Labour's plan to extend workers' rights will be gutted by 'consultation' with bosses unless trade unions fight back

The focus of the Palestine solidarity movement has shifted towards boycotting arms for Israel, but to succceed it needs international organisation.

By KD Tait In early September Keir Starmer reshuffled the shadow cabinet ready for a general election campaign, stuffing it with Blairite hardliners, friends to big business and sworn enemies of the left. Just as the Tory conference marked the beginning of the struggle for the leadership of the Conservatives in the wake of an […]

An Open Letter to union activists and the left on the next steps for our movement

The TUC has fined the NEU £153,000, bang in the middle of their strike campaign.

Editorial June 2023, No. 404

By Jeremy Dewar STRIKES—ESPECIALLY a prolonged strike wave like the present—draw huge number of trade union members into activity, and expand the numbers of activists building for the action. There’s lots to do: organising workplace meetings to get out the message and identify new activists, phoning up members to check postal addresses and win the […]

How can we get unions that fight?

THE WORKING class is facing the most serious attack on its living standards since the introduction of austerity after the financial crisis of 2007–8. Workers have responded with the biggest wave of strike action since the 1980s. Millions of workers in the private and public sector have struck for pay rises to keep pace with […]

INFLATION HAS reached its highest level since the 1980s. The November rate for the UK was 10.67%. Between September 2021 and September 2022, food prices increased by 14.5 percent. At the same time annual wages rises in the private sector stood at 6.7% and 2.9% in the public sector. The purchasing power of wages has […]

AS IMPORTANT as they are, these strikes are not the immediate answer for the whole working class. Given weak levels of unionisation and strikes in Britain since the 1980s and Thatcher, there must be a social movement against the high cost of living crisis—the poor, those on benefits, pensioners, low income workers and precarious sections […]

Tim Nailsea reviews A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organising and the Fight for Democracy by Jane McAlevey

Labour’s lead has narrowed to just four points.

Dave Stocking Radical Lambeth: 1978-1991 by Simon Hannah

By KD Tait THE RAILWAY NETWORK was brought to a standstill as 40,000 rail workers walked out in the first national strike for 30 years. The RMT union is taking action over a 3% pay offer and threats to jobs, pensions, working conditions and the safety of the railways. They were joined in London by […]

What are they for?

In the first week of May, 85 years ago, the tragic end to the Spanish revolution played out on the streets of Barcelona.

The base rate of pay for deliveries has been reduced by 24%.

Editorial May 2022, No. 393

We face the worst cost of living crisis in living memory.

The only way to ensure that union officials will never again sell out their own members to the bosses and the state is to democratise our unions.

The strategy has won victories, but there are limitations.

By Dave Stockton THE CONFEDERATION of British Industries (CBI), representing 190,000 companies, warned on 18 October that ‘acute’ labour shortages will spread across more and more industries, from construction and distribution to retail and healthcare. And this crisis could last as long as two years. Though hospitality trades have enjoyed a strong bounce-back, this sector […]

By Tim Nailsea BRITAIN’S ECONOMIC growth has almost stalled because of shortages of labour in parts of industry and of material inputs, due to disruptions in the supply chain, coupled with the effects of Brexit. GDP grew by 0.4% in August but is still 0.8% below where it was in February 2020, before the country […]

‘NEGOTIATIONS ARE about give and take … We are not cowards because we have taken a compromise,’ said the self-styled ‘socialist revolutionary’ Irvin Jim, general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa). Immediately after, he ordered 155,000 steelworkers back to work, ending their three-week strike. This wasn’t just ‘compromise’; it was […]

By Jeremy Dewar Workers in Britain are being hit by a triple whammy this month: inflation heading towards 5%; a £20 cut to Universal Credit, hitting the unemployed and worst paid workers; and the ending of furlough for 1 million workers, throwing hundreds of thousands out the door. These are not ‘temporary blips’ that will […]

Brexit and pandemic-induced shortages fuel demands for action on pay and conditions

General Secretary candidate Sharon Graham heads up the union's Organising Unit.

Branch activists must now co-ordinate real change from below.

Teachers take strike action.