Trade union Unite has condemned further cuts to NHS jobs, following a new report detailing the effects of the health service’s “budget squeeze” in England.
“Unthinkable” NHS cuts come as staff morale has “never been lower”
A new NHS Providers survey has revealed that “services are being scaled back and jobs cut” across the nation. The report explained that the “predicted financial shortfall” in funding is around £7bn for this year, and that the expectation is for NHS trusts “to drastically reduce running costs” to compensate. It added that:
nearly half of trust leaders (47%) surveyed warned they are scaling back services to deliver tough financial plans, with a further 43% considering this option. Virtual wards, rehabilitation centres, talking therapies and diabetes services for young people are amongst services identified at risk
And in terms of job losses, it said:
The scale of job cuts is becoming clear with a number of trusts aiming to take out 500 posts or more and one organisation planning to cut around 1000 jobs.
Almost all survey participants insisted that the measures:
would have a negative impact on staff wellbeing and culture at a time when morale, burnout and vacancies are taking their toll and disquiet over pay and conditions is rising.
NHS leaders have reportedly been considering “previously unthinkable” and “eye-watering” measures to balance the books. One mental health trust boss told the BBC morale among staff had “never been lower”.
“Stark” and “catastrophic”
Unite’s national health officer Richard Munn responded to the NHS news by saying:
Further spending cuts to staff or to services in the NHS would simply be catastrophic. The service is already hanging on by a thread and now government seem intent on wielding scissors.
He added that:
Patients and staff will have their health and wellbeing put at risk and lives will be lost – it is that stark.
The union’s general secretary Sharon Graham, meanwhile, asserted:
This prime minister cannot continue with the Conservative legacy of running the NHS into the ground under the guise of “reforms”. Unite will be aggressively campaigning against any measures that are a byword for cuts or any downgrading to our members’ pay and conditions.
Industrial action as a result of the plans “is likely to increase”, the union said.
Despite previous calls for Unite to disaffiliate from Labour due to its rush to the right under Keir Starmer, it has thus far opted to maintain its links with the party.
“Hospitals already buckling under the pressure of understaffing”
British Medical Association (BMA) chair Prof Phil Banfield responded to the NHS news by saying:
It is deeply concerning to hear that so many trusts are still thinking about cutting services, given the state of the NHS today. Patients up and down the country will be wondering how this can be possible when they see hospitals already buckling under the pressure of understaffing, A&E patients lining corridors, waiting lists that seem endless and clinical staff eternally on the verge of burnout. To be in that situation and then to cut the number of doctors will seem absurd to most people. We are already hugely under-doctored amongst comparable countries.
He added that honesty about the situation is necessary, and the government should be upfront about it:
What we need is for Government to get a grip of a currently fragmented health system. There needs to be an honesty with the public about the scale of the financial challenge of restoring our NHS and the costs of reorganising services, which must be driven by the clinical need of patients, not managerial expediency.
If they truly want to meet their targets of cutting waiting lists rather than extending them, Government will need to ensure their NHS plans boost the numbers of doctors, and create – not cut – capacity.
A new RMT report, How Outsourcing Embeds Systemic Racism on the Railway, exposes how rail companies have trapped thousands of rail workers – predominantly from Black and racially minoritised communities – in outsourced roles with no pensions, no training, and no pathway to progression.
Key findings from the RMT reveal:
58% of outsourced cleaners and caterers are from Black or racially minoritised backgrounds. This is despite making up only 25% of directly employed train operator staff.
In London and the South East, the racial divide is even sharper: up to 80% of outsourced cleaners are Black or from racially minoritised backgrounds, compared with 40% of train and station staff.
82% of outsourced workers want to build a career in Great British Railways. Yet, 77% have never had a discussion about promotion, and 68% have had no meaningful training in the last three years.
83% are regularly performing unpaid duties like customer service and fault reporting, tasks expected of directly employed staff.
83% of outsourced rail workers believe that passengers would benefit more if their service was taken in-house and run directly by Great British Railways.
The report also shows how private firms use outsourcing to create a two-tier workforce. They have stripped staff of sick pay, pension rights, and job security, all while extracting shareholder profit.
Outsourcing: an exploitative practice that enriches shareholders
RMT is calling on the Labour government to fulfil its manifesto commitment to undertake the biggest wave of insourcing and end this exploitative practice once and for all.
RMT General Secretary Eddie Dempsey said:
Outsourcing is one of the most exploitative practices, enshrining dreadful employment conditions and low pay for workers.
Black and ethnic minority workers bear the major brunt of this super exploitation and are effectively trapped in second-class employment, unable to progress in a train company or Network Rail.
Outsourcing is inefficient and wastes public money while company bosses and shareholders make obscene amounts of money, much of it leaving the country all together.
RMT will fight tooth and nail to see these workers brought in-house, so they can enjoy the benefits our other members have being directly employed.
Labour has promised the biggest wave of insourcing for a generation. We intend to hold them to their promises and build on what they have started with GBR.
During the New Democratic Revolution, the Chinese trade unions united and mobilised the broad masses of workers to bravely throw themselves into the revolutionary torrent against imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism with a fearless revolutionary spirit. They fought bravely and made important contributions to achieving national independence and people’s liberation and establishing the new China.
During the period of socialist revolution and construction, the Chinese trade unions united and mobilised the broad masses of workers to actively participate in the construction of New China with a sense of ownership and passion, worked hard and built enterprises with arduous efforts, and sang the strong voice of the times that “we workers are powerful”.
NHS staff across three health trusts in Dorset are facing a major attack on their jobs, pensions, and pay, as nearly 1,300 workers—including porters, housekeeping, catering, and estates staff—are threatened with transfer to a private subsidiary company (SubCo). This move, driven by the University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust, is a clear step towards privatisation, set to happen as soon as September.
1,300 NHS staff in Dorset set to have their jobs privatised
As World Socialist Web Site reported, during a recent Zoom meeting held for NHS workers in the area, union leaders failed to present any solid plan to stop the outsourcing and instead urged members to write letters to MPs and hospital boards.
Promises of protests, work-to-rules, or strike action that were floated in earlier discussions have been quietly shelved.
Gareth Drinkwater, Unison Branch Secretary at the University Hospitals Dorset Trust and chair of the meeting, pleaded with workers:
If you are not a member of a union, my desperate appeal is for you to join Unison. We need you to. This will give us the best chance of stopping these changes going ahead.
Yet, this appeal rings hollow when no real campaign is underway, and industrial action is ruled out unless membership hits 100%, a practically unachievable target.
Laurie Hackney, a local Unison organiser, echoed this stance:
A strike is a last resort. If it comes to a strike or protest or mass gathering, we need as close as we can get to 100% because we cannot do it half-cocked. Any kind of collective action requires more members, numbers.
Bowing down to corporations and the government
But this excuse ignores the union’s immense resources. Unison claims over 1.2 million members nationally, with more than half employed in the NHS, and reported an income of over £185 million last year. Yet they claim that holding a strike ballot in Dorset is “expensive,” even though they spend around £80 million annually on bureaucracy and expenses.
This approach exposes a pattern of betrayal: instead of fighting privatisation and cuts in the National Health Service, the union bureaucracy consistently collaborates with management and the government.
Their track record includes accepting pay caps, freezes, and below-inflation increases that have slashed the real earnings of NHS workers over the past 15 years. In 2018, a deal negotiated by Unison helped cut sickness enhancement pay and dismantle incremental pay progression, while falsely promising to boost morale.
The unions were equally complicit during the COVID-19 pandemic’s darkest days. Over 1,500 health workers died—many due to shortages of personal protective equipment—while unions like Unison stood by and enforced government policies that prioritised “herd immunity” over workers’ safety.
Now, with Labour’s health secretary Wes Streeting pushing further NHS privatisation and job cuts, including the expansion of SubCos, unions like Unison remain silent or, worse, willing collaborators.
The NHS sell off continues apace
Last week’s meeting failed to address the Labour Party’s role in accelerating the creation of these private subsidiaries, which began under Tony Blair’s government in 2006 and have only spread under Conservative governments.
By 2019, over 65 NHS Foundation Trusts operated or were planning SubCos, where staff face lower pay, loss of NHS pension rights, reduced unsocial hours pay, and minimal employer pension contributions.
Keir Starmer’s Labour government insists that NHS trusts create these subsidiaries as part of “efficiency savings,” refusing to allocate necessary extra funding. Streeting has criticised what he calls a “begging bowl culture,” pushing staff to accept worsened conditions to help plug funding gaps.
Unison’s response in Dorset—to encourage polite engagement with management consultations and to channel frustration into writing letters—does nothing to protect hard-working NHS staff. This simply legitimises cuts and privatisation disguised as consultation, while failing to empower workers to organise real resistance.
Many NHS workers in Dorset and across the country desperately need more than empty promises and bureaucratic inaction. The call from campaign group NHS FightBack is for workers to boycott management-led briefings, organise independently through rank-and-file committees, and unite nationally to fight privatisation not with letters but with strikes and collective action.
NHS: take action
The message is clear: SubCos are not just administrative changes but a direct assault on jobs, pay, pensions, and working conditions for NHS staff. The failure of union leadership to lead a genuine fight against these attacks leaves workers vulnerable to the ongoing dismantling of the NHS.
NHS workers across Dorset and beyond are encouraged to come together to defend the health service, day in and day out, and speak out against the ongoing privatisation that threatens their livelihoods and the care patients receive.
The time for safe words and timid tactics has passed; it is action and solidarity that can make a difference.
“Extreme temperature variations” reportedly caused a massive blackout in Spain and Portugal on 28 April. And on the same day, trade union Unite marked International Workers’ Memorial Day released “a set of policy proposals to protect workers from the impact of extreme weather”.
