A crucial factor in many Asylum seekers’ cases in this country is whether they declared that they were seeking asylum ‘on entry’ or ‘in country’. Not declaring at passport control when you arrive in the UK can have a serious effect on your chances of gaining refugee status.
Unsurprisingly though, people often have problems getting out of countries where they’re being persecuted. This leads some to use falsified travel documents, and some to entrust their passage to people smugglers. Whatever method they take, they arrive in the UK pretty nervous about their deception, distrustful of authority, and wanting to make sure they get into safety before rocking the boat.
Over 10 years back now, the Government decided that they would clear all this up by means of a poster, written in several languages, and stuck up prominently in airport arrivals. Surely now, ignorance of the law on claiming asylum the right side of the barrier could be no excuse?
Well… maybe. The poster was never very prominent, especially given the huge amount of other information and adverts on your way into arrivals, but the one at Gatwick South Terminal really takes the biscuit. Coming through from my hols, I noticed it stuck upside down on the ground, tucked in by a Tru-Print ad pillar.
Have let BAA know, but I wonder how symptomatic it is of how seriously asylum claims are being evaluated.
Good to see this little victory for GMB members - they’ve waited long enough for the case to come all the way up to the House of Lords, and well done to them for staying the course.
A group of 36 dinner ladies employed by St Helens Borough Council took out an equal pay claim back in 1998, originally as part of a wider group who settled separately. As a result, they were all sent letters by their employer, warning them that the cost of equal pay for them could result in the kids going without food. A disgraceful blackmail attempt that I’m glad to hear they never gave in to.
Worse still, similar letters warning of cuts for children or redundancies if the claim went ahead were sent to the women’s colleagues - seeking to isolate them from the rest of the workforce.
No-one ever hopes to take a greivance, go to court, or go on strike and thereby risk damaging the business, and hence risk their jobs or undo the hard work they’ve put in (regardless of the lost wages and soured relations) - it’s a last resort when faced with a persistently unreasonable employer. It’s often doubly hard for staff in the public sector though, as they also have a strong emotional connection to the people who clearly need the service they supply.
By playing on their dedication to the children in their care, the employers in this case hoped to swindle the dinner ladies out of what was rightfully theirs - a terrible dilemna for them. Hopefully this small case will have a big effect in curbing any future cases like this. Dedicated staff will already be wracking their consciences over taking action, without such irresponsible blackmail from employers.
Scary article on unionbusting in the States on afl-cioNOW. According to a survey by a union-friendly lobby group, 91% of US firms faced with an organising campaign will make employees attend one to one meetings with their managers about the union, and a whopping 82% engage a “union avoidance consultant” (the dreaded unionbusters). Worse still, 30% fire union activists during a campaign, and 49% threaten to close the plant if the union is recognised (though tellingly only 2% actually carry this out if they lose).
The AFL estimate unionbusting to be a $4bn a year business - a conservative estimate apparently, because it’s often very hard to prove the consultants were engaged for that purpose.
So far this is a far cry from our own situation in the UK, though the unionbusters are popping up over here too now, both home-grown and imported. US firm The Burke Group have been engaged against union campaigns at T-Mobile, Amazon, Virgin Atlantic and Calor Gas.
The TUC have a novel new approach to countering this, and are publishing a leaflet today, which outlines the actual benefits that an employer could be throwing away by not engaging with a union organising campaign. You can download a pdf here.
Yes - that’s right, benefits. Many of them in the tangible form of lovely cost savings. The Government reckons union reps are worth at least £3.5bn to the economy in increased productivity. 3000 workplaces have union funded (including through Government money) learning projects, which provide job related training to over 67,000 workers a year. Safety reps save firms millions through accidents and work related illness, and dealing with problems through a union means less tribunal cases, and hence much less money to lawyers.
…and of course, that’s before the cost savings in not employing a firm of extremely expensive unionbusters!
