the Institute of Employment Rights (IER) has everything you need.

From Fact Sheets to Podcasts, from a dedicated hub webpage to a living document tracking Parliamentary amendments, IER has been keeping a close eye on the Bill’s twists and turns.

And it’s no surprise. The first object of the IER is ‘to advance the education of the public in labour law, work, unemployment, trade unions and related issues’. True to form, the labour law experts at IER have been informing the debate on defending and restoring labour rights for over 35 years.

During that time, IER has lived through the class war waged by Thatcher in the 1980s and 90s. We’ve lived through the disappointment of the Blair years which left “British law the most restrictive on trade unions in the Western world.”

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We saw a glimmer of hope during the Corbyn years when IER’s work was used as a template for the 2017 and 2019 Labour Party Election Manifestos.

Then, despite setbacks, IER assisted trade unions and Andy McDonald, MP, to develop the New Deal for Workers, which formed a large part of the current Government’s election Manifesto promises.

And now IER is busy comparing that promised New Deal for Workers with the Employment Rights Bill currently passing through Parliament.

Given our history, it will come as no surprise that IER believes more, much more, needs to be delivered if workers and trade unions have any chance of shifting the balance of workplace power in favour of workers.

So, to assist all the Oliver Twists in our movement, who, like us, are asking for more, IER has produced bite sized materials full of information and arguments for activists to use.

Last year we launched the first IER series of 6 podcasts covering important aspects of the ERB. In these you can hear IER experts talk on issues ranging from the history of the New Deal for Workers, the right to strike, the need to push on with proposals for a single status of worker; how to strengthen proposals around zero hour contracts and fire and rehire, sectoral collective bargaining and equality issues.

When the Bill was first introduced, Lord Hendy and Professor Ewing outlined the strengths and weaknesses of the Bill and developed an informed critique on what they saw as serious gaps in the proposed legislation

As the ERB has passed through Parliament IER’s experts have been busy producing Fact Sheets on single issues of importance to trade unionists. These are living, ever changing documents as new amendments are introduced and passed. They will remain important even when the Bill becomes an Act as a reminder of the work that still needs to be done – including a call for a second Employment Bill during the term of this government.

So, if you are struggling to keep up with the twists and turns of the Bill, or if you are sceptical about the claim that this is as much as we can expect, then visit the IER’s website – ier.org.uk – and make use of the materials on offer.

—

James Harrison, Director, IER

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Now 300 pages long, the Employment Rights Bill is probably the biggest single piece of legislation on workers’ rights ever printed in this country. But don’t be fooled. The impressive length is not matched by the quality of the content, which is characterised by broken promises and missed opportunities. The substance is either weak and compromised, or empty of content with much of the detail being left to ministers to deal with by regulations. The result is that it will be several years yet before the Bill is brought into force, and the full scale of the disappointment revealed.

Although it is customary in trade union circles to be grateful to the government for what it has delivered in the Bill, such servility is misplaced. The British people gave Starmer a huge mandate to deliver on workers’ rights and he has failed in his duty adequately to follow through. As a result, the overriding emotion should be one of anger at having been let down once again. Almost every promise on major issues covered by the Bill has not been honoured, while gaping holes remain in our increasingly complex labour laws to ensure that many workers will still be denied basic rights.

‘Exploitative’ zero hours’ contracts will not be banned; ‘fire and rehire’ will not be prohibited; and protection from unfair dismissal will not be available to employees from day one. On the contrary, vulnerable workers will have the ‘right’ to continue to reject the offer of regular hours’ contracts; employers – such as P&O Ferries – will be able lawfully or unlawfully to dismiss staff and replace them with agency workers recruited at sub-optimal wages; and ministers will have a power likely to be used to reduce rather than remove the current two year qualifying period for dismissal protection.

Similarly, trade unions were promised a raft of new rights, beginning with a right of access to employers’ premises: to meet, support, represent, recruit or organise workers. But all the Bill does is provide trade unions with a right to request an access agreement for these purposes. A union which is denied an access agreement may apply to the CAC for an access arrangement to be imposed on the employer. If this is done and the employer refuses to follow the arrangements imposed, the union is required to go back to the CAC for an order requiring the employer to comply.

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Where the employer disregards a CAC order, the union must make yet another application to the CAC for a financial penalty on the employer. But any penalty set by the CAC goes to the government, not to the union. Unions have been granted a right without a remedy. In the absence of any remedy for the violation of its ‘right’ of access, there is no reason why a union would incur the additional cost of taking any additional legal proceedings against a recalcitrant employer. This enforcement model operates in other parts of labour law, and for obvious reasons is not widely used. The expectation here is that employers will simply deny access to trade unions in the knowledge that access cannot be compelled.

On trade union recognition the Bill fails to fulfil earlier promises to overhaul the statutory recognition procedure. This is despite GMB’s failure at Amazon, due in part to the employer’s ability to keep unions out by using the opportunities provided by a weak statutory procedure. True, the Bill proposes modest changes to ballot constituencies, ballot thresholds, and union access to the workforce during the recognition campaign period. But these do not address the core problem, namely the conduct of employers before and after a recognition application is made. There is no change to the substance of the law dealing with unfair practices: employers can continue with their disruptive behaviour.

Also on collective bargaining, a commitment was made to roll out a programme of sector wide collective bargaining, designed to reverse the alarming decline in the levels of collective bargaining coverage in the United Kingdom. In 1978 about 82% of workers were covered by a collective agreement or a wages council order. Today that is likely to be in the region of 28%. Although the Bill makes provision for pay determination for adult social care and school support staff respectively, the procedures are subject to tight ministerial control and veto, and do not satisfy any definition of collective bargaining, which in the case of both adult social care and school support staff is in any event actively suppressed.

The lesson from all this is to judge the Bill by what it says, not by what ministers – or some trade union leaders - want us to believe it says. It does not even pass the P&O test, which invites us to ask whether the Bill’s effect would be at least to prevent a P&O type situation arising in the future. The summary dismissal of 786 seafarers in breach of collective agreements and statutory obligations was one of the greatest of many scandals in modern labour law history. Yet the Bill provides no guarantees that this could not happen again, making no provision to restrain employers who behave in this way, or to empower trade unions to resist by solidarity action when employers do so behave.

The Bill should be seen for what it is. It addresses but does not resolve some extreme forms of employer abuse, and fails to deal with all such abuses, the most notable being bogus self-employment. It extends the individual rights of workers (such as on parental, paternity and bereavement leave), but does not respond to the problems of enforcing these rights in the chronically overloaded tribunal system. And while it nods in the direction of trade union rights and collective bargaining, the Bill makes only limited changes, the government’s commitment highlighted by its failure to lead by example to restore sectoral bargaining in the civil service, despite the obvious efficiencies in doing so.

There are other multiple concessions to employers, including on the right to strike.

While the Bill will repeal the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023, it will not remove all the restrictions introduced in the Trade Union Act 2016, and does not address the fundamental restrictions introduced in the 1980s. But for reasons explained above, the penny is unlikely finally to drop until the eve of the next general election, just when trade unionists are being asked again to become foot-soldiers in Starmer’s electoral army. We may then see large scale desertions by those duped by an over-hyped Bill that is likely to make little difference to their working lives, their standard of living, or their job security.

—

KD Ewing and Lord Hendy IER President and Chairman

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N.B. This article was first published in May 2025, as part of the re-launch of our Federation News tabloid newspaper, available here.

March 17 marked three years since one of the darkest days in modern British maritime history. Three years since 786 dedicated maritime professionals were escorted off their vessels by security guards wielding handcuffs, having been told via Zoom that their careers with P&O Ferries were over.

No notice. No consultation. No dignity.