The electricity grid operator in Portugal, REN, claimed that a “rare atmospheric phenomenon” caused a “fault in the Spanish electricity grid”. This has left many millions of people without power for several hours.
This very much ties in to Unite’s statement about protecting workers in situations of extreme weather disruption.
The union surveyed over a thousand members from Northern Ireland, following on from the “2018 death of Unite member Matthew Campbell, who was killed while working during Storm Ali”. And of 59% of workers “whose work included outdoor responsibilities” who “still had to perform them on the day of the storm”, the union reported that “only 23% said they felt safe and 66% said they did not consider their employer had taken all reasonable precautions”.
More than half of outdoor workers who didn’t have to work during the storm, meanwhile, “had to take the day as annual leave, unpaid leave, flexitime, sick leave or time-off-in-lieu, (TOIL) or holiday”.
“Workers must not be made to pay the price… for a climate crisis not of their making”
we are demanding that the government climate-proof health and safety laws to ensure that workers’ lives and incomes are protected during extreme weather.
Specifically in Northern Ireland, Unite is pushing for a number of ‘Extreme Weather’ protections. The union said:
As well as statutory maximum working temperatures, Unite’s proposals include an obligation on employers to conduct risk assessments during extreme weather events, cease all routine outdoor work during orange alerts and cease all non-essential work (whether indoor or outdoor) during red alerts, with workers continuing to be paid during such closures.
It added that it:
is also proposing four days’ paid climate leave, along the lines of that introduced in Spain following last year’s devastating Valencia floods, if conditions render travel hazardous or workers need to address pressing domestic needs resulting from extreme weather.
As Unite regional secretary Susan Fitzgerald insisted:
Accelerating climate change means that the intensity and frequency of extreme weather are set to increase. Workers must not be made to pay the price – in terms of their safety, health and livelihoods – for a climate crisis not of their making.
Spain and Portugal blackout: ‘extreme is the new normal’
As the Guardianreported in February after the hottest January on record, “extreme weather is our new reality”. Other records are falling too. And that’s set to continue.
With this in mind, Unite’s demands for working protections must become the minimum that we expect from our employers and governments.
In a recent meeting, trade unionists heard that “there will be no global climate justice, no global just transition without the liberation of Palestine”. One example of this was that, “just in the first two months of the genocide in Palestine, the CO2 emissions by Israel were superior to the annual emissions of more than 20 nations in the Global South”.
Delegates at the meeting reaffirmed their solidarity with the Palestinian people, specifically through Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) energy embargo campaigns. But there was one speech in particular that absolutely everyone must listen to very carefully to understand the connection between Palestine and climate destruction.
Linking the energy transition and Palestine freedom in the union movement
Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) has brought unions and allies together since 2012 to advocate for:
democratic control and social ownership of energy, in ways that promote solutions to the climate crisis, address energy poverty, resist the degradation of both land and people, and respond to the attacks on workers’ rights and protections.
a growing commitment among Global South trade unions to fight for an energy transition guided by planning, cooperation and a public goods framework.
In February this year, “120 union leaders and allies from 35 countries gathered in Mexico City for the Second Inter-Regional TUED South meeting”. And they had a session:
to review actionable strategy and reiterate the call on union leaders within the TUED network to stand in solidarity with the struggles of the Palestinian people.
But it was one speaker in particular who excellently summed up the importance of linking the fight for a just energy transition with the liberation of Palestine.
The Gaza genocide is a rehearsal for the Global North’s future treatment of climate refugees
Hamza Hamouchene is the North Africa programme coordinator at the Transnational Institute, “an international research and advocacy institute committed to building a just, democratic, and sustainable planet”. And he told the delegates at the TUED South meeting that:
It may feel misplaced or even inappropriate to talk about ecological and climate and energy questions in the context of genocide, displacement, and ethnic cleansing in Palestine. But I would strongly argue that there are strong intersections between the ‘climate justice’ and the ‘just transition’ struggle with the ‘liberation of Palestine’ struggle. In fact, I would say that there will be no global climate justice, no global just transition without the liberation of Palestine.
He explained that:
Palestine in a way concentrates all the ugliness and the contradiction of the capitalist, imperialist system and it shows its general tendency towards more violence, more militarism, more war, and cruel use of outright violence.
Colombian president Petro said very strong words: ‘genocide and barbaric acts unleashed against the Palestinian people is what awaits those who are fleeing the South because of the climate crisis. What we see in Gaza is the rehearsal of the future.’ He is absolutely right. Because the genocide in Palestine is a harbinger of worse things to come if we do not organise and fight back vigorously.
Why have large carbon-consuming countries allowed the systematic murder of thousands of children in Gaza? Because Hitler has already entered their homes and they are getting ready to defend their high levels of carbon consumption and reject the exodus it causes.
We can then see the future: the breakdown of democracy, the end, and the barbarism unleashed against our people, the people who do not emit CO2, the poor people.
Ruling classes have proven their willingness to sacrifice millions of people at the altar of profit and domination
Hamouchene continued by stressing that:
The global ruling classes and the Empire are already willing to sacrifice millions of black and brown bodies, as well as poor white working class, to maintain their profits, the accumulation of capital, and their domination.
They re “willing to fund genocide, to fund displacement”, he asserted. But the situation in Gaza is more than that, he added:
It is not just a genocide. A lot of analysts and researchers have been coming up with all these terms—from urbicide to domicide to epistemicide—but also ecocide. I think the most appropriate way, in my opinion, to describe what is happening is a holocide, which means the utter destruction of the social and ecological fabric of life in Palestine.
The death and destruction in Palestine and in other places around the world, he insisted, also show a deep connection between “the military-industrial complex” and “the ecological and climate crisis”. As he highlighted:
Just in the first two months of the genocide in Palestine, the CO2 emissions by Israel were superior to the annual emissions of more than 20 nations in the Global South…. Half of those emissions are due to the transport and shipping of weaponry by the United States, which shows the deep complicity in genocide and ecocide in that part of the world.
Imperialist control in the Middle East is key to ongoing climate destruction
Perhaps Hamouchene’s most powerful contribution, however, was on the central importance of Israel in securing US dominance in the oil-rich Middle East – a critical driver of climate change. Because he argued:
we cannot dissociate the struggle against US-led imperialism and global fossil capitalism from the struggle for Palestinian liberation
And he explained that:
US hegemony rests on two key pillars in the region and beyond. First, Israel as a Euro-American settler colony, which is an advanced imperialist outpost in the so-called Middle East. Israel is the number one ally of the United States and keeps US hegemony and domination of the region and control of its vast oil resources. The second pillar are the reactionary oil-rich Gulf monarchies.
Therefore, he insisted:
the Palestinian cause is not merely a moral human rights issue, but is fundamentally and essentially a struggle against US-led imperialism and global fossil capitalism. So basically, there will be no climate justice, no just transition without the dismantling of the deeply racist Zionist settler-colonial state of Israel and the overthrow of the reactionary Gulf monarchies.
So what do trade unions and allies need to do for Palestine?
In light of the above analysis, Hamouchene rallied delegates to support the transformation of words into action on Palestine. He said:
Colombia has shown the way when they stopped the export of coal to Israel. We need the same thing from South Africa. We need the same thing from Brazil, who provides around 9 to 10% of crude oil to Israel. We need the same thing from Nigeria, from Gabon, that still provide fossil fuels that are being used to massacre Palestinians—to fuel genocide, displacement, to fuel infrastructure of dispossession, to fuel the murderous F35 bombers and AI infrastructure that kills Palestinians by the day.
And he concluded that:
we need to stand together to push our own countries and our own trade unions to have a serious conversation about Palestine and how do we show concrete and active solidarity.
Backing the words up with action really matters
Brazilian speaker Andressa Oliveira Soares later backed Hamouchene’s call up by describing an energy embargo on Israel as “a matter of sovereignty for the Global South”. In Brazil, she said, pressure is increasing on the state to step in and take action. But at the same time, she pointed out, there are also some countries that maybe don’t sell products directly to Israel but do sell “flags of convenience” that facilitate shipments of resources to Israel.
Meanwhile, she asserted, there are companies that are “experts in stealing water from Palestinians”, which try to sell that expertise to governments in the Global South. Boycotting Chevron over its complicity with Israel’s crimes is another step unions and allies can take, she stressed, as are setting up Apartheid Free Zones, ensuring there is No Harbour For Genocide, and investing ethically.
Asad Rehman from War on Want and Friends of the Earth, meanwhile, argued:
this, I think, is a class war. Because what we’re seeing around the world is a war on the poor. We’re seeing a war on the planet. We’re seeing a war on workers. And we’re seeing a war on people that they see as being disposable—black, brown, and the poor—and the Palestinians are at the forefront.
He added that:
what’s happening on Palestine is also important for us. Because in the Global North, the reaction of the state to our protests has been to demonise us, to criminalise us.
And he said:
We’re seeing now also the same ‘walls and fences’ narrative that Israel has used in terms of the West Bank and Gaza and Palestine now being exported all over the world… the same technologies are being transplanted all around the world. And already Israel is saying, ‘This is battle-tested weaponry. This is battle-tested surveillance’ and already… selling it to some of our despotic regimes.
That’s why “we need a new internationalism”, he stressed, and:
the trade union movement has to be at the forefront of building and rebuilding a global anti-apartheid movement
Royal Mail: winning over CWU bosses – but not the workers?
As the World Socialist Web Site reported, in a letter titled “USO Update on Pilot Sites,” dated April 15 CWU Deputy General Secretary (postal) Martin Walsh and assistant secretaries Davie Robertson and Tony Bouch attempt to spin pilot trials aimed at dismantling Royal Mail’s Universal Service Obligation (USO) as positive progress.