Not so clever. For someone who purports to be interested in unions and blogging I shouldn’t really have missed comment on my own union running a live conference blog last week. I do have the half-excuse that I’m only just back from hols at a pal’s farmhouse in rural Spain, where the landlines haven’t ever got to - let alone the wireless networks, so I’ve been web-starved for much longer than I’d like to be again!
So first in my bookmark list is going to be looking over the whole of the “100 Years of the NUJ” ADM blog, and seeing what I missed whilst I was busy sunning myself.
Congrats to the NUJ for doing this - A group blog like this gives you a good feel for an event, as well as letting members read and comment on the goings on at conference. Other unions like the RMT have webcast theirs, which is also good, but I think I’d prefer a blog format as a member, as it’s easier to cherry-pick from, without knowing the running order or sitting through bits that don’t interest me (shameful to admit I know, but there might be the odd moment I could nip out for!).
As of this morning, the ZCTU are out on strike across Zimbabwe, in protest at Mugabe’s economic mismanagement. Inflation has risen to 1,700%, the highest in the world, meaning that people’s salaries have become worthless by the time of their next pay packet. Hunger is killing thousands, and reports suggest one third of the working age population have left to try to send home money from neighbouring countries.
Police turned over the union offices again yesterday to try to disrupt the strike and arrested more union staff. This is a very dangerous time to be a trade unionist, in one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a trade unionist.
Labour Minister Nicholas Goche has overruled normal labour law protections for striking workers, saying: “Employers are free to deal with workers who choose to deliberately stay away from work.”
Conflicting reports in the expat ZimOnline and the Government controlled Herald. Who is telling the truth? Well, here’s a clue: Which one do you think publishes reader comments?
Slick YouTube-style campaiging from a Belgian union. Their Equal Pay Day (31 March was the second of these annual campaign days - bit late, sorry!) is similar to the UK Work Your Proper Hours Day in terms of using dates to really bring home work-related statistics to people who may be affected by them but not fully aware. In this case, it’s the end of March, as the average Belgian woman would need to work an extra 3 months of the year to earn the same as her male colleagues.
The online delivery may be cheap enough to do, but filming this and the other 3 slots they’ve done with a professional ad agency will have cost a fair bit (even on favour rates if they got them - unions don’t tend to in the UK!). Nice to see examples of unions really investing in online campaigning, and hope it did well for them.
So Unite it is then - Christine Buckley has the scoop in the Times that it’s the least worst name for the new union. I didn’t think it was even one of the front runners for the name, but I think it fits the bill pretty well.
You may think ‘what’s in a name?’, but I reckon it’s pretty crucial to get right if the union is going to reach out beyond it’s traditional membership - something which is pretty much the last big hope for the growth of the UK union movement.
The name needs to work well on an aspirational basis - all the millions of professional and clerical people in new economy jobs, who are looking for a union, even if they don’t know it or know the first thing about unions (natural recruiting territory for Amicus).
But it also needs to be an immediate and clear statement that it is here to help people sort out workplace problems together, to fit well with the work started by the T&G, aiming at the other big non-union sector of vulnerable workers - the low pay, low conditions jobs that have traditionally slipped through the union net.
Unite seems to be a name that could work well in communications to both groups - fingers crossed now that the visual identity for it comes out in the same way, rather than leaning too much to one side, and risking alienating the other group.
It’s a bit similar to Unity mebbe, and there may be confusions on their planned international focus if they take up joint working with UNITE-HERE in the States. There’s a potential gift to mickey-takers with the name ‘Untie’, but it’s an old joke after it was done so effectively to United Airlines.
Least worst or not, I think you couldn’t have got better with a whole union of focus groups - good luck to them in making it fit the new organisation.
All of this obviously being my own thoughts and nothing you can pin on my employers present or past, my union, my local party, my mates, or anyone else you might confuse me with - most of whom don't agree with me about very much anyway.
site feed