I still remember the shock waves that rippled through our maritime community that day. The outrage was palpable, crossing political divides and uniting the nation in condemnation. Yet for all the promises and tough talk from the previous government, precious few tangible protections emerged for seafarers in the following years.

By contrast, in just a matter of months, we have now witnessed the progression of the UK’s Employment Rights Bill (ERB) — legislation that represents a genuinely generational shift in employment rights with significant positive implications for our members and all seafarers.

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The ERB closes critical loopholes that P&O Ferries so callously exploited. It strengthens collective dismissal laws, requiring operators of foreign-flagged vessels with operational links to the UK to notify the UK government before dismissing 20 or more employees. It tackles ‘fire and rehire’ practices and doubles the maximum protective award available to employees at employment tribunals — making it harder for unscrupulous employers to simply ‘price in’ the cost of sacking workers.

The Seafarers Wages Act, which came into force last December after being delayed by the 2024 General Election, already requires most operators of a service with more than 120 UK port calls to pay their seafarers at least the equivalent of the UK National Minimum Wage. These are substantial steps forward, and the current government is delivering on its promises. But our work is not finished. At Nautilus International, we continue to press for further protections to prevent any repeat of the P&O Ferries scandal. We want the directors of P&O Ferries held accountable for breaking the law.

We are also calling for powers that would allow the government and unions to take immediate, pre-emptive legal action against employers contemplating mass dismissals. We want to see sick pay, holiday pay, training and pension rights included in mandatory employment standards for all seafarers. We are advocating for a reduction in the threshold for these regulations to apply — from 120 to 52 UK port calls per year — ensuring that more seafarers benefit from these vital protections.

The maritime sector is the lifeblood of our island nation. The security, resilience and prosperity of the UK depend upon it.

Three years on from that shameful day, I remain as determined as ever to fight for the rights of maritime professionals. The progress we have made with this government represents a significant victory, but it is not the end of our campaign.

Maritime is fundamentally an international industry, and P&O Ferries represents the worst face of globalisation – attempting to exploit global labour markets by importing insecure employment for disposable labour and undermining the rights of skilled UK maritime professionals.

Our fight goes far beyond national borders. While the Employment Rights Bill provides crucial protections in the UK, Nautilus is taking our campaign international, working closely with the Nautilus Federation, European Transport Workers’ Federation, and International Transport Workers’ Federation to expose and challenge these exploitative practices. We’re collaborating across our branches in the Netherlands and Switzerland, and with international partners to create a unified front against employers who seek to treat maritime workers as commodities rather than skilled professionals.

Our message is clear: maritime workers are not disposable, and we will fight globally to ensure dignity, fair wages, and proper working conditions for every seafarer, regardless of their nationality.

We will continue this vital work, to ensure that what happened on our shores three years ago cannot happen again, by rebuilding a sector where skilled maritime professionals receive the respect, recognition and rewards they deserve.

—

Mark Dickinson General Secretary, Nautilus International

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N.B. This article was first published in May 2025, as part of the re-launch of our Federation News tabloid newspaper, available here.

In 1994, under the Criminal Justice Public Order Act 1994 Section 127, the POA were banned from inciting any form of industrial action. In the year 2000 we were given the Prison Service Pay Review Body (PRB) as a so-called compensatory mechanism. However, the POA would much rather have sectoral collective bargaining and the right to strike but have been denied those basic rights by both a Conservative Government and a Labour Government.

The POA this year gave written and oral submissions to the PRB and made it clear that our members who work in the Prison Service (where the remit group are Prison Officer Grades and Operational Support Grades ) deserve not just an inflation proof pay rise but also restorative pay as in real terms over the last 14 years pay has been eroded by over 13 per cent. It will take substantial pay rises over several years for POA members’ pay to catch up and we are determined to make that case each year whilst there is a review body in place.

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It is difficult to comprehend after years of austerity and financial suffering that our members could well be facing austerity mark two or, as some would name it, austerity on steroids. POA members in the prison service setting who come under the Pay Review Body do not need or want more misery on pay.

Let us face it gas, electricity and water charges are all seeing massive increases in 2025. Food prices continue to rise along with car insurance, house insurance, mobile phone charges. All these increases in ordinary bills are heaping financial pressure on POA members who have suffered due to their take home pay not keeping pace with these rising prices. This is causing families to rely on foodbanks and applications through the POA welfare fund and credit union for assistance.

If the Government are serious about decent employment rights and having an effective prison service that works, then they need to treat the workforce with respect. That starts by recognising that POA members need and deserve a decent pay rise otherwise they will vote with their feet and leave the prison service for jobs that pays more and are less stressful than working in a service that is over crowded and violent.

Prison Officers do a magnificent job on behalf of society in keeping them safe. But praise from politicians does not put food on the table or keep the wolves from the door when bills are mounting up simply because pay levels have been eroded year on year.

Our evidence was credible and accurate, and I will be surprised if the Pay Review Body do not recommend a substantial pay increase for our hard working men and women that protect society to a high professional standard.

But even a recommendation by the PRB is not always implemented by Government. We will be watching developments over the coming weeks with interest.

—

Steve Gillan, General Secretary, POA

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N.B. This article was first published in May 2025, as part of the re-launch of our Federation News tabloid newspaper, available here.

The Employment Rights Bill passing through Parliament, is the most meaningful upgrade to UK employment law in decades and should deliver concrete change to reverse the slow erosion of their rights, security, and real wages.

Yet employer groups are sounding the alarm. Lobbyists from employer organisations warn that this landmark legislation will scare employers, flood firms with red tape and ultimately reduce recruitment.

But behind headlines of ‘costly burdens’ and ‘regulatory thickets’ there is a more hopeful reality: this Bill, far from being a threat to jobs, is a path to fairer, more secure, and more productive employment – exactly what Britain’s labour market needs.

Yes, the business concerns are real – or at least, sincerely held. The British Chambers of Commerce has said, “there would be a reduced hiring appetite were this legislation to come in.” The Federation of Small Businesses reports that two-thirds of members are likely to recruit fewer people because of the Bill. And the Institute of Directors warns it will make hiring “more onerous.”

At the heart of this worry is the introduction of day-one rights to protection from unfair dismissal – a long-overdue reform that employer groups argue will make hiring feel too risky, especially for small firms or for candidates who might be seen as less of a ‘safe bet’ on paper.

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But this argument wilfully ignores a basic truth: workers who feel secure at work are more likely to join, stay, and thrive. The trade union movement – from the TUC to Unite and the GMB – is clear that the Bill’s protections will support, not suppress, recruitment.

It’s time we turned the recruitment debate on its head. For too long, the UK’s hiring model has been built on insecurity: zerohours contracts, bogus selfemployment, and disposable labour. The Bill offers a reset. Protections from day one will build trust and stability. Guaranteed rights to request flexible working and to know your hours will help people – especially women, carers, and disabled workers – see employment as sustainable. These are not “costs to business.” They are investments in a workforce more willing and able to work.

Let’s not forget who really pays for bad jobs. It’s not just the workers facing unpredictable shifts and short notice dismissals. It’s also the employers themselves, who deal with constant churn, poor morale, and the costs of re-recruitment. The TUC’s Paul Nowak highlighted at the committee stage of the Bill how some firms with high turnover spend thousands in the recruitment of new staff, whereas the Bill actually incentivises employers to invest in their staff.

Insecure work isn’t flexible – it’s chaotic, and it’s damaging. The Bill’s commitment to improving guaranteed-hours contracts by requiring a stable contract offer after twelve weeks is being painted by some as a blow to business. But it simply means that workers who have shown up week after week will get the certainty they deserve. This is basic fairness. And as the TUC has repeatedly pointed out, the most productive workplaces are those where people feel safe, not disposable.