Yet, behind this polished PR lies a plan that threatens thousands of jobs, brutal workload increases, reduced service standards, and a betrayal of postal workers’ interests.
The letter, addressed to union branches and members, claims the pilot projects—taking place at just six of the proposed 37 sites—are progressing based on four “overarching principles” agreed between Royal Mail and the CWU.
These include meeting “commercial targets,” achieving Ofcom’s newly lowered 90% quality of service for first-class letters, and ensuring workloads are “fair, manageable and achievable.”
On the surface, these sound reasonable, but in reality, the new Operational Delivery Model (ODM) slashes the number of postal routes while pushing call rates up by nearly a third. Delivery workers face shifts stretching over five hours, rotating between “core” and “combined” routes, robbing them of steady duties and predictability.
The CWU’s letter promises “extra Saturdays off” but ignores the fact these are designed to accommodate longer weekday hours—sapping workers’ energy rather than providing genuine respite. Absurdly, it speaks of reducing fatigue and improving morale while supporting longer, more intense work patterns that postal staff have already denounced as unworkable.
Mounting outrage
This letter follows mounting outrage from rank-and-file postal workers over the “USO Reform Pilot Terms of Reference” agreement Walsh signed last December, literally signing away protections to deliver Royal Mail’s corporate agenda and billionaire owner Daniel Kretinsky’s plan to “financially sustain” the service by gutting it.
The CWU’s own fightback efforts have been stifled: in January, postal workers at Cumbernauld in Scotland voiced serious concerns about the pilots during a workplace meeting, only for a motion opposing the changes to be blocked by the local union rep—a clear indication of the union bureaucracy squashing member dissent.
Walsh tried to brush off these criticisms by visiting the Cumbernauld depot and promising further communications “to prove the truth will prevail.” The latest letter though contains no testimonials from workers directly affected by the pilots.
This absence speaks volumes—it exposes how the CWU leadership is out of touch and aligned with management rather than acting as a genuine voice for postal staff.
The letter unabashedly endorses Ofcom’s attack on postal service standards. First-class next-day delivery targets have been quietly slashed from 93% to 90%, and second-class deliveries will now only take place four days a week instead of six. Walsh and Co even argue the current USO imposes “substantial unnecessary costs” on Royal Mail.
This claim dismisses the huge value postal workers deliver every day to communities across Britain, especially those in rural or vulnerable areas who rely on the consistent six-day delivery.
CWU: cold and calculated?
Despite claiming not to have “agreed as yet to full USO reform,” the letter warns that failure to implement the ODM will result in harsher cuts—reducing delivery days to just three or four each week. This backtracking is less a protection and more a threat, indicating the CWU’s collusion in dismantling the service.
The CWU admits the trials’ inevitable job losses will be managed through “not filling vacancies” and “voluntary redundancies.” Tens of thousands of postal workers have already been forced out or left due to the punitive regime imposed on them.
In November, Walsh coldly stated that 1,000 job losses would come directly from USO reform, with another 6,000 “natural wastage” attritions added on top—all as Royal Mail’s workforce had already been cut by 10,000 between 2023 and 2024.
There is a stark contrast between the CWU leadership’s cosy cooperation with management and the reality faced by postal workers struggling under increased workloads, longer hours, and job insecurity. The pilots are mired in problems, with many sites delaying their start dates to May amid clear staff resistance and already visible signs of fatigue and route “not clearing.”
These changes are being pushed through while the government and regulator Ofcom stand by, approving the erosion of a vital public service to appease billionaire shareholders. The public, along with postal workers themselves, express growing disgust at seeing a national treasure handed over to asset-strippers and oligarchs like Kretinsky—who view Royal Mail only as a cash cow to be milked.
Royal Mail workers must organise
In this bitter atmosphere, the only hope for postal workers lies in organising rank-and-file networks independent of the union bureaucracy, which has consistently failed to defend members.
The Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) has called for a fighting strategy to oppose these attacks, inviting postal workers nationwide to an online meeting on 27 April at 7pm. The session aims to unite opposition across delivery offices, mail centres, and Parcel Force, empowering workers to stand up for their interests against corporate greed and union collusion.
The CWU leaders’ recent letter reveals their role as enforcers of Royal Mail’s destructive plan, not protectors of working people. Postal workers continue to bear the brunt of longer hours, job losses, and slashed services while management and union officials try to sweep dissent under the carpet.
The future of the British postal service and its workforce hangs in the balance, depending on whether rank-and-file workers can organise and fight back against this assault.
Outgoing RMT general secretary, Mick Lynch, reinvigorated the trade union movement and gave marginalised citizens hope for a fairer society. Mick is a hard act to follow, but his successor Eddie Dempsey has already proven his mettle during the disputes – not just for his members, but for all other workers too.
Mick Lynch passes the baton to Eddie Dempsey: from one champion of progressive change to another
Eddie Dempsey, like Mick Lynch, eloquently presents his case without hyperbole and champions progressive change for working-class people. History has already proven that they are both on the right side of it, especially in their fight to oppose driver-only trains and the closure of the ticket offices.
Both men have accumulated a treasure chest of memorable moments in time. They debunked the neoliberal ideology that insidiously pervades our society. Eddie dismissed the excuse of a wage price spiral as a three-card trick to stop workers asking for a pay rise and designed to keep them skint.
One of the most inspiring speeches Eddie delivered was in Glasgow, where he opined:
they say the market must rule but the market can’t run society. It can’t feed the children and cannot keep our old people warm. We can do that and that is what they are frightened of. My trade union has got a motto – unity is strength.
There is a plethora of Eddie’s erudite quotes; it’s hard to choose the top three but each and every one is always evidence-based and backed up by his diligent research – certainly no spreading of fake news or disinformation from this union man. Other classics which will go down in history amongst us who greatly admire him:
There has been a transfer of wealth from working class people to people at the top. And that can’t carry on; that has got to change because the people at the top of the economy – they’re having a disco and everyone else is being told they’ve got to carry the can and tighten their belts.
Really this is about who owns what. Are we going to have a country run for corporations with some people in it or are we going to have a country run for the people in it with some corporations?
I think a lot of the politicians are aligned with the big corporations and they should be made to wear their sponsors on their suits and dresses.
Eddie Dempsey has the press and billionaires running scared already
I have been fortunate to meet Eddie Dempsey and Mick Lynch a few times now at rallies and recently had a chat with Eddie at a Strengthening the Employment Rights Bill rally. It is unequivocal that Eddie will continue Mick’s work with aplomb, and then some – he has, after all, got right on his side and the billionaire press is running scared.
Eddie was quick to help and provide practical advice and empathy to every person at the rally, especially a group of domestic workers whose working conditions are beyond lamentable. At one point, a delegate raised concerns about a work place issue, and immediately, he was able to offer sound advice.
Eddie, like Mick, has an abundance of emotional intelligence, integrity, and empathy – attributes that simply cannot be taught – it’s in their DNA. Both men are always meticulous in their preparedness and are fully versed in the history of howworkers’ struggles won our rights – rights that those who oppose unions take for granted today, such as holiday and sick pay.
Their demands? Pretty elementary – a fairer society for all. No fellow citizen should ever have to choose between heating and eating while billionaires do all they can to avoid paying taxes by becoming non-domiciles and hiring expensive lawyers to find tax loopholes. As Bernie Sanders said when he turned up to support the RMT during the strikes:
We fight for government of the people, by the people, for the people- not government of, by and for the billionaires.
Another world is possible for all key workers on the frontline
While on the subject of billionaires – the High Pay Centre continues to produce some eye watering facts:
If you had earned £1,000 a day since Jesus died and kept it under the mattress, you still wouldn’t have accumulated £1bn.
And:
FTSE 100 bosses make more money in less than three days than the average worker does in a year.
The pandemic proved to us who the key workers are and the immense value they contribute to our society – not that it should have taken a pandemic to remind us –and it certainly wasn’t the FTSE 100 bosses who devour money from the top. It was the wealth creators who were on the frontline risking their lives to keep us safe, fed, and watered. Key workers are still paid a paltry salary with precarious employment and Eddie, is on a mission to address this in his own inimitable way.
Thatcher was wrong with her iniquitous TINA neoliberal doctrine – there is an alternative and another world is possible. One of the first steps is to replace Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a metric – as Robert Kennedy said:
it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
Even the economist, Simon Kuznets, who pioneered the modern concept of GDP, disowned it as a metric.
Following in the footsteps of union giants
Union funding is the cleanest money in the UK – Eddie Dempsey and the union movement must now unite and continue to do all they can to enhance workers’ rights and pay. The ‘service-model approach’ should be put to rest and other unions must be bold and unapologetic like the RMT. Unions must continue to spread the message to all via feet on the ground outreach – especially to our young workers – that it is imperative to join a workplace union and to consider following in the footsteps of giants – become a union rep.
The poet Keats wrote, “a thing of beauty is a joy forever” – Eddie and readers of the Canary know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a fairer society is possible and this, is indeed, a beautiful thing.
The DWP WASPI scandal continues: now trade unions have weighed in
The PHSO’s report, released last year, highlighted severe maladministration at the DWP, leaving approximately 3.6 million women born in the 1950s without proper notifications about the increasing state pension age. The ombudsman called for reparations of up to £2,950 for affected individuals, citing that many of these women are now facing retirement in poor financial conditions due to these changes.
Despite these recommendations, the Labour Party announced in December that it and the DWP would not be issuing compensation, which caused an uproar among campaigners and union leaders alike.
