johninnit

Just arrived in Liverpool, ready for this year’s TUC Congress (www.tuc.org.uk/congress2009), which is worryingly my eighth one (I hope there’s some kind of medal). I’m pretty chuffed with some work I’ve been doing on a separate site Congress Voices, which aims to collate social media coverage of Congress, linking people here at the event with the millions of UK trade unionists that this parliament of unions represents.

You can find it at www.congressvoices.org , but if you are blogging, Tweeting or Flickring about Congress, it will hopefully find you! I’ve already noticed a few Tweets coming in on the hashtag #TUC09, and any flickr photos shared with user tuc.org.uk will also come to our attention. The site also provides a commentable agenda, where users can have their say on the motions under debate, which is another first. (more…)

Can anyone tell it’s the silly season? 2 days running now, the papers have been having fun with a story on how TUC killjoys would like to ban stiletto heels. It started in the Mail, and whilst I’d not expect them to let facts get in the way of a handcart firmly on it’s way to hell, it’s a little disappointing to see every paper (okay, bar the Morning Star) following their lead without checking either.

As I don’t imagine many people who read this are avid Mail subscribers, I thought I’d do them the favour of posting the article here. Hope you don’t mind if I put in a parallel pedant’s guide for those easily troubled by facts… (more…)

The TUC’s new Middlebritainometer (widgeted below) shows you how close (or not) you are to middle income Britain. Give it your income and it will quite possibly give you a surprise!

Certain sections of the media are very fond of talking about Middle Britain, portraying an aspirational group of happy Mondeo drivers as the very core of society. This is something of a fiction though, and the new Life In The Middle pamphlet shows how British society has moved in recent history from a sort of diamond shape, clustered around median income with some poorer and a comparable number richer, tapering off in both directions.

Now it’s all gone (literally) pear-shaped. The median has fallen downwards in the overall income scale, with the working poor better off in recent years, but the middle quintile slumped around the £20,000pa mark, and professionals and the super-rich stretching off much further at the top of the graph. (more…)

Spotted at the lights in Stratford. And there was me thinking that Brendan Barber got around the Congestion Charge by driving a trendy hybrid rather than having to pray to Boris to keep a monster SUV. Surely no-one else would want the plate “Me TUC” though?

First Nigel roundly berates the left blogohemisphere for our lack of a coherent critique of the current financial crisis (gulp), but then his colleagues Adam and Janet very kindly go and plug up the gap a bit themselves, at least enough to keep me safe for opinions at dinner parties for a little while (now all I need is an invite…)

Wellington Chibebe and Lovemore Matombo are the leaders of the Zimbabwean union federation, the ZCTU. They were arrested after a May Day rally for ’spreading falsehoods prejudicial to the state’ (ie: telling the truth) and Mugabe is trying to silence them in the run up to the run off of the presidential election, with a trial on Monday that could go badly for them, and a ban on appearing in public or making public statements.

The TUC and others have an extremely ambitious plan to try to make a giant photo mosaic of Lovemore and Wellington, made up of  hundreds and hundreds of tiny pics of supporters’ faces from around the world. Wellington and Lovemore may be banned from appearing in public, but this is a nice way for thousands of people to show solidarity and help them to “appear” at the London demo called to conincide with their trial on Monday, and in other demos that will be happening around the world. The plan is to use the picture to get more attention on the issue and demos in the media. (more…)

Woke up with a cold this morning, and thought “wouldn’t it be nice to have a bank holiday today and get up a bit later?”. Fat chance though with our miserly quota of public days off, and a dreary 16 week run without hols between August and Xmas.

The Bank of England used to recognise more than 30 holidays and saints’ days, which were whittled back to a miserly four in 1834 (a bad thing). These were then increased to six (in practice) in 1871, when the cricket-mad Liberal MP John Lubbock introduced the Bank Holidays Act to include two traditional village cricketing days, but we then had to wait over 100 years for another day off, with the last two coming in the 70’s as a result of union campaigning.

But that’s still nearly 20 years ago, I reckon another couple are very much deserved. Especially so as in the Euro holiday league tables, we’re right at the bottom, and probably about to be relegated – The average European enjoys three more public holidays. (more…)

Well, that’s another Congress over. I watched a pretty empty looking hall on telly for the last words, which this year went to David Hencke of the Guardian, with the traditional less-than-serious “Reply from the Media”.

He proposed a new round of Union Modernisation money to be spent entirely on high-tech innovations. The upcoming “Winter of Discontent”  would be replaced by a “Summer of Fun” Wi-Fi beach festival instead of next year’s Congress, with motions downloadable as podcasts for a individually customisable event, and unions would go entirely online to conduct their disputes through hacking and phreaking.

Might work. In fact online might already be how they’re organising the GC elections, given the results 

And they’re off! The motions for TUC Congress 2007 have been announced, and the shape of the event is starting to get clearer. They’re going to be amended, collated, composited and spat out the other side before September, but on a brief flick through the book (see it here) it looks like a good snapshot of issues that concern the UK’s unions.

Not as much as I might have thought on private equity, given current profile. Connect (p34) are calling for a database to monitor private equity fund activities, which is interesting, and might be a useful step in getting the hard proof needed to show how PE takeovers have historically resulted in worsened work conditions – an area where the PE lobby are currently calling unions’ bluff. There’s also an oddly worded motion from BECTU on accountancy as a revolutionary tactic (p69) may well prove useful in dealing with tax and transparency issues.

The TUC’s co-ordinating work on countering public sector privatisation will get a boost from Unison and Prospect (p45 and 46), and the media will likely use PCS and NUT’s public sector pay motions (p47 and 48) to bash visiting ministers (of whom there may be a good crop, given a new cabinet wanting to establish itself).

I think around 95% of Congress motions pass, with only a minority seriously contested, so much of this will be a shoe-in. Card votes in the past (where opinion is too close to call on a show of hands) have often come in the Global Solidarity section, and this year mightn’t disappoint. No Israel boycotts on the menu, but controversy in the international arena may come from the FBU’s Venezuela motion (p76), which supports Chavez’s revoking of a TV station’s licence, and the RMT’s motion (p72) to call for a referendum (and a ‘no’ vote campaign) on the new EU Reform Treaty.

The POA are getting a bit miffed about motions that don’t get followed up properly during the year. They had a motion in last year, politely chastising those unions who don’t fulfil the commitments they make in their Congress votes every year, and are on the same theme again, a little more directly, with motion P15: “Congress notes the need for the TUC and its affiliated unions fully to support TUC policies, once democratically adopted by Congress”. That’ll tell ‘em!

The PFA (p18) have an interesting organising motion, asking the TUC to help share good practice between unions who want to do more to be seen as key professional development bodies, something my own union (NUJ) are keen on. A practical initiative that might help our niche unions really play up their strengths in organising.

Adjacent motions on environmentally friendly freight may have a little barney, with ASLEF (p37) unsurprisingly calling for priority to rail freight and Nautilus UK (p38) to shipping. Strange that URTU and BALPA don’t have motions here

Incidentally, I was very glad to see that Nautilus UK are calling for Congress’ support in dealing with “mythical obstacles to the use of short sea shipping”. Scylla and Charybdis be warned!

I probably won’t be there this year, so hope there are going to be a lot of livebloggers to let us follow the fun (luckily I think MarshaJane has already volunteered, and Judy McKnight will hopefully have her laptop in the hall for a third year). Hey, at least NASUWT’s motion (p79) on “Abuse of technology” will mean you shouldn’t get sacked for blogging it!

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!