And we must remember the wider context. The UK has endured fourteen years of wage stagnation, growing in-work poverty, and the steady erosion of employment protections.

The deregulated labour market model has not delivered dynamic growth or stable jobs. It has delivered insecurity and inequality. If the worst practices of employers are allowed to continue, we risk a repeat of the fire-and-rehire practices that allowed P&O to sack 800 workers by video call. We cannot afford to keep giving ground in the name of flexibility.

To prevent such measures, the Bill could go further.

As I argued in the Commons, the government should establish a single legal definition of employment status to stop exploitative employers dodging obligations. And trade unions should be given injunctive powers to prevent mass dismissals before they happen – a necessary balance when employers already have the legal means to stop strikes. But even in its current form, the Bill is a generational opportunity to rebalance power at work.

Critics have also attacked the Bill’s support for collective bargaining – but I have argued it does not go far enough, in terms of delivering true, independent collective bargaining or in reintroducing it to sufficient new sectors of the economy. The OECD and IMF have both concluded that coordinated wage-setting leads to higher productivity and lower inequality. Their arguments strengthen the case for a renewed culture of workplace democracy, including sectoral agreements that lift standards across the board. Far from scaring off employers, such mechanisms ensure fair competition and stable employment relationships.

The business case against the Employment Rights Bill rests on the flawed idea that workers’ rights and job creation are mutually exclusive. They are not. A fairer workplace is a stronger one. Secure jobs attract committed workers. Respect breeds productivity. And dignity builds a labour market people actually want to enter and stay in.

And as the TUC’s Paul Nowak has said, ‘We hear a lot about the potential cost to employers, the potential impact on recruitment and so on, but some of those points were made during the introduction of the minimum wage.’

We must stop pretending this is a zero-sum game between employers and employees. The Employment Rights Bill deserves not just support, but strengthening. Now is the time for bold action – and to move forward to a more positive future.

—

Andy McDonald MP

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N.B. This article was first published in May 2025, as part of the re-launch of our Federation News tabloid newspaper, available here.

If you’re out and about in one of Britain’s cities and need to hail a cab to get home, be especially nice to your driver if she happens to be female. She’s almost certainly had a rough day.

It’s fair to say, however, that encountering a female driver is one of the slimmest. That’s because most women leave the profession due to safety concerns, because they’re paid less than men, and because the app based companies they work for are doing nothing to protect them.

Cristina-Georgiana Ioanitescu, President of ADCU, the App Drivers and Couriers Union, works as a chauffeur, picking up diplomats and businessmen from Britain’s airports. “We estimate that women make up less than 1 per cent of our 10,000 members. Most of them don’t stay long, primarily because of the safety concerns. They’re on their own in the car and the app companies won’t let them have cameras, so it’s their word against the rider’s. And the companies always side with the riders”.

“It’s also hard for them to make a decent living, because the highest-paying jobs are often at times women can’t typically work, because they have caring responsibilities, and need to work during the day, when the kids are at school.

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“Another issue is access to toilet facilities. We know of women who have developed UTIs because they have not been able to use a toilet all day or get parking fines for stopping for a few seconds to use a hotel toilet. Long journeys are the worst. You have to accept them or you don’t get other jobs.

Ioanitescu has been hassled for dates and asked for underwear from male passengers. She tells of members who have been propositioned for oral sex by riders, only to find themselves on the receiving end of a retaliatory complaint when they refuse. The app companies have no system in place for investigating and, nine times out of 10, if a driver tries to complain, they’ll be the one who loses their licence.

ADCU member Maryan, a mum of four from Brent who drives at night to support her kids, learned this the hard way. After two years of driving for Uber, she was permanently deplatformed from the app, without explanation. She remembered one particularly difficult passenger who had put pressure on her to break the speed limit. “I’m convinced he thought he could intimidate me, because I’m a woman, and also because I wear the hijab. He kept asking if he could take the wheel, and drive himself, which he would never have done if I had been a man.

Maryan appealed to Transport for London, which investigated and cleared her to work, but still Uber refused to let her back on the platform. So, she contacted her MP, Barry Gardiner, who wrote to Uber for an explanation. It refused to provide details of the complaint and claimed, without evidence, that there had been several others made against her. “All I wanted was to be able to tell my side of the story, but they wouldn’t give me a chance,” she says. “It’s such a shame, because I love my job.”

Catherine Meechan, couriers branch member for ADCU, highlights another issue— the fact that the algorithm is inherently sexist. “I’ve been working as a delivery driver for five years, and have a five-star rating. A male friend was thinking of becoming a delivery driver, so I said I would show him the ropes. We were sitting in McDonald’s, and a job came up on the app, offering £3.50. I turned it down, because I was talking to him and didn’t want to take it. He logged onto the app seconds later, and was offered the same job at a rate of £5. This was Uber Eats, which has known for a long time that the system discriminates against women — there was research carried out by Stan ford University back in 2018, which found that male drivers earn about 7 per cent more than women — but they have done nothing about it.”

So, if you manage to beat the odds and book a female driver to take you home, or bring you your food, be extra nice to her. And give her a big tip.

—

By Jane Wright

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N.B. This article was first published in May 2025, as part of the re-launch of our Federation News tabloid newspaper, available here.

On January 7th 2025, cleaners at the Old Bailey Central Criminal Court returned to work after the Christmas break to the news that their jobs were due to be outsourced in just 2 months’ time: they were to sign their new contracts there and then or resign from their positions immediately.

Surprised, confused, and fearing for their future security, they approached the Cleaners and Independent Allied Workers’ Union (CAIWU) for support fighting back against the plans. Reflecting on the process, a CAIWU member commented:

“I’ve been working for the corporation for 27 years and we all work here as a family. But now what is the corporation doing to us? We’re not happy. That’s why we’re all standing here today. We have to fight for our rights. There’s nothing we can do but strike so that they hear our voices. We’re all from different countries and we must work hard for our families back home. The corporation has let us down. If these people take over, we are nothing. We’ve already seen some examples: they are bullying us and belittling us in the way they’re talking to us. And our manager said the outsourcing is already decided: whether we say yes or not. If we say no, we’ll be kicked out. So, there’s nothing we can do. Do we say yes and go home and cry inside? Or do we fight back? They don’t respect us or what we have done for the corporation”

CAIWU represents 25 cleaners at the Old Bailey with over 500 years’ service to the City of London corporation between them. The decision to outsource their contracts — abruptly and without diligent consultation beforehand — represents a betrayal of public sector workers and flies in the face of the Labour government’s promises to end exploitative outsourcing practices.

We know that outsourcing is a race to the bottom: suppliers win contracts by offering the lowest price, and it’s the workers who pay the consequences. They are at higher risk of redundancy, face increased workloads leading to physical and mental health issues, their wages and allowances are squeezed: all while the private sector reaps the rewards.

Cleaners are some of the most vulnerable workers in our society — with the majority being women and from migrant or racialised backgrounds — and thus are too often the first port of call when companies are looking to save a few pennies through a wave of privatisation. Too often, the outsourcing of cleaners opens the floodgates to more rounds of outsourcing, from security staff to administrative roles and beyond.

In response to the plans, CAIWU members at the Old Bailey voted overwhelmingly to take strike action in February, with an 86% turnout and 100% yes vote. Following 1 day of strike action on 7th March, cleaners walked out between March 24-28th. Though they were able to cost the corporation a significant amount through undermining the use of scab labour (provided by incoming contractors OCS Commercial Cleaning Services) and disruption to court proceedings, outsourcing came into fruition on April 2nd — a month later than the corporation had initially hoped.