The Labour Party’s decision to sideline the findings of the PHSO has led to allegations of betrayal against a government that claims to advocate for social justice. As the Mirror reported:
The leaders of Unison, GMB, the Communication Workers Union, Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association, and the Fire Brigades Union, said the decision will make many question the point of an Ombudsman.
They wrote:
By disregarding its report, the Government has established a dangerous precedent that suggests official checks and balances on ministers can be ignored, eroding public trust in our democratic institutions.
Union leaders, including Unison’s Christina McAnea, have not held back in their criticism. Speaking to the Mirror, McAnea said:
These women lost out on their pensions through no fault of their own. Many now face a much poorer retirement. Ministers should do the right thing and grant the compensation that’s owed.
How are WASPI women still having to ask for compensation?
Angela Madden, who chairs the WASPI campaign, expressed frustration with the Labour government and the DWP:
Nobody would have expected that one year after the publication of the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s report we would still have to be asking 1950s-born women to raise funds for a legal case to secure justice, especially under a Labour government that is meant to fight for social justice and equality.
Madden emphasised that the judicial review initiated this week presents an opportunity for the government to engage with WASPI representatives and rectify their stance.
The unions’ letter underscores the widespread dissatisfaction that exists, not only among their members but also within the broader public. They assert that the DWP disregarding the ombudsman’s recommendations could lead many to question the efficacy of such watchdogs in holding the government accountable.
The letter warns that by dismissing these significant recommendations, the government is setting a “dangerous precedent” which could allow ministers to ignore essential checks and balances, effectively eroding public faith in the very institutions designed to protect citizens.
In the face of mounting pressure, the Labour government’s justification for its decision has revolved around the argument that a flat rate compensation for all women, costing up to £10.5 billion, would not be a fair or proportional use of taxpayer money. DWP boss Liz Kendall suggested that the majority of women were aware of the changes to the state pension age, implying that compensation was not warranted.
The DWP: rotten to the core
This narrative has drawn fierce criticism from advocacy groups and campaigners who argue that the DWP simply did not inform many women adequately about the changes that would dramatically affect their financial futures. During a committee session earlier this year, Debbie de Spon, WASPI’s communication director, remarked:
We feel disempowered, we’re being airbrushed out of history.
The backdrop of this unfolding situation is a relentless struggle for justice by the WASPI campaigners, who are seeking to rectify a DWP systemic failure that has placed a significant financial burden on those who dedicated their lives to work.
The sentiment is summed up by the repeated calls for engagement and meaningful dialogue with the government and DWP, challenging them to reconsider their position and take accountability for the harms inflicted on thousands of women across the UK.
As the legal proceedings progress, the future remains uncertain for those 1950s-born women who have fought tirelessly for what they believe is their due compensation.
The pressure on the Labour government to revisit its decision mounts, with union leaders making it clear that time is running out for those who feel they have been left in the lurch by the very systems intended to protect them.
Mick Lynch has paid tribute to his successor at the RMT Eddie Dempsey, as the latter is set to take over leadership of the union. Meanwhile, in a sign that Dempsey is a good choice, the right-wing media has lost its collective mind over the appointment.
Eddie Dempsey taking over from Mick Lynch at the RMT
He previously served as RMT’s Senior Assistant General Secretary, and will take over from Mick Lynch on Friday 7 March.
Dempsey has been a leading figure in the union’s campaigns for fair pay, job security, and better conditions for transport and maritime workers.
He has pledged to continue RMT’s tradition of industrial strength and tough negotiation to protect members’ interests.
He originally joined the railway in 2008 and has worked as station staff and a train driver.
Outgoing general secretary Mick Lynch, who has led RMT through the successful national dispute, welcomed Dempsey’s election and expressed confidence in his leadership.
Mick Lynch said:
“It has been an honour to serve as RMT General Secretary, representing our members in their struggles for better pay terms and conditions. Eddie Dempsey is a committed trade unionist who has played a pivotal role in our union’s recent successes.
“He has the experience, determination, and leadership qualities to take RMT forward, and I have every confidence that he will continue to stand up for our members with strength and resolve”.
The right are already running scared
New general secretary Eddie Dempsey said:
“I am honoured to be elected as RMT General Secretary.
“Our union has a proud history of standing up for working people, and I will ensure that continues. The challenges ahead are significant, but we will meet them with the same unity, strength, and determination that defines RMT.
“I want to pay tribute to Mick Lynch for his leadership and dedication to our members – he has set a high bar, and I will do my utmost to build on his legacy”.
And if you want a measure of how politicians and the rich are reacting to the news of Dempsey’s election – look no further than the Telegraph. It noted that:
Eddie Dempsey… [is] a longstanding ideologue of the hard-Left, who critics fear will push the agenda of the RMT into further strikes – and even into more broader anti-government action across the trade union movement.
New analysis by the RMT union shows that Southeastern, the rail operatorowned by the Department for Transport (DfT), is routinely failing to meet its obligations to keep ticket offices open during advertised hours.
Southeastern: failing across the board
Data obtained through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request shows that over an eight-month period (June 2024 to January 2025), Southeastern ticket offices were closed for around 70,000 hours when they should have been open, equivalent to approximately 2,900 days.
As a result:
At five stations, ticket offices were open for only 1% or fewer of their advertised hours.
17 ticket offices in total were closed for at least 50% of their scheduled hours.
46 ticket offices were shut for at least a third of their advertised hours.
The union believes Southeastern’s failings are part of a deliberate attempt to reduce reliance on ticket offices, despite the unprecedented opposition to proposed closures during the 2023 consultation.
Our findings show a shocking picture of Southeastern’s failure to open ticket offices as advertised which is a clear breach of their obligations.
Passengers, particularly those who are elderly, disabled, or less able to navigate unstaffed stations, are being left without the support they need and will potentially be put off from using the railway altogether.
Rail operators once again are trying to undermine essential services and erode public trust in our railways.
The government must step in now to protect ticket offices and ensure Southeastern is held to account.
A breach of contract?
Under its service contract with the DfT, Southeastern is required to adhere to its advertised ticket office hours. Specifically, the contract states that “as part of each Customer Report to be provided by the Operator… [it] shall publish details of the… level of adherence to scheduled ticket office opening hours at Stations”
Ticket office staffing is the only regulated station staffing requirement, making these failings even more serious.
Booking offices provide vital services to passengers who cannot use or access online alternatives, and these closures risk worsening accessibility and travel confidence for those who rely on face-to-face support.
RMT is calling on the government to ensure Southeastern adheres to its service contract and stops abandoning passengers by cutting back on essential services.
Fifteen trade union leaders have written to the Home Secretary and Mayor of London to call for an independent inquiry into the Met Police’s approach to a pro-Palestine protest on Saturday 18th January 2025 which resulted in 77 arrests and charges under the Public Order being brought against organisers. Describing the Met’s approach as “repressive and heavy-handed” they say police assertions of…
The following is a short letter from Canary reader Sarah Gale. Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, has announced his retirement at the age of 63.
Elected in 2021, Lynch led the union through significant industrial actions, notably the extensive rail strikes from 2022 to 2024.
Prior to his tenure at RMT, he worked as a qualified electrician and was blacklisted for union involvement, leading him to co-found the Electrical and Plumbing Industries Union in 1988.
Lynch expressed pride in the union’s resilience against challenges, stating “We can all be proud that our union stood up against the wholesale attacks on the rail industry by the previous Tory government and the union defeated them”.
The RMT has initiated the process to elect a new general secretary, with the election concluding in May 2025.
Possibly the greatest prime minister we never had, is retiring. Mick Lynch, the working class lad from Paddington, left school at 16 and then proceeded to eloquently perform common sense verbal gymnastics with brazen truth twisters, who, when they failed to outsmart him, then resorted to slander and the proverbial grasping at straws.
Mick amplified the voices of poorly paid and precariat workers everywhere and not just his RMT union members.
I was fortunate to meet him twice, once at an ‘Enough is Enough’ rally in 2022 and then on the march to save the ticket offices in 2023 where I saw many hopeful faces proudly holding up placards saying, “Mick Lynch for Prime Minister.” You couldn’t meet a more authentic bloke; he looked chuffed when I gifted him a copy of Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist and informed me, “that’s my bible.”
Mick, like all readers of the Canary I’m sure, refuses to believe that a fairer society is impossible – a society where everyone can and does thrive. Mick epitomises the celebrated quotation from the Welsh thinker and writer, Raymond Williams:
To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing.
I wish Mick Lynch a well-earned retirement and hope he lives to see the words of another great man, albeit a fictional one, come to fruition:
The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.’
Headteachers have intervened after a report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) warned that funding for primary and secondary schools is facing a 0.8% cut under the Labour Party government. And that’s before you account for the 5% cut to each government department that chancellor Rachel Reeves quietly announced before Christmas, branded as “efficiency savings”.
The 0.8% reduction is because of a promised increase in teachers’ salaries. But providing more income for undervalued teachers shouldn’t come at the price of cutting resources for schools, as well as increasing class sizes and reducing the curriculum.
Overall, the education budget already faced a 9% cut from 2010-2020. This was drastic for school sixth forms that underwent cuts of 26%. The lack of funding forced 47 school sixth forms to close from 2016-2019. Funding for colleges, meanwhile, will still be 11% lower than in 2010.
“Relentless financial pressures”
Julie McCulloch, director of policy as the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said:
This report reveals the reality that is facing many schools and colleges – yet another round of cutbacks. It will inevitably mean further reductions to pastoral support, curriculum options and classroom resources. It is also likely that in many cases class sizes will increase.
Schools and colleges have been expected to absorb relentless financial pressures over the past 15 years, and they have done an incredible job in minimising the impact on students. But we cannot go on like this. It is death by a thousand cuts. The government must recognise the importance of improved investment in education.
