21 January 2016
Unison, Unite and GMB are now consulting their members over the Local Government Association’s two-year pay offer of 1 per cent a year. Once again, rhetoric is outpacing reality.
Astronomic rises in house prices and rents, young teachers unable to live in the capital, a staffing crisis in the schools. Sounds familiar?
The 2016 local government pay negotiations are under way. Unite, GMB and Unison gird their loins for a battle, but the claim is weighted towards the “Living Wage”.
Traffic wardens working for outsourcing company NSL in Camden, north London, have voted to accept a new pay agreement. The settlement, which breaks through the ceiling of the “London living wage”, also avoids the need for another two weeks of planned strike action.
19 September 2015
Finland’s national trade unions held a mass demonstration on 18 September at Helsinki Railway Station, combined with widespread strikes, against government plans to cut pay and benefits.
The assumption that the national minimum wage was good for workers was always wrong.
7 July 2015
Cabin crews at the airline easyJet are to be balloted for industrial action by their union, Unite, following a breakdown in negotiations over pay for over 2,000 cabin crew at 11 bases throughout Britain.
6 July 2015
The delivery of thousands of “white goods”, from fridge freezers to kettles, could be severely disrupted if industrial action by more than 200 drivers and warehouse staff at Indesit goes ahead.
After 7 May, what should workers do? We don’t have the luxury of just preparing for the next election, as the Labour party is doing – though it looks like it is seeing how to lose the next election too.
As Workers goes to press, the Higher Education Committee of the University and College Union will be meeting to discuss the results of its consultative pay ballot.
16 June 2015
University and College Union members in higher education across Britain are currently being consulted on the “full and final” offer for 2015-16 made to the union by the University and Colleges Employers Association.
16 June 2015
Workers in the food industry union BFAWU today enter the second day of their 48-hour strike at Gunstones factory, Sheffield, following the employer’s decision to force through a pay freeze.
2 June 2015
Planned strikes at Network Rail over pay and conditions this week and next have been called off after the rail operator increased its pay offer to 2 per cent this year.
25 May 2015
Guides at London’s Globe Theatre are preparing for their second day of strike action over pay. The 38 tour guides have been in dispute since 2014, fighting for pay parity with similar prestigious organisations.
25 May 2015
Rail unions RMT and TSSA suspended a national rail strike scheduled for the Spring Bank Holiday weekend after Network Rail improved its pay offer. It would have been the first national rail strike for two decades.
17 May 2015
New data from the Bank of England demolish the ideologically motivated belief of those encouraging migration that it has no effect on wages.
2 May 2015
Hundreds of members of the Royal College of Midwives and the Society of Radiographers struck for the first time ever in hospitals across Northern Ireland on 30 April as part of the public sector pay battle.
Unison’s local government sector has been thrown into turmoil following the hijacking of the union’s democratic procedures after last year’s local government pay fiasco.
Rail unions RMT and TSSA look set to call around 20,000 Network Rail staff out on strike in a fight over pay after talks at ACAS broke down.
Unions in health will be meeting at the start of March to consider the results of the ballots on the government’s offer in the NHS pay dispute.
The government has made great play of naming and shaming employers who fail to pay the minimum wage. Yet just 92 employers have been prosecuted over the past two years
18 February 2015
The TUC’s “Fair Pay Fortnight” runs from 16 February to 1 March, supposedly a time for Britain’s trade unions to campaign over Britain’s depressed wage rates. But it seems a muted campaign.
7 February 2015
National Gallery workers were on strike for five days against privatisation proposals. They are part of a wider fight to defend Britain’s cultural heritage.
7 February 2015
Unions in the NHS are balloting their members on the pay offer that their industrial action has extracted from a reluctant government. But no one on the union side is claiming victory.
6 February 2015
A Unite union rep in north London explains why the capital’s drivers are having to fight to force bus companies to sign a single agreement covering pay in the capital.
26 January 2015
Union members at ITV have agreed to reject the company’s 2 per cent pay offer for 2015 and will move to a ballot for strike action unless the offer is substantially improved.
26 January 2015
Workers at more than 200 theatre venues across Britain are taking part in a pay survey for 2015. The initiativeis part of the entertainment and media union BECTU’s preparation for upcoming talks with theatre employers.
25 January 2015
German executive pay has outstripped the level in Britain for the first time. But British directors are doing their best to catch up – to the detriment of the country’s largest companies and their workers.
9 January 2015
With the announcement by Unite of a London-wide bus drivers’ strike on 13 January the stage is now set for a key confrontation in the capital’s public transport. The 27,000 drivers work for 18 different companies, and want to end big discrepancies in pay with a single agreement for all.
8 January 2015
Staff at the National Gallery in London are fighting low pay and privatisation, which is putting 400 jobs at risk. PCS members held a 24-hour strike in October and will ballot for more action.