But their fight isn’t over yet: more resolved than ever to end outsourcing in the City of London, CAIWU members are reaching out to outsourced colleagues across the corporation to build a coordinated and mass campaign against their privatisation. A win for these workers would throw a spanner in the works of not only the City of London’s outsourcing plans, but accelerating privatisation across the public sector more broadly.

To find out more visit CAIWU’s website at caiwu.org.uk or follow us on X/Twitter: @caiwuunion and Instagram: @caiwu_union

—

Jamila Squire, Communications Worker, CAIWU

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N.B. This article was first published in May 2025, as part of the re-launch of our Federation News tabloid newspaper, available here.

The first trades councils were founded the late 1850s in Sheffield, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and in 1860 in London. The London Trades Council was formed out of a strike committee within the building trades, led by the Operative Bricklayers Society, and from their very early days, trades councils were involved in strikes and lockouts. These were both defensive fights to protect terms and conditions, and offensive fights to improve the lot of working people.

The key purpose of trades councils was, and is, to bring together unions organising working people in all different trades and industries on a local basis. In doing so, they build solidarity and unity in action amongst workers on a geographical basis, coordinating strike solidarity, taking up local campaigns, defending local services, and of course organising annual May Day activities.

In 1868, at a meeting convened by Manchester Trades Union Council, the trades councils founded the TUC, to bring greater unity to the movement on a national scale. In 1899, also in Manchester, the TUC in turn formed the GFTU, in order to build greater industrial unity between unions. Thus, in many ways, the trades councils movement set off the chain of events that led to the founding of the GFTU.

Trades councils today continue to play the crucial role of bringing working people together on a local basis. For example, Birmingham TUC support for the Birmingham Bin Workers’ Strike. At the time of writing, bin workers in Birmingham are facing £8000 pay cuts as a result of historic underfunding pushing the council into deficit. Birmingham TUC has responded by publicising the strike and organising picket line support to strengthen the fight to defend pay. Or the support Oxford & District Trades Union Council gave to the UCU strikers at the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University during their strikes, to GMB security guards at Job Centre Plus during their strike. Lending a PA system, etc.

Trades councils are able to organise broad support for these fights because they operate across sectoral and industrial boundaries. They don’t rely purely on the communication of disputes upwards through union structures and back down; they build direct solidarity between workers at a grassroots level, in the workplace and in the community.

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This last point is another key advantage of the way in which trades councils are organised. Because they are rooted within a sense of space and place, they have the opportunity to become embedded within their local communities, providing a link between local union branches and local community campaigns, tenants groups, etc. At their best, trades councils can form an interface between the organisation of workers in the workplace and the organisation of those same workers within their local communities.

At a time when workers are facing pay cuts and redundancies at work, continued underfunding of public services and fragmentation of local communities, there could be a no more important time to build the trades council movement and combine workers’ collective power in the workplace with their collective power in the community.

To build solidarity and unity in action, trades councils need the engagement of every local trade union branch, and the active participation of workers involved in organising their workplaces and their communities. We also need to expand the opportunities for Trade Union education amongst these activists, to develop the workplace and community leadership that our movement needs to win.

Get involved in your local trades council, help shape it, and help us to build a movement that can continue to change the face, not just of trade union organisation, but of our society.

—

Pôl O’Ceallaigh Secretary of Oxford & District Trades Union Council

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N.B. This article was first published in May 2025, as part of the re-launch of our Federation News tabloid newspaper, available here.

Cuba knew it would be in for a grueling four years when Trump was elected for a second term, but the speed with which his new administration escalated US economic warfare against the island was unprecedented.

In his first term, Trump waited almost four years, just as he was leaving office, to designate Cuba a ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism’ (SSOT). This time, within hours of his inauguration, he returned Cuba to the US SSOT list.

Cuba does not sponsor terrorism. It sends doctors not bombs around the world. Inclusion in this spurious US list deprives Cuba of trade, investment and access to international banking mechanisms, warning off much needed potential investors. It has fuelled the economic and migration crisis that they are now facing.

Cuba’s Foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla was defiant in response. “It will cause harm, but it won’t subdue the firm determination of our people,” he said on X.

On 31 January the US declared that the Cuban company Orbit SA a “restricted entity.” Orbit is responsible for processing remittances (money sent home to their families by Cubans living abroad) most of which are sent through Western Union. On 8 February Western Union suspended transfers to Cuba “due to a change in US sanctions regulations.” Remittances are a lifeline for many Cuban families during the current economic crisis and they will end indefinitely unless another way to transfer money is found.

On 31 January the US declared that the Cuban company Orbit SA a “restricted entity.” Orbit is responsible for processing remittances (money sent home to their families by Cubans living abroad) most of which are sent through Western Union. On 8 February Western Union suspended transfers to Cuba “due to a change in US sanctions regulations.” Remittances are a lifeline for many Cuban families during the current economic crisis and they will end indefinitely unless another way to transfer money is found.

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US State Department officials have made it clear that the aggression is only just beginning. The new US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has promised to implement “a tough US-Cuba policy.”

In February he launched a direct attack on Cuba’s international medical missions by imposing visa restrictions on individuals and immediate family members associated with the humanitarian programmes. Cuba’s international medical brigades have treated millions of people in the global south since they were introduced, and are deemed vital for the healthcare infrastructure of many countries, especially some of Cuba’s closest neighbours in the Caribbean.

Rubio accused the medical missions of depriving “ordinary Cubans of the medical care they desperately need in their home country,” when in reality it is the US blockade that is blocking Cuba’s ability to buy lifesaving medicines and surgical supplies its people desperately need. For years the US government has attempted to undermine the medical programmes, providing USAID funding to try and expose them as “forced labour.” However this propaganda has been challenged both by Cuban officials and the doctors themselves, and by international observers, who argue that the missions are voluntary and provide critical services to the communities in need.

The leaders of CARICOM countries were quick and vehement in their condemnation of this measure which would sanction them for using Cuban doctors and nurses in their health systems.

“Does anyone expect that, because I want to keep my (US) visa, I’m going to let 60 poor, working-class people die? That will never happen,” said Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, where Cuban doctors working at the county’s Medical and Diagnostic Centre, save dozens of lives every day.

With a slew of pro-blockade hardliners appointed to diplomatic and White House posts, and a new Senate bill which seeks to impose even harsher sanctions on foreigners who “engage” with Cuba, all levels of the US government and the legislature are focused on strangling the Cuban economy and increasing shortages and the suffering of its people.

In its first 100 days the Trump administration has moved with unprecedented speed and aggression, with more attacks to come. The solidarity movement must step up to this challenge, and prepare for a four year fight alongside the Cuban people in defense of their sovereignty and Revolution. You can help by supporting the Cuba Solidarity Campaign’s medical aid appeal at cubavive.org.

—

By Natasha Hickman Cuba Solidarity Campaign

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N.B. This article was first published in May 2025, as part of the re-launch of our Federation News tabloid newspaper, available here.

Last Autumn, the Scottish Government announced that it would be reducing the opening hours of 101 stations across Scotland, with some stations slated to lose up to 98 hours per week.

Ticket offices are far more than just places to buy tickets. They provide an easily identifiable source of advice and for paying the correct fare; an obvious point of contact and support for disabled, elderly, and vulnerable passengers; a place of safety for staff suffering violence and abuse; and of refuge for women and girls who are being harassed.

That’s why TSSA has campaigned hard against these cuts. They follow the 2023 Tory plans, south of the border, to shut nearly 1000 ticket offices across England. My union and others were vocal in our opposition to those closures, which were overwhelmingly rejected by staff and passengers. After mobilising thousands to take part in the statutory consultation – responses to which completely opposed the plans – the Government were forced to backtrack.