When it comes to a share of GDP, education spending has also fallen from around 5.6% of national income in 2010 to about 4.1% in 2023-24.
Schools funding plan: “an insult”
The National Education Union (NEU) is also not happy with Labour’s proposed pay increase. The government already issued a 5.5% pay increase for teachers for the 2024-25 academic year. But, according to the NEU, teachers pay in real terms remains 20% lower than in 2010.
The current proposal of 2.8 per cent is not sufficient to even start to address the crisis in recruitment and retention. The suggestion that an unfunded pay award can be paid for by making ‘efficiencies’ is an insult to a profession who have already endured 14 years of austerity. Thousands of teachers voted for the change that Labour promised for education. They promised to invest in education, to recruit 6,500 teachers and to value education and to secure the life chances of our children.
Headteachers ‘unblocking toilets’
The austerity has gotten so bad that headteachers are taking on additional roles. Amanda Richards, the headteacher of Sytchampton primary in Worcestershire, said in April 2024 that her school “literally can’t afford” a permanent caretaker.
I’m 53 this year; I’m not built for lifting and shifting, to be honest with you. But there isn’t anyone else to do it.
Just before half-term, the toilets in our new building were blocked. So when that happens during the day, it’s me who puts the marigolds on and goes down to the toilets with the plunger and tries to unblock it as best as I can. That’s a fairly regular occurrence.
With regard to things like DIY or maintenance for the building, we don’t have anyone to do that. So we either do it ourselves, or we save up bigger jobs for someone to come in and do, because we just couldn’t afford somebody to be on hand regularly as a member of staff.
A survey has further found that one in six schools in England can no longer afford to employ a caretaker.
The following article is a column from Nick Ballard, head organiser and founder of the ACORN Union
There’s little scarier than a knock at the door from bailiffs at Christmas time — but that’s the reality facing tens of thousands of people right across the country right now.
The reality is more and more people are struggling with household finances.
People have been slammed by the cost of living crisis – rising energy bills, increasing food costs, runaway rent increases, the list goes on. For too many, it’s a choice between heating and eating, which utilities are most needed and which bills most urgently need paying.
So it’s no surprise that council tax arrears are also growing.
Councils are using bailiffs more and more for council tax arrears
As of March 2023 (the most recent data available – it’s likely to have risen since), the total amount of council tax arrears in England alone was £5.5 billion, up £513 million from the previous year.
And more councils are turning to enforcement agents, aka bailiffs, and more often. Between April 2021 and June 2023, more than 3 million people were taken to court for council tax debt – that’s an average of 4,500 per day – staggering numbers!
If a payment is missed, in many cases residents become liable for the entire year’s council tax bill in one go. And if you can’t pay this, a knock at the door from bailiffs looking to take away your belongings often follows.
A visit from bailiffs is distressing for anyone, especially for those who are already in debt, and who are vulnerable.
Mental health and debt are mutually reinforcing: mental health issues can disrupt people’s lives and lead them into debt, while being indebted and harassed by bailiffs can create or worsen mental health issues. Half of people in debt have mental health problems.
But it’s also clear that aggressive bailiff visits have a huge effect on people’s wellbeing; with fear, stress and anxiety the most immediate.
Making matters worse
A recent report found that council tax debt collectors significantly harm the health of those struggling to pay.
Bailiff visits also push people further into debt, as bailiff and court fees add an average £310 additional debt.
Not only does the use of bailiffs fail to generate more income for councils, it can actually make the problem worse, ultimately costing local and national government more in extra health, social care, employment and housing support (£9.7 billion more, to be precise).
A few years age one of our members in Manchester, Viv, had a bailiffs at her door threatening to take away her children’s toy, and to arrest. She worked as a childminder, and was looking after children at her home.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Making change happen
Some councils have made the move away from bailiff use and Hammersmith and Fulham Council have entirely ended the use of bailiffs.
Instead of beating on their residents’ doors at 6am, the council intervenes early when people start to fall behind, and helps them to access all the support and advice available to them. Their ethical debt collection policy has led to an increase in council tax collection rates.
Ahead of the general election in July ACORN members decided to make the issue of bailiff use a key priority for the union, and throughout 2024 our branches have shown that local campaigns can build the power needed to force councils to change.
In January, Manchester City Council announced that residents in council tax debt won’t have bailiffs knocking at their door if they are eligible for council tax support, with £1 million in support pledged for struggling families. This was the result of a long running campaign by ACORN Manchester and Debt Justice, ranging from outreach to occupations of council meetings:
Manchester ACORN
And in October, our Brighton branch declared victory in their year-long ‘Boot the Bailiffs’ campaign, meaning people on benefits in council tax debt will no longer be referred to bailiffs, with an additional £2.2 million pledged by the council to support the most vulnerable residents in the city!
And the fight continues in Birmingham, Haringey, and Leeds:
But we know our communities across the country are suffering due to bailiff visits, which is why we want to expand our campaigns in 2025.
Council use of bailiffs can end in 2025
We recently launched our Christmas appeal, a fundraiser to get the resources we need to launch new campaigns on this issue across the country, building a national movement to end the practice for good.
Please consider donating, sharing and supporting this fundraiser and our future campaigns on this issue – together we can make 2025 the year we turn the tide on council bailiff use and end this cruel and outdated practise for good.
Twelve leading academic employment relations experts have written to the Labour Party government calling on policymakers to strengthen trade unions‘ right to be consulted on major business decisions.
The academics have endorsed the High Pay Centre think tank’s submission to the consultation on a new Industrial Relations Framework issued by the Department for Business and Trade.
UK workers right still lag behind Europe – thanks to squashing of trade unions
The High Pay Centre argue that workers in the UK have less voice in the workplace than in almost any other European country, citing research from the European Trade Union Institute which ranks the UK 26th out of 28 countries for worker participation at work.
The think tank’s consultation response states that the proposed industrial relations framework, including plans to permit unions access to relevant workplaces and rules preventing employers from manipulating worker votes on union recognition, is to be welcomed.
However, it does not clarify rights for unions to be consulted on decisions that will affect their members.
UK workers have a right to request consultation on business decisions, as part of the Information and Consultation of Employees (ICE) regulations. However, the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices found that just 14% of workplaces had taken up this right.
29% of workers in workplaces with over 50 people are trade union members, while 67% of these workplaces have at least some union presence. The High Pay Centre argue that giving workers’ rights to consultation would boost employee productivity and wellbeing, and lead to senior management’s decisions being better informed by practical understanding of the business.
Labour still needs to go further
The consultation response recommends that where workers vote to recognise a union, management should ensure:
Union representatives are presented with key information about major strategic and business practice issues in a timely manner, in order to solicit and feed in the views of the workforce.
Union representatives have regular access to senior decision-makers, in order to raise views and suggestions of the workforce on business issues.
Employers are accountable to their workforce via unions for explaining how they have considered and acted upon the views expressed by the workforce and communicated to the business leadership.
High Pay Centre Director, Luke Hildyard said:
To boost productivity and deliver better work and better working lives, we need to build a more democratic business culture where the workforce via unions are genuine partners and participants in decision making processes. We live in a less deferential, less hierarchical, more connected society. A modern industrial relations framework should reflect this change by guaranteeing workers more say over the decisions that affect them.
Supporting voices
A letter supporting the response to the Labour government has been signed by the following academics:
Ödül Bozkurt, Professor of Work and Employment, University of Sussex Business School
Niall Cullinane, Professor of Employment Relations, Queens University Belfast
Tony Dobbins, Professor of Work and Employment Relations, University of Birmingham
Tony Dundon, Professor of HRM and Employment Relations, University of Limerick
Chris Forde, Professor of Employment Studies, University of Leeds
Irena Grugulis, Professor of Work and Skills, University of Leeds
Ed Heery, Emeritus Professor of Employment Relations, Cardiff University
Jean Jenkins, Professor of Employment Relations, Cardiff University
Stewart Johnstone, Professor of HRM and Employment Relations, University of Strathclyde
Sian Moore, Professor of Work and Employment, Anglia Ruskin University
Chris Rees, Professor of Employment Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London
Melanie Simms, Professor of Work and Employment, University of Glasgow
Thousands of Greek firefighters demonstrated on Thursday 31 October at the Ministry of Civic Protection in Greece demanding their contracts to be renewed against the government’s decision to lay them off at the end of the season.
Greek firefighters: not having it
After the minister refused to meet them, the firefighters entered the ministry demanding immediate meeting and contracts that will guarantee them steady jobs.
The government responded with the use of riot police, with violent attacks using tear gas and water canons against the Greek firefighters:
During the attack several firefighters were injured and detained. Also arrested was a journalist of Rizospastis newspaper (of the KKE, Communist Party of Greece) who was covering the protest:
As the Morning Star reported:
The short-term contracts of about 2,500 firefighters ended on Thursday [31 October], leaving them unemployed until possible rehiring next May.
Seasonal firefighters typically serve from May through October, but union representatives argue that climate change means that a year-round firefighting capability is now required.
Seasonal Firefighters Association of Greece leader Evangelos Tsoukalas said that many of members with six or more years of experience had been barred from applying for positions in special firefighting units opened this year because the age limit has been set at 35.
Trade unions, in solidarity with the Greek firefighters, denounced the government that calls them heroes in the summer and lays them off in October.
An immediate response was given with a new massive rally on Friday morning in front of the Parliament with the support of the unions of Athens:
The grieving family of the jailed Shrewsbury Picket Arthur Murray as well as Ricky Tomlinson have made an emotional plea for Keir Starmer to release all the official government papers relating to the Shrewsbury Pickets.
Remembering Shrewsbury Picket Arthur Murray
The funeral service for Arthur Murray was held at Flint Crematorium only five miles from Mold Crown Court, where over 50 years earlier one of the most notorious working class miscarriages of justice in British legal history took place.
The case of the Shrewsbury Pickets saw construction workers from North Wales jailed for taking part in peaceful picketing during the 1972 national building workers strike. Arthur Murray was one of the jailed pickets, alongside Dessie Warren, Ricky Tomlinson (who later became an actor and national treasure), and others.
After decades of campaigning, the convictions of the Shrewsbury 24 were finally quashed in the Court of Appeal in March 2021. Arthur Murray was the first person to submit an appeal to the Criminal Cases Review Commission that eventually led to the historic legal victory, which saw the pickets leave the Royal Courts of Justice as innocent men – which they always were.
Jillian Murray-Keddie and Cheryl Clark, the daughters of Arthur Murray, described how the families of the jailed pickets had suffered but were supported by the solidarity of other workers, but how when their father was first released from prison:
he was blacklisted and found it almost impossible to get work. But he never backed down because he knew he had done nothing wrong.
Ricky Tomlinson: ‘fitted up by the state’
Ricky Tomlinson, who served two years imprisonment for his role in Shrewsbury and who last met Arthur just a few weeks ago, spoke at the funeral, telling mourners:
Arthur fought like hell to clear his name, and all the other pickets who were fitted up by the state by a conspiracy between the Heath government and the construction employers when they wanted to wipe out trade union organisation after winning a £6 a week settlement of the strike.
This was a vicious, spiteful and malicious conspiracy against ordinary workers who dared to challenge the construction industry bosses. The quashing of our convictions is not the same as justice. The real conspiracy was between the building employers, the police, MI5 and the government. When will they be held to account?
One of the outstanding issues for the Shrewsbury Pickets, their families and supporters is that even after fifty years, the official government papers on the dispute and the trial have still not been released.
The vast majority of government papers are released under the 30 year rule (and now the 20 year rule); but successive home secretaries (both Conservative and Labour) have refused to allow the papers relating to the Shrewsbury Pickets to be placed into the national archive.
Demanding justice now
At the wake, when members of Arthur’s family and trade unionists who had traveled from around the UK shared their memories of Arthur, a unanimous vote was taken calling on the new Labour government to immediately release all the official government papers relating to the Shrewsbury Pickets. Ricky Tomlinson also added his name.
A hastily written note of the vote reads:
This gathering of friends and comrades call upon Sir Keir Starmer to release all the Shrewsbury secret files.
Phil Simpson, a long standing Shrewsbury campaigner and close friend of Arthur, commented:
We are calling on the Prime Minister to draw a line under this outrageous episode in industrial relations, where consecutive governments have used the same lame excuse that publishing the records would be a ‘threat to national security’. I just don’t buy it.
When we see the world around us heading to monumental disasters, it’s more to do with consecutive governments covering one another’s backs regardless of the political party.
The PM told us he was going to change society for the better: so let’s start here.
Tens of thousands of workers at major ports on the US East and Gulf Coasts went on strike Tuesday 1 October. The ILA strike is an action that could drag on in the world’s largest economy just ahead of the November US presidential election. Some people were saying that the strike was linked to candidate Donald Trump, in an attempt to destabilise Kamala Harris’s campaign.
ILA shut it down in the US
The shutdown, the first strike by the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) in almost 50 years, affects 36 ports from Maine to Texas, impacting an array of goods from food to electronics. About 45,000 workers are on strike, according to the ILA:
BREAKING – Over 45k union dockworkers with ILA are officially on strike, shutting down all East and Gulf coast ports, from New York to Miami to Houston. They’re standing to protect their future against the shipping companies forcing automation on the docks. pic.twitter.com/BnRqZzkHqT
In Elizabeth, New Jersey, trucks passing by were honking in support of about 200 striking workers carrying American flags and signs blasting port automation as a job killer.
“Profits over people is unacceptable,” one sign read.
A possible stoppage had been telegraphed for months, with the odds rising in recent weeks as the September 30 contract deadline loomed.
After weeks of stalled talks, the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), which represents shipping companies and terminal operators, had late Monday expressed greater hope of a deal. But there was no agreement before the midnight deadline.
In preparation for a possible ILA strike, shippers front-loaded some cargo and shifted some containers to West Coast ports.
However, analysts caution that a lengthy strike could pose a major headwind to the US economy, leading to shortages of some items and lifting costs at a time when inflation has been moderating.
Messing with the US presidential election?
The White House said President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are “closely monitoring” the ILA strike, with both briefed on government assessments that “impacts on consumers are expected to be limited at this time,” according to a statement:
The president has directed his team to convey his message directly to both sides that they need to be at the table and negotiating in good faith – fairly and quickly.
Under the Taft-Hartley Act, Biden has authority to order the parties to resume talks for an 80-day “cooling off” period, with union members going back to work during that time.
But Biden has ruled out such a move, citing respect for collective bargaining rights.
The National Retail Federation called on Biden to “immediately” restore operations, invoking Taft-Hartley, saying the ILA strike:
will have devastating consequences for American workers, their families and local communities.
On the other side of the issue, the Teamsters union issued a statement expressing solidarity with the ILA, adding:
the US government should stay the fuck out of this fight and allow union workers to withhold their labor for the wages and benefits they have earned.
The first ILA walkout since 1977 follows recent high-profile strikes at US automakers, Boeing and other employers.
The union is pressing for protections against automation-related job loss and for hefty wage hikes after dockworkers kept providing essential services throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
Media reports say the ILA is asking for a 77% wage increase over six years. The last USMX statement said its offer would increase wages by “nearly 50%”.
There were mutterings on social media that the strike was a Donald Trump-affiliated plot against the Harris campaign:
Oxford Economics estimated that the ILA strike would dent US gross domestic product by $4.5 billion to $7.5 billion per week. The overall economic hit depends on the length of the strike, analysts say.
Jonita Carter, who has worked as a dockworker for 23 years, said workers are feeling financially pinched by inflation and anxious about automation.
We worked during Covid… never stopped. We moved the world. Easypass took peoples’ jobs. Walmart took peoples’ jobs with self-checkout. I don’t want that for us.
Capital Economics said fears about the economic impact of the strike were “overdone,” in part because recent shocks to the supply chain have made businesses more aware of the need to bake in precautionary measures.
But Biden would have “little choice” but to take action if the situation worsens, according to the note, “forcing workers to return while negotiations continue.”
There is little chance that the administration would risk jeopardising its recent economic successes just five weeks before a tightly contested election.
The pay award was announced by Reeves in late July as she accepted the recommendations of the NHS Pay Review Body (PRB), awarding a 5.5% consolidated pay increase across all bands. This is expected to be paid next month and will be backdated to 1 April 2024.
However, not long after Reeves finished her Labour conference speech, the news broke. The RCN said in a statement:
As this is a pay award rather than a pay offer, the results of our consultation will not directly affect employers’ payment of it. However, it shows our members’ strength of feeling that something fundamental must change for nursing pay.
Our consultation was not a vote on the issue of strike action. By law, a new statutory ballot by post would be needed to authorise industrial action.
The RCN noted that the “government must now demonstrate its commitment to nursing staff by showing that its NHS reform plans will transform the profession as a central part of improving patient care”.
The RCN general secretary and chief executive Professor Nicola Ranger is in Liverpool at the Labour Party conference. She is talking to ministers about the consultation results and the fact that nursing staff want – and deserve – bolder change.
Nurses will not be undervalued
In a letter to health secretary Wes Streeting she said:
We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the determination of nursing staff to stand up for themselves, their patients and the NHS they believe in.
Many will support the new government’s health and care agenda as set out in recent weeks and fully recognise the diagnosis of a failing NHS. Working closely with all other professionals, nursing staff are the lifeblood of the service. The government will find our continued support for the reforms key to their success.
To raise standards and reform the NHS, you need safe numbers of nursing staff and they need to feel valued. Nursing staff were asked to consider if, after more than a decade of neglect, they thought the pay award was a fair start. This outcome shows their expectations of government are far higher.
Our members do not yet feel valued and they are looking for urgent action, not rhetorical commitments. Their concerns relate to understaffed shifts, poor patient care and nursing careers trapped at the lowest pay grades – they need to see that the government’s reform agenda will transform their profession as a central part of improving care for the public.
All this comes amid not only the Labour conference but Streeting trying to fend off other unions’ talk of strike action, too.
GPs will strike if Wes Streeting does not “listen to us”, a senior union figure has warned.
Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer, of the British Medical Association (BMA), said there could be further industrial action to come if Mr Streeting, the Health Secretary, does not act rapidly to improve the situation for family doctors.
Surgeries across the country are embarking on work to rule measures designed to bring the NHS to “a standstill” as a protest against “insufficient funding”, with the move following a vote by the BMA over the summer.
So, RCN members sending a clear message of disquiet to the Labour government is yet another NHS-shaped headache – but one of the government’s own making. Whether or not Streeting will address this when he makes his Labour conference speech is unclear.
Where does the right-wing media think the ‘Labour’ Party came from? Rich upper-class people who just wanted to kill some time? The Labour Party was founded by trade unions. Obviously they wouldn’t understand the concept of putting in a hard-days work:
Garraway thinks she’s made the announcement of the year!! Fuck me don’t they understand what Labour is? Why is it all these media twats are all Tory? Is it a requirement on the job description
The Labour Party was formed in 1900 off the back of years of struggle by the working class, trade unionists, and socialists. Ultimately, they wanted to unite so that working-class voices would be represented in British parliament:
Trade unions, those huge unaccountable organisations trying to force employers into paying their staff more money, answerable to no one, except the millions of workers who are members and pay their subs.