Proposals that make changes to Schedule 17 of the Ticket and Settling Agreement – the document that sets out the goods and services provided by train operating companies – require a public consultation. But in Scotland, rather than ask people what they think of this round of cuts, the SNP have hidden behind a 2022 consultation for similar plans. Even back in 2022, with a short window for reply, a vast majority of participants thought cuts were a bad idea, citing accessibility of the railways and the safety of women and girls travelling alone or at night as key issues.

The Gilruth report on women and girls’ experience of the Scottish transport system came soon after, recommending that there was an increased staff presence at stations and reporting that ‘many women spoke of feeling safe in well-staff ed areas/ stations, and of feeling less safe in unstaffed areas.’ Soon after, the cuts were quietly – and rightly – shelved.

But now they’re back. Since Autumn, they’ve been tweaked and now 97 ticket offices are in the fi ring line.

ScotRail has claimed that only a minority of stations will face staffing cuts and that transport workers will be redeployed to gatelines or the platform. Crucially, though, there’s no guarantee that staff won’t be moved in the future.

Schedule 17 sets out the services that train operating companies must off er, but it doesn’t specify how many workers should be available to provide them. By removing the requirement to keep a ticket office open, they have effectively opened a backdoor for reducing staffing levels in the future – without consultation.

To make matters worse, the Scottish Government were asked repeatedly for an Equality Impact Assessment of the cuts. Now it’s finally published, it can only be described as shoddy work.

The Assessment itself admits its own failure, saying that ‘for many of the protected characteristics, it is difficult to fully ascertain what [the] impact might be at this stage’. Most of the mitigations it proposes are simply business as usual for ScotRail, rather than any specific attempt to tackle the challenges people could face without an open ticket office.

Importantly, in a key omission, the impact on ‘Turn Up And Go’ services – the right of disabled passengers to turn up to the station and travel without having to book assistance in advance – is entirely, and shockingly, missing from the report.

Disabled people, women and girls, the elderly, and vulnerable people deserve better. That’s why TSSA will continue to fight these cuts, keep ticket offices open, and campaign for a railway that’s accessible for all.

—

Maryam Eslamdoust, General Secretary, TSSA

Union activists and supporters gathered in central London recently calling for major improvements to the government’s Employment Rights Bill currently passing through Parliament.

Union leaders, rank and file activists, leading labour lawyers, progressive academics and MPs lined up at the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom rally to point out the shortcomings in the Bill.

Many argue that the present Bill is far from what Labour originally promised in its New Deal for Working People, adopted at party conference.

Garfield Hylton, a GMB activist from Amazon’s Coventry depot, explained how Amazon’s union busting techniques when faced with a recognition claim will not be outlawed under the Bill.

Tabusam Ahmed, a Unite officer from London, spoke against outsourcing which, despite Labour’s promise to bring about a wave of insourcing, is hardly mentioned.

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Eddie Dempsey, transport union General Secretary, and Martyn Gray, director of organising at maritime union Nautilus, both spoke about how P&O Ferries had fired 786 seafarers and replaced them with labour recruited by an overseas agency.

Mr Dempsey argued that under the terms of the Bill another P&O Ferries could happen tomorrow.

A group of migrant domestic workers at the rally said that they were permanently tied to even abusive employers through their visa, under a law brought in by the Tories, arguing the Bill should have recognised their plight.

Lord John Hendy KC described the implausibility of a worker on a zero hours contract being able to insist on being given a guaranteed hours contact and keeping their job.

Other key deficiencies in the Bill, such as no real sectoral collective bargaining and no repeal of the 1980s restrictions on the right to strike were comprehensively dealt with by Lori Holmes from PSC, Professor Keith Ewing and John McDonnell MP.

Activists have been urged to take two actions. Firstly, to get their union branch or trade union council or similar to carry the Campaign’s model motion.

Secondly, to lobby Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds to accept forthcoming amendments made to the Bill in the House of Lords using the QR code in the graphic below.

The emerging consensus is that we will need an Employment Rights #2 Bill to be brought forward before the next General Election.

—

Adrian Weir Assistant Secretary, CTUF

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N.B. This article was first published in May 2025, as part of the re-launch of our Federation News tabloid newspaper, available here.

Air pollution doesn’t stop at the factory gate. It is more likely to have been caused by work activities. It seeps into communities and homes as well as the buildings and environments that workers occupy.

During hot weather, air pollution can build up to harmful amounts leading to dangerous pollution episodes. These cause health problems for those with compromised health conditions and even those with none, contributing to the deaths of more than 40,000 people each year in the UK.

In 2019 the Hazards Campaign along with Greener Jobs Alliance and UCU set up TUCAN – Trade Union Clean Air Network. We were quickly joined by 14 other organisations and trade unions who signed up to a Charter.

The Charter demanded the introduction of a new clean air act, enshrining the right to breathe clean air, amending work exposure limits to place duties on employers to monitor and adopt control measures on vehicle emissions and ensuring effective enforcement by the relevant agencies.

If your trade union or organisation isn’t signed up to the Charter, please pass a motion urging them to get involved. Workers need to lead this debate and highlight the real-life examples of the harm being caused.

Air pollution is made worse by other climate conditions. Last year we partnered with Heat Strike to highlight the health impacts of working in extreme heat. Temperatures which affect cognitive functions can cause serious health conditions including heat exhaustion, heatstroke leading to organ damage and even death if untreated, and safety incidents and catastrophic mistakes.

All workers can be impacted including those providing emergency responses to weather conditions, often left without adequate protection or clean accessible water. It is essential that the impacts of climate risks are controlled and prevented.

But heat is not the only risk faced in our climate crisis. Other extreme weather conditions put workers at risk – floods, storms, freezing temperatures and wild fires.

The recent LA fires and the lack of COVID infection controls highlighted the need for clean air to be a priority both indoor and outdoor. And as outdoor air comes into buildings, so air filtration in indoor spaces needs monitoring and improving.

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It will take strong trade unions to hold employers to account and oversee a transition from climate harming work activities to ones that will ensure the planet’s future. Workers need to be listened to, their health and safety put before profit and future work designed to their needs and health priorities.

TUCAN and Hazards have produced films, guides, and a dedicated website showing the value of monitoring and the need for workers to be involved in solutions, including advancing a Toxic Use Reduction policy.

Central to any risk controls must be making the invisible visible, providing monitoring alongside all work activities on temperature and pollution with reps and employers working together.

The debate in Government needs to change to ensure that workers have a fundamental role in these discussions. To assist, we have produced a campaign briefing paper which sets out 20 proposals to give occupational indoor air pollution the necessary recognition and response from Government.

During May and June we have organised 4 events in London, Glasgow, Manchester and Cardiff to bring together trade unionists, environmental activists, campaigners, politicians and academics to discuss how we take the issue further. Afterwards we will be developing a toolkit for workers and a trade union education course.

Workers must be at the centre of policy development, driving change to secure safer jobs, and sustainable healthier work. As Dave Whyte and Ben Crawford said in the IER ‘Working for Climate Justice: Trade Unions in the front line against climate change’ ‘The Hazards campaign provides a model approach that sees the occupational threats to workers’ health and threats to the environmental health of the community as indivisible.’

—

Janet Newsham Coordinator and Chair of Hazards Campaign

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N.B. This article was first published in May 2025, as part of the re-launch of our Federation News tabloid newspaper, available here.

The probation service was decimated in 2014 as a result of Chris Grayling’s disastrous privatisation reforms. Since its reunification in 2021, the service has been severely impacted by staff shortages in each of its regions and dangerously excessive workloads. The service requires significant investment, both in the organisation of the service and in it’s staff, in order that it can meet the government’s agenda for its future.