Who is the other half in the pay of?, that is the question – memo to anyone reading this exchange: the Labour Party was created as its political arm by the unions….
Whether the Labour Party still represents the voices of the working class is up for debate. However, it is comical that the right-wing press choose to pounce on it now when they ignored the literal corporate criminals funding the Tories for 14 years:
Why oh Why is it ‘breaking news’. The GrifTories received 100’s of millions over the years from wealthy tax dodging grifters.. who then were awarded billions in government contracts.
Why is a trade union donation to elect mp’s different or worse than the GrifTories??
Quite the revelation. It’s taken them more than 100 years to catch up.
213 Labour MPs receiving £1.8m in donations. Not much, considering self-confessed white supremacist Frank Hester gave £20 million to the Tories and earns more than £500 million a year in government contracts.
Michelle Mone donated to the Tories, got a peerage, and sold over £200m-worth of defective PPE to the NHS. You didn’t read about that on the front page of the Daily Mail.
Meanwhile, the corporate media continue to deflect on the real problems. For example – Israel funded a quarter of all MP’s in the last parliament, including one in three Tory MPs. The Daily Mail and Good Morning Britain seemed to gloss over that one:
A bit of deflection from the growing awareness of funding across UK politics…
More concerning is how many MP’s are in the pocket of the Israeli lobby but the Daily Mail won’t have that as a headline, virtually a news blackout over the FCDO resignation on Friday, over Israeli War Crimes, his job was to sign off Licences for Arms sales to Israel,
Not to mention the number of Tory MPs profiting from businesses and foreign billionaires:
The good old reliable Daily Mail tells us 50% of Labour MPs are “in the pay” of the unions but fails to tell us 100% of Tory MPs have directorships and consulting retainers from business
MPs getting donations from organisations which represent working people? Good.
Better than donations from rich people demanding peerages, companies demanding tax concessions, shady foreign billionaires, and Russian oligarchs. pic.twitter.com/Ru0T2WzBOG
It is worth mentioning that the Daily Mail is owned by Jonathan Harmsworth, a British peer. Notably, he has a net worth of $1.30bn. His non-domicile tax status means he pays zero tax in the UK. Additionally, he owns all of his media businesses through offshore holdings and trusts. Sounding sketchy yet?
He claims his non-dom status is because his father (who is dead) resided in France. However, he has a stately home in Wiltshire and his status as a Freeman of the City of London makes that even more questionable.
So it goes without saying, the people who own the corporate media literally have their own agendas, profit, and ideas way out in front of any concern for the country:
Funding of a political party by unions that represent thousands of people is far less concerning than the donations of the very wealthy who use their wealth to buy access to power.https://t.co/0RI32HH3vh
Why the sudden ‘Daily Fail’ pandemonium over Labour union funding you might wonder? That would be the right-wing’s latest whataboutism over train drivers union ASLEF. It followed similar groundless outrage over Labour negotiating a pay deal with junior doctors on strike:
Interesting framing.
Ignoring the fact that this article concerns a deal offered to ASLEF members, Tories are now trying to play off workers against pensioners.
Remind us, how much did the Conservative government waste on unusable PPE during the pandemic?
(Answer: £10 billion) https://t.co/fmI3rQWTGW
To the right-wing capitalist cronies, Labour is surrendering to the unions – while throwing pensioners under the bus with winter fuel payments. The second part is true of course, but it’s not because the new Labour government has been improving the lot of workers. As the Canary previously reported, the Labour junior doctors pay deal is a real-terms pay cut. It turns out, the same it true for train drivers.
Ultimately though, the Daily Mail is doing what the rightwing corporate shit-rags do best. Trying to seed division between marginalised communities.
In reality, Labour union funding is a red herring. The real problems in parliament come from the capitalist-funded establishment minions sitting pretty in Westminster. If the Daily Mail want to do some real journalism, we can point it in the right direction.
The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has condemned the rise of far-right race riots and racist, Islamophobic violence in cities and towns across the UK this week.
The FBU: the riots were racist and Islamophobic
Matt Wrack, FBU general secretary, said:
“Firefighters were among the first to respond to the appalling stabbings in Southport last week. The FBU sends its thoughts and condolences to all those affected, especially the loved ones of the three young children who tragically lost their lives, and we applaud the bravery and professionalism of the firefighters who attended.
“It is clear that the organised far right has used these tragic events to mount a deliberate campaign of racist violence and intimidation. The attacks on mosques, hotels housing migrants and other targets in recent days have been shocking.
“This situation has been decades in the making. Mainstream politicians and media outlets have stoked anti-migrant hate and Islamophobia while driving down the living standards of most people.
We must mobilise against the far right
Wrack continued:
“Austerity, cutting pay and trashing public services were choices made by right wing politicians in the interests of big business – not by migrants. The new Labour government has a duty to offer an alternative, rather than pandering to anti-migrant rhetoric.
“Firefighters are on the front line. We are still assessing the experience of FBU members on the ground, but there is evidence to suggest that firefighters have faced obstruction, and that fire appliances have been deliberately damaged. Resources being deployed to fires resulting from rioting could impact response times to other incidents.
“The FBU stands in solidarity with those facing racism, violence and intimidation, and we stand for the unity of all workers against a cynical divide and rule agenda.
“We have written to the FBU’s Brigade Secretaries to ask them to reach out to local mosques, migrant groups and civil society organisations to offer support and build links. The trade union movement has a proud history of mobilising against the far right, and it must continue to do so.”
Gabriela Rodriguez was fired from her job over a minor misdemeanour. Now she and others like her are fighting back
At the moment when Gabriela Rodriguez discovered she had been sacked for eating a tuna sandwich, she was carrying the bins out. Removing rubbish bags from the office in Finsbury Circus – an elegant, towering ring of neoclassical buildings that sits at the heart of London’s financial district – formed a key part of Rodriguez’s daily duties. So did wiping surfaces, scrubbing dishes in the kitchen, restocking basic supplies and all the other quietly essential activities that enable a busy workplace to function. “I’m proud of my job: it’s honest, and important, and I take it very seriously,” she says. Which is why, when the call from her manager flashed up unexpectedly on her mobile last November, nothing about it seemed to make any sense.
“He ordered me to come back inside and hand over my security pass immediately,” she says. Rodriguez was at a loss, until the words “theft of property” were mentioned – an act of gross misconduct, and a criminal offence under English law. “That’s when it began to dawn on me,” she says, shaking her head. “This was about a leftover piece of bread. And I was going to be dismissed for it.”
Workers at Labour Party-led Lewisham Council could strike over the victimisation of union reps by council managers. UNISON’s Lewisham branch committee voted unanimously to move towards balloting members on Wednesday.
The move came as Christina McAnea, the general secretary of UNISON, issued a statement calling on the council not to victimise the reps.
Lewisham council: union busting
Managers issued a six week redundancy notice to Lewisham UNISON’s joint branch secretary, Justine Canady, earlier this week. Canady’s co-branch secretary, Jay Kidd-Morton, is also in line for dismissal.
Campaigners say that the council is engaging in “transparent union-busting”, and that the sackings are designed to hamstring the union as the council prepares to make £25m of cuts. Children’s services and adult social care are expected to take the worst hit.
Canady, 27, is UNISON’s youngest branch secretary. Since she was elected in May last year, members say that Lewisham UNISON has been transformed from an inactive branch into a campaigning one, with a focus on equalities and fair treatment at work.
Because she is on full-time release for union activities, Canady does not even work in her post in Lewisham Children’s Social Services department. But the council has moved to delete her post, and is insisting that, without a substantive post, she will be removed as branch secretary as well. This contravenes common practice at many other councils.
Kidd-Morton is facing dismissal alongside the rest of her (overwhelmingly Black and Asian) team in Lewisham council’s legal services department, despite no allegation of wrongdoing. She was previously Black Members’ Officer and had lodged a whistleblowing complaint about discriminatory practices.
No place for discrimination
In a statement sent to the branch, Christina McAnea, UNISON general secretary, said:
It is disappointing that the council have failed to engage with the many arguments put forward about the nature of their actions and they’ve failed to address UNISON’s valid concerns.
There is no place for any form of discrimination within our workplaces and everyone deserves an impartial and just process. No branch activists should ever be victimised by any employer for their participation in UNISON and we must always stand up for what is right and fair.
Elaine Jones, a member of UNISON’s national executive, said:
Lewisham Council is now engaged in transparent union-busting. Managers are preparing to make £25m of cuts – workers will need the union branch to stand up for them. So just before they go ahead, they sack both of their main union reps.
This is a brutal way to treat workers. Someone senior evidently thinks that they can get away with treating a young woman like this, as well as sacking her black co-joint secretary.
Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for rogue employers to engage in union-busting to get rid of effective union organisers. But for a Labour Council to engage in these practices is abhorrent.
Tony Cisse, Lewisham UNISON’s treasurer, said:
Since Justine was elected as Branch Secretary, Lewisham UNISON has gone from strength to strength. She and Jay have transformed the union.
There are hundreds of people here at Lewisham who know Justine personally. She has fought for our jobs, our pay and our conditions. We won’t let the council do this to her.
Guidance drawn up by Conservative ministers which told civil servants to ignore Strasbourg rulings and remove asylum seekers to Rwanda is lawful, the high court has ruled.
The FDA trade union, which represents senior civil servants, brought legal action claiming senior Home Office staff could be in breach of international law if they implement the government’s Rwanda deportation bill.
In the twenty fourth of our video interview series #CanaryCandidates, we meet Tony Wilson – standing in Oldham against Labour’s Jim McMahon
Tony Wilson is a trade unionist who is standing at the general election as an independent socialist candidate in Oldham West. As he told the Canary:
I’m an activist, basically. So I believe if I got elected MP, I would be there to amplify the movement on the streets. I wouldn’t be separate from the movement on the streets.