In response to the keynote speech by the Lord Chancellor in London on 12th February announcing a series of measures designed to reduce the strain on the service, Napo General Secretary Ian Lawrence said:

“Our members have gone above and beyond over the last decade to keep the probation service running and to deal with successive governments’ emergency measures to alleviate the prison capacity crisis. They need more than just words to recognise their efforts, and the previously announced 2.8% cap on public-sector pay rises for 2025 just isn’t going to cut it. Our members want to be properly recompensed for the work that they do to protect the public and to help people turn their lives around.”

On top of better wages to recruit and retain staff, Napo is calling on the Lord Chancellor to make radical reforms to ensure the future of the service. Probation’s current capacity to absorb change is being stymied by a prison-centric civil service. Napo have tried to work constructively with HMPPS, making suggestions for real changes to probation workload that will support staff in doing their jobs to the best of their ability. Unfortunately, all too often HMPPS have been too slow to respond or have failed to explore these options properly.

We believe the gross mismanagement of HMPPS over the past decade has led to the current state of crisis in the probation service. As a result, Napo do not have confidence in the employer to make any substantial positive changes to the working conditions or practice of our members. Napo want probation to be taken out of HMPPS and to be embedded into the local communities it serves – and not suffocated by centrally driven bureaucracy.

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Ian Lawrence said: “Prior to Grayling’s reckless reforms, probation was an awardwinning service. All 36 Probation Trusts were rated as good or excellent. Since 2014, all that good work has been lost. Probation just doesn’t fit the civil service model, and we risk losing the profession altogether if we don’t break away from prisons and central control.”

Evidence of this can be seen with accredited programmes. Programmes are designed to address specific offending behaviour and form part of both community orders and licences. Three years ago, HMPPS began consulting with Napo on a new target operating model that would rewrite the job description for those who deliver programmes. As a result, last year the role was evaluated as a Band 3 role (Band 3 is for non-probationqualified staff). This led to large numbers of experienced Band 4 staff (who largely worked with those who commit sexual offences) leaving the role and moving elsewhere in the business, or resigning.

As the Lord Chancellor announced on 12 February, this has led to huge backlogs in people waiting to start a programme. Staffing levels in programmes are at 70%. This means the service has the capacity to deliver 8,500 programmes a year – but we have 16,500 people waiting to start a programme.

This situation is entirely the making of HMPPS. Unions warned them that their ideological approach of doing more for less (Band 3s are paid less than Band 4s) would result in a reduced capacity and add greater pressure to an already broken system.

Probation needs to be able to focus on its core work and evidence-led practice. It cannot continue to be used simply as an escape valve to alleviate prison pressures. There will be a further challenge for already hard-pressed staff with the expected early release of over a thousand prisoners in June.

The foregoing is why Napo is calling for removal of Probation from the civil service to enable it to deliver on its key priorities and build in flexibility to meet local demands.

Just as the government can’t build its way out of a prison crisis, it cannot recruit itself out of the probation crisis. Drastic urgent action needs to be taken to reduce workloads in a way that ensures public protection, protection of its own staff and ground-breaking changes by way of the sentencing review to make a permanent impact on reducing re-offending.

How GFTU affiliates and their members can help

Questions that affiliates may wish to ask of your sponsored MP’s include:

• The Labour manifesto promised a review of probation. When will this review take place?

• Does the Minister agree with Napo that the service is in crisis and that drastic action such as taking probation out of HMPPS and the civil service is required to preserve and develop this 150-year-old agency?

• Does the Minister believe legislation is required to enshrine the core functions of probation and to ensure it is able to focus on rehabilitation and public protection, and not simply be used to alleviate prison pressures?

• Probation wages have stagnated for over a decade, so does the Minister agree that urgent investment is required to retain and recruit staff, and will they reconsider the 2.8% pay cap?

—

Tania Bassett Former Probation Officer and Napo’s Press, Parliament and Campaigns lead

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N.B. This article was first published in May 2025, as part of the re-launch of our Federation News tabloid newspaper, available here.

Two years ago, at the 105th Biennial General Council Meeting of the General Federation of Trade Unions, we criticised the embrace of neoliberal economic models by successive governments over nearly five decades. This economic orthodoxy has had several disastrous consequences for working people.

The dismantling of collective bargaining, coupled with attacks on trade union rights, has led to a race to the bottom on wages, terms and conditions, and a catastrophic fall in the standard of living of the vast majority of the population. Meanwhile, a small number of people have got very rich.

The dismantling of public services, combined with suppression of their funding, has led to a major underresourcing across the public sector, from health and education to local amenities and infrastructure. This in turn has led to a crisis of service delivery, further affecting the living standards of the mass of people.

Finally, the dismantling of the UK’s manufacturing capability has resulted in a lack of skilled, quality jobs, a trade deficit and an inability to protect our economy against external shocks. This was shown throughout the pandemic, and again during the cost of living crisis, when the UK economy experienced both deeper lows and slower recovery times than many other developed economies.

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Two years later, in spite of a welcome change of government, that analysis remains fundamentally accurate. Wages have continued to fall and terms and conditions remain under attack in many sectors, through outsourcing, fire and rehire, and other underhand tactics. Public services have faced further cuts and many local authorities are on the brink of collapse. In the manufacturing sector, we have seen further dismantling of our industrial capacity, most notably the huge swathe of job cuts at Port Talbot British Steel. Our economy is as vulnerable as ever to external shocks and slow to recover, as the last few years have shown.

Our last Biennial General Council Meeting took place in the middle of a strike wave, during which many sectors of the economy were drawn into action, including rail, communications, health and education to name but a few.

If the past few years have taught us anything, it is that the ability of workers to resist these negative trends in our economy and to defend their pay, terms and conditions, rests on the strength of their collective organisation, their unity and their willingness to fight.

Growing and strengthening the labour movement.

To this end, the General Federation of Trade Unions has focused all of its energies on growing and strengthening its affiliate unions and the broader movement of which they are a part.

Over the past two years, we have significantly expanded our education programme, offering over 80 courses, including a mixture of residential, online and blended learning, and have registered over 1600 students since September. Our programme prioritises the development of collective leadership at every level of the trade union movement and is provided entirely free to affiliates (except for the Trade Union Leadership and Innovation Programme) and at a small cost to members of nonaffiliate unions. Our new Trade Union Education Fund widens access to branches and regions of non-affiliate unions, for a donation to our Educational Trust.

Similarly, our strategic consultancy, campaigns and organising support, HR, payroll and accountancy services, and all our other Win:Win Services are designed to strengthen our affiliate unions and contribute to the growth of the wider trade union movement. However, our work goes beyond strengthening the trade union movement in the here and now. The General Federation of Trade Unions was founded 126 years ago and we used our 125th anniversary last year to lay the foundations for the next 125 years. Our role is not just to support workers to defend themselves collectively against the attacks they face in 2025, but, as our founding aims set out:

“To uphold the right of a combination of labour, to improve in every direction the general economic position and status of the workers by the inauguration of a policy that shall secure to them the power to determine the economic and social conditions under which they shall work and live, and to secure unity of action among all societies forming the federation.”

These words are inscribed on our national banner and they guide our work going forwards.

In order to take up this challenge, to secure to workers the power to determine the economic and social conditions under which they shall work and live, we will need to invest not just in building our unions but in rebuilding working class communities. We will need to refocus our work on the development of working class culture. It is these strong bonds of community and culture that form the basis for the development of working class solidarity, on which we build the potential for unity in action.

Over the next few weeks, we will be preparing for our 106th General Council Meeting. The focus of this biennial gathering of trade unions will be on Class, Culture, Community. As a growing Federation, we will be looking to the future we want to build for our class and our communities. We invite you to join with us in shaping that future.

—

Gawain Little General Secretary, GFTU

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© Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

N.B. This article was first published in May 2025, as part of the re-launch of our Federation News tabloid newspaper, available here.

Welcome to the second edition of the GFTU’s Federation News, timed to help celebrate International Workers’ Day.

The main theme of this May Day special is the Employment Rights Bill. And once again the message is clear: that any loyalty to a labour government should not blind us to the realities of the deficiencies in the Employment Rights Bill.

We should not allow the Bill to become the proverbial Emperor’s New Clothes, shielding the naked truth by declaring all is well. What is blindingly obvious is that while the Bill correctly identifies many of the problems associated with the world of work in the UK today, it falls unnecessarily short of delivering the required solutions.

Two people who know and understand labour law more than most are Keith Ewing and John Hendy. In their piece they update us on changes made to the Bill during its passage through Westminster. They guide us through what they describe as the ‘broken promises and missed opportunities’ before warning workers against being ‘duped by an over-hyped Bill that is likely to make little difference to their working lives, their standard of living, or their job security.’

Andy McDonald, MP continues the theme. He challenges the economic and industrial myths put forward by business representatives, dutifully amplified by the media, and says the Bill can and should go further. He urges the establishment of a single legal definition of employment status and encourages the government to go further in delivering true, independent collective bargaining across sufficient sectors of the economy.

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Mark Dickinson from Nautilus then measures the ERB against the action pursued by P&O exactly three years ago and says it is clear that the Bill in its current form will not prevent another P&O disgrace happening again.

So, what can be done? James Harrison, IER Director highlights the excellent resources available free to trade unionists from the Institute of Employment Rights to inform the debate around the Bill. While Adrian Weir reports on a wellattended rally organised by the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom, outlining actions you can take to raise your voice in support of strengthening the ERB.

And it wouldn’t be a May Day special if we didn’t include voices from the frontline. So, we have a contribution on the work of Trades Councils, highlighting how they bring together workplace and community struggles into collective community actions. We take a look at how women fare on AI generated platforms like uber and we hear about a strike by cleaners at the Old Bailey, exposing the problems created by outsourcing of services.

Janet Newsham from Hazards uses her regular column to outline a campaign about air quality and climate risks for workers. And Natasha Hickman from Cuba Solidarity Campaign, one of 8 international partners working alongside GFTU, updates us on the determination of the Cuban people to resist the latest bully-boy tactics from Trump’s USA.

A number of GFTU affiliates update us on their current campaigns, including NAPO on problems and possible solutions in the probation service; TSSA on Saving ScotRail against office closures and the POA on their pay campaign.

And to top it all, Gawain Little outlines the past and future work of the GFTU in helping to strengthen not just the power of trade unions but also the collective power of working class communities to ‘help them to secure to workers the power to determine the economic and social conditions under which they work and live.’ Solidarity to all on May Day.

—

Carolyn Jones, Editor cad@gftu.org.uk

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N.B. This article was first published in September 2024, as part of the re-launch of our Federation News tabloid newspaper, available here.

I started teaching in 2006, and the classroom then felt much the same as it had to me in my own days at school. I remember being sceptical when I was told that a change of government would mean radical change in education, but in 2010 the General Election brought in a government who were wholly committed to the destruction of the state sector, the destruction of the trade union movement and the purposeful undereducation of the working class.

What we’ve seen in our schools since then is a system in which pupils aren’t taught to think or to question, but merely to learn what is required to pass tests. Damaging enough in itself, but when exacerbated in 2014 by the imposition of performance related pay for teachers based on their pupils’ exam results, it’s easy to see how this culture took hold of state education in England so quickly.

Funding for schools was decimated. Changes to the curriculum and assessment sidelined and marginalised the arts, and we saw not only a massive push in the privatisation of state education through the academies programme, but a mental health crisis in our pupils.

We’ve suffered 14 years of purposeful underfunding of education. This represents the entire time a child attends school in this country. The damage is deep, and we’re not going to see a quick recovery.

I want to celebrate the recent landslide victory of the Labour Party, but Starmer’s Labour is a long way from the visionary Labour Government of the 1940s. It’s a long way even from Blair’s Labour Party of the 1990s, who fed and clothed me and thousands of other impoverished children and paid us to stay at school.

Our 461,000 members stand ready to take action on resolving these issues. We took eight days of strike action last year, turned down an unfunded pay offer and continued to fight. Labour should be under no illusions: we fought and won against a Tory Government, we will do the same again against a Labour Government.

My optimism does not lie with politicians. It’s with the working class. It’s with the trade union movement. We know change won’t be handed to us. We know that we get nothing without a fight. No matter which Government we’re under, we will always fight for the children that we work with, and as the last year has proven; we will win.

—

Sarah Kilpatrick Vice President, NEU

N.B. This article was first published in September 2024, as part of the re-launch of our Federation News tabloid newspaper, available here.

Over 30 years ago the Tories introduced the 1993 Railway Act to break up and privatise this country’s rail network with disastrous, costly and often deadly results.

Today this incoming Labour government is finally committed to bringing passenger services back into public ownership as contracts expire or if contract terms are broken by the private operators.

Under Section 25 of the 1993 Act, public sector operators were prohibited from running franchises and failing services could only be run in the public sector on a temporary basis under the Department of Transport’s Operator of Last Resort (OLR).

This deeply ideological neoliberal approach, adopted in line with EU directive 91/440 introduced by Brussels in 1991, presumed that the government must re-tender each franchise for a private sector operator at some point. Indeed, the last Tory government stated its intention to return successful public sector operators like LNER to the private sector.

The new government’s Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill removes this presumption and allows the government to place passenger services into the public sector operator as the first option when a franchise expires or is ended early for under-performance.

As franchising has progressively failed like a car crash in slow motion, the number of franchises being run directly by the OLR has exponentially expanded. Currently the OLR runs four English franchises with its equivalents in Scotland and Wales running three more. This new bill reflects the need for the Operator of Last Resort to assume control of services in an orderly and phased manner that allows it to scale up its operations over time and ensure a good service while legislation to integrate it within Great British Railways (GBR) is progressed.

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GBR will be an arm’s length body and ‘directing mind’ tasked by the Secretary of State with improving the rail network with a focus on passengers and freight customers.

Within the clear strategic direction set by the Secretary of State for Transport, Great British Railways will be responsible for planning timetables, improving services, and the operation, maintenance, and improvement of rail infrastructure. This will be effectively re-uniting train and track under one body after being separated for so long.

This will bring finances together into a single body, enabling it to take longterm decisions to deliver improvements for passengers and freight and bring significant decisions around services and infrastructure under democratic control.

This provides the legal basis on which public sector passenger services can be rebuilt and constitutes an essential basis for the government’s wider reform agenda to deliver an integrated, publicly owned railway.

It will also deliver some early savings by cutting off dividend payments to private sector operators. On average, over the last seven years, the remaining private Train Operating Companies have paid out £130 million a year in dividends to their shareholders. Any profits can be put back into the railways, as was the case when LNER paid a £40 million dividend to the DfT in 2022. This includes some of the worst performing operators like Avanti West Coast, which paid out £11.4 million last year and has paid out £36 million in the last three years.

Integration into the Public Sector Operator of Last Resort, prior to deeper integration into GBR, will improve performance too.

In September 2023, even the Tories were forced to admit that those franchises within the public sector were operating well.

When the government integrates the OLR into the publicly owned body GBR with all staff employed by a single employer, it will deliver significant savings by finally eradicating the wasteful interface costs inherit in a fragmented rail network. For example, the complex and much pilloried Delay Attribution system, through which over 400 people are employed to attribute blame for delays between Network Rail and the train operating companies, in order to compensate parties against commercial risks, will have no further purpose.

Now that would be a better way to run a railway.

—

Mick Lynch General Secretary, RMT

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N.B. This article was first published in September 2024, as part of the re-launch of our Federation News tabloid newspaper, available here.

The new government is to be congratulated for its commitment to honour its manifesto commitment to implement the proposals made in Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay, the latest version of its New Deal for Working People.

The government’s proposals include major changes: employment rights from day one, doing away with zero-hour contracts, banning “fire and rehire,” easing the conditions for statutory sick pay, allowing workers to take carers’ leave and bereavement leave, ensuring workers have the right to switch off, extending full employment rights to all workers other than those truly in business on their own account, and much else besides.

But although most welcome, even if fully implemented these changes to individual rights will not address the real problem faced by the overwhelming majority of 31 million working people - lack of power at the workplace, with the vast majority of workers having no control over — indeed, no input into — the terms and conditions on which they work.

6.1 million workers in the UK are in insecure work, with 3.4m being in low-paid insecure work. Over 1 million workers are on zero-hours contracts not knowing how many hours they will work and hence how much they will earn in any given week. The earnings of half the workforce are not keeping pace with inflation.

Trade union voice at work

The fundamental need is for changes to the law to allow workers to exercise collective power through their trade unions to balance the power of employers. Labour’s Plan will certainly help in this respect, with reforms to the statutory recognition procedure making it easier to establish bargaining rights at places like Amazon.

Unrestricted to recognition claims, Labour also proposes long overdue changes to allow unions to have reasonable access to members and potential members at their workplace. But a problem which Labour is not currently planning to fix is that the statutory recognition machinery only allows a claim against a single employer. Labour it seems has put on hold the proposal in the New Deal to legislate to impose collective bargaining across each sector and most occupational groups in the economy.

True, Labour intends to require such bargaining across the social care sector and for school support staff; but why pause there?

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The case for extensive collective bargaining is well accepted internationally. Both the OECD and the ILO have been pressing its case for years. The EU introduced a Directive last year requiring states with less than 80 per cent of the workforce covered by a collective agreement to produce an action plan to achieve it. In the UK, collective bargaining coverage from the second world war to 1980 covered over 80 per cent of the UK workforce. But now, thanks to 45 years of anti-union legislation, privatisation, outsourcing, globalisation, and government policy, less than 1 in 4 of our workforce has negotiated terms and conditions. The rest have their terms dictated by the employer unilaterally — on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

The result has been catastrophic for workers. In addition to the growth of job insecurity, real wages have not risen in value since 2007. Of the 6.7 million people on universal credit, 2.3 million workers (38 per cent) are in work. Indeed, the real scandal of universal credit is not a few hundred people claiming for what they are not entitled but the fact that 38 per cent of the £59.8 billion annual cost of universal credit is spent on subsidising employers paying low wages.

Apart from improving the conditions of life for millions, higher levels of collective bargaining would increase demand for goods and services which would be instrumental in Rachel Reeves’s hope of achieving growth in the economy. It would also help to slash the government’s expenditure on benefits and at the same time increase its tax take. Above all it would restore some degree of democracy to the workplace so that workers again have some say in setting the terms and conditions in which they spend their working lives.

Sector-wide bargaining

The best way of achieving these objectives would be by restoring sector-wide bargaining, the case for which is overwhelming. By setting minimum terms for an entire industry minimum wages and allowances can be enhanced, pay gaps eliminated, fair differentials maintained, hours and holidays regularised, apprenticeships and training credentials standardised, and competition on labour costs eradicated. Employers will then compete on efficiency, productivity, research and development, and investment.

Sector-wide collective bargaining would also magnify trade union voice, without displacing enterprise or company based activity. In good collective bargaining regimes both sectoral and enterprise-based bargaining co-exist, the former enhancing opportunities for the latter by making it easier for unions to penetrate hostile firms.

Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay therefore cannot stop at sectoral bargaining for social care and school support staff. The need for sectoral bargaining across the food production and agriculture sector, the warehousing sector, the parcel and food delivery sector, the hospitality sector, and many others is just as acute.

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And as the RMT and Nautilus pointed out in evidence to the International Labour Organisation, if there had been a sectoral agreement for seafarers, it would not have been possible for P&O Ferries to sack 786 seafarers and replace them on inferior terms. That said, there is a commitment in the current New Deal/Plan to review the operation of sectoral bargaining and to “assess how and to what extent” sectoral bargaining arrangements “could benefit other sectors and tackle labour market challenges.” Although this falls far short of undertakings made in earlier versions of the NDfWP, there is enough here to provide a basis for future action enabling ambitious trade union leaderships to maintain political pressure for legislation to extend sectoral bargaining more widely.

Industrial Action

But there is more. To redress the power imbalance in the workplace, the heavy restrictions on industrial action imposed in the 1980s must be reversed. Labour’s Plan proposes workplace and electronic balloting, repeal of the Minimum Service Level legislation and the Trade Union Act 2016. But that is not enough. The New Deal for Working People made the modest proposal that UK industrial action law should, at the least, meet the standards of those international laws which the UK has ratified and by which it is notionally bound. That would be transformational. But so far it is not reflected in Labour’s Plan. It should be.

—

Prof. Keith Ewing and Lord John Hendy KC

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N.B. This article was first published in September 2024, as part of the re-launch of our Federation News tabloid newspaper, available here.

This year is the 30th Anniversary of the POA not having the right to strike in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Tories brought in this pernicious piece of legislation in 1994 under Section 127 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act which effectively made it a criminal offence to induce a Prison Officer to take any form of industrial action.

This legislation has existed under successive Governments since 1994. It was strengthened when the courts obtained a permanent injunction against the POA and then again by contempt of court proceedings, when the POA was fined £210,000 for alleged breaches of the legislation and the leadership was threatened with prison if there were further breaches. In Scotland the restrictions were lifted by the Scottish Government and POA members there have the basic fundamental human right to take industrial action up to and including strike action.

The sky has not caved in and, if anything, it has strengthened employee relations - a lesson perhaps for the British Government to learn from and repeal this restriction in the rest of Britain and Northern Ireland.

The New Deal for Workers (NDfW) under a Labour Government is a starting point that could be a game changer for workers in the UK if enacted in full. There are many good things in the NDfW and the POA will continue to work with the Labour Government on the repeal of section 127 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.

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No other trade union is restricted in the same way that the POA is in respect of Prison Officer Grades. As a compensatory mechanism for not having the right to strike the POA were given a Pay Review Body (PRB) for resolving issues of pay by independent individuals.

Unfortunately, as we have found over the last 24 years since its inception, it isn’t independent. The panel are selected by Government, paid by Government and appointed by Government. The POA have no say in the process. Moreover, the terms of reference of the PRB are set by Government Ministers.

There is actually nothing independent about it. We do not have a proper, fit for purpose disputes mechanism for resolving local and national disputes. Nor do we have confidence in the procedures as there is no independent binding arbitration. At the moment our application to the ECHR has been provisionally accepted and Steve Gillian General Secretary, POA the court has set dates down for the British Government to negotiate a “friendly” outcome.

I hope the British Government take this opportunity to reflect on the last 30 years and recognise that this anti trade union legislation is grossly unfair and repeal it during the negotiation period with the POA.

Trade Union rights are human rights and this piece of legislation, imposed on the POA has no place in a modern society and should be repealed if the Labour Government are serious about a New Deal for workers

—

Steve Gillian General Secretary, POA

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