He’s standing against the Labour Party’s Jim McMahon in the constituency partly because:
McMahon basically put his career first when it came to the vote on the ceasefire in November [2023]
And having spoken to “hundreds and hundreds” of voters, he said:
Lots of people in Oldham who would’ve voted Labour five years ago are not gonna vote Labour now. I mean, the collective punishment quote of Starmer that he supports Israel withholding water, food, electricity, and medicine to two million Gazans is clearly collective punishment and a war crime.
And I think his statements… and Sunak’s as well – they’ve given a green light to the genocide, haven’t they? And it’s just a totally morally bankrupt position, morally repugnant.
On the doorsteps, only one person claimed they’d vote for Labour ‘like they always had’. But in general, Wilson insisted:
I’ve had… very little enthusiasm for Labour.
And in his opinion:
Labour could be in for a shock in Oldham West. I’m not saying they’re gonna get beaten, but they could be down thousands and thousands of votes compared to 5 years ago.
Tony Wilson: Starmer’s authoritarian Labour is “a lost cause”
Tony Wilson lamented that:
I think it’s a lost cause, Labour… It was always banging your head against a brick wall. I was part of that Labour link as an NEC member for a year or two, that was like three or four years ago, and I never thought the union leadership was seriously trying to influence Starmer. I think probably Unite were a bit more serious… But I think it’s a massive uphill battle.
He believes that a Labour government would have tensions with trade unions “practically from Day 1”. And he has little faith in the party’s approach to workers’ rights:
There’s not a lot of it to start off with, to be honest, but what there is there they want to water down… Starmer seems to be an authoritarian character to me. If you look at the way he runs the Labour Party by diktat, it’s quite a lot of insecurity there, isn’t it? ‘My Labour Party. My changed Labour Party.’ He will run the country in the same way, an authoritarian way.
Speaking of authoritarianism, he mentioned that Starmer is likely to “clamp down” on protest movements just like “he’s clamped down on Labour Party democracy”. He spoke in particular of the Labour leadership parachuting controversial right-winger Luke Akehurst into North Durham, which he called “just total corruption”.
‘The best chance in decades we’ve had to build a new left-wing movement’
As an MP, Tony Wilson said:
I would listen more. I wouldn’t turn down invitations to meetings to meet people. I would seek to open an office in the Oldham town centre, to be more accessible… The problem with the main, failed, establishment parties now is they’ve got the party whips, corporate lobbyists, corporate donors, so they can’t be their own people anymore.
They can’t be responsive. That’s why being an independent is important to me. It’s about being responsive to the needs and the commands of the communities.
And he has real faith that a new left-wing movement could soon be in the making, insisting:
If we got a bunch of MPs in there, it’s the basis for something building going forward. And I don’t think Starmer’s government would last 5 years. I think it… would be in crisis two years in, or even 18 months in. Obviously the big danger is the far right try to capitalise on the undoubted discontent there will be with a Starmer government.
But we need to build a radical left as like an alternative pole. And I think it’s probably the best chance we’ve had, that, for decades… The fact we’ve got these… independent socialists coming through now even before Starmer gets elected is quite remarkable I think.
For more on Wilson’s comments see the full interview on our YouTube channel:
Watch and read all our #CanaryCandidates interviews here.
In the twenty third of our video interview series #CanaryCandidates, we meet Adam Gillman – standing in Reading against Labour’s Matt Rodda
Adam Gillman is one of the youngest candidates standing in the 2024 general election. He also has a very clear vision of what needs to happen to move the country forwards. Standing against the Labour Party’sMatt Rodda in Reading Central, Gillman is sick of the lies and careerism of Keir Starmer’s party. And regarding Rodda, he said:
He was very opportunistic in the way he rode Corbyn’s popularity. He said to people, ‘oh I’m pro-Corbyn’ in 2017 and 2019… Now, he’s voting party line with Keir Starmer… He’s just betrayed everyone in Reading… He’s all in it for his career.
He added that Rodda “has taken people’s votes for granted” and has “just completely gone 180 now that Starmer’s in power”.
We need a new mass movement
Adam Gillman strongly believes that a new mass movement is necessary to replace Labour:
Most young people are quite disillusioned with politics… A lot of them don’t care about politics because… they’ve been let down by the establishment parties… But they want hope. And the thing is, if there is a true alternative, a mass alternative that everyone can vote for, then people would rally behind that.
And it would stop the rise of right-wing populism, like what’s happening with Reform and Farage… Loads of young people, loads of workers would join it, and it would have a real impact.
Speaking about why he’s not hopeful about Starmer’s Labour getting into power, he said:
I don’t like how they lie about most of their policies. Keir Starmer pledged to abolish tuition fees, many other policies for public ownership, that sort of thing. He’s U-turned on all of that. And it’s absolutely outrageous. The worst thing about this new ‘changed’ Labour Party is the fact that it’s just the Tory party!
They will win a massive majority on July 4th, because people don’t like the Tories. But I think that Labour government will be exposed very quickly and I think the trade union leaders will be pressured to form this new party.
Adam Gillman: we need “an anti-war, anti-cuts socialist alternative”
Adam Gillman argued that:
We need councillors and MPs that will fight back against these cuts… Because these cuts, they affect people… If there’s cuts to the NHS, that means people die.
And he insisted:
What I’m offering is an anti-war, anti-cuts socialist alternative in this election. If elected, I’ll take the wage of a skilled worker and put the rest back into the movement, into the trade unions…
He also strongly supports nationalisation as an alternative to endless capitalist destruction of the environment:
We see a lot of people, a lot of young people, really sad about their future, feeling quite scared about their future with the environment. They’re seeing the climate catastrophe happening now. But the point is, capitalism doesn’t offer a solution. It’s a profit system…
We can’t trust the oil companies to be slightly nicer and all of a sudden be more environmentally friendly… What we need to do is nationalise these big corporations… under democratic workers’ control and management, with democratic job reallocation to more environmentally friendly, sustainable jobs. Imagine what we could use these skills for.
People want an alternative. If we don’t build it, Farage and co. could fill the vacuum.
Adam Gillman’s view of a new mass movement would be of a:
mass party that’s democratic and lets all socialists in… against cuts to public services, against… war, for public ownership of at least rail, mail and energy… If it’s democratic, workers and young people would have a say in how this party is run, and it could go very far in fighting for working-class people.
And while it’s easy for the mainstream media to focus on the establishment parties and ignore left-wing voices right now, he stressed, unity would make it much harder for the media to ignore them. A new mass party, he argued, would “have enough resources to get onto the mainstream media all the time”. In short:
If we have a mass workers’ party, then the media can’t ignore them, can they?
Speaking about the urgency of building this new movement, he insisted:
If there isn’t an alternative formed soon, then Farage and Reform will gain popularity and people will rightfully look for an alternative, but they’ll go to the wrong place.
For more on Gillman’s comments see the full interview on our YouTube channel:
Watch and read all our #CanaryCandidates interviews here.
In the twentieth of our video interview series #CanaryCandidates, we meet Dave Nellist – standing in Coventry against Labour’s Mary Creagh
Dave Nellist is the TUSC candidate for Coventry East in the general election, and is backed by Collective – which is bringing together voices on the left to build a “mass movement that will eventually transform into a new political party”. Nellist told the Canary that he’s standing as a candidate partly because of:
that drift to the right of Labour. It’s more authoritarian. It’s… driven out about a third of its members. And almost everything that was worthwhile in Jeremy’s two manifestos has now been ditched
Nellist quoted a recent article by Andy Haldane, CEO of the Royal Society of Arts and formerly the Bank of England’s chief economist, in which Haldane said:
Labour’s proposed additional spending is about one-tenth and one-fifteenth respectively of proposals in their 2017 and 2019 manifestos
This drastic reduction in spending proposals, Haldane asserted, was a result of both Tories and Starmer’s Labour having “self-imposed constraints” which saw them “committing to near-identical fiscal rules”.
Labour will have increasing tensions with trade unions
Because of Labour’s current absence of any meaningful proposal for ordinary people, Dave Nellist said, it is likely to have more and more problems with the trade union movement in coming months and years, assuming it wins the election as polls predict. He asked:
What do unions with members in public services, that are going to continue their decline after the election, say when their members hoped that the new government was gonna be different from the last and are disappointed that it isn’t?
How do they then say at the next council elections ‘vote Labour, even though they’re not gonna give you a pay rise that meets the rising prices, even though they’re not gonna secure or replace the lost jobs in the services that you’re trying hard to provide’? So there will be tensions.
But he also pointed out that for the most people “what changes their view is experience”. So there won’t be a truly massive shift away from Starmer’s Labour Party until ordinary people actually see the results of its awful political positions with their own eyes.
Nellist wants the trade union movement to play a bigger role in left politics going forwards, and reminded us that:
This country was at its most equal at the point when trade union membership was at its highest and when its influence was the greatest, which was the mid-1970s.
In terms of his own electoral promises, he insisted he would continue his commitment to only taking a reduced salary:
As it was my Labour Party’s policy in the early 1980s, only taking the wage of a local skilled factory worker for the nine years I was in parliament or the 14 years I was in the local authority.
And he stressed that his current campaign is largely about trying to:
find the people who think the same way as we do: domestically on poverty and inequality, or internationally on Israel’s war on Gaza. You need anti-austerity, anti-war candidates.
We’re back to square one. And we need a new mass movement urgently.
Dave Nellist is also a firm believer that we desperately need a new mass movement on the left now that Keir Starmer has set in motion the terminal decay of the Labour Party. He argued:
We’re roughly where we were a century and a quarter ago when the trade union movement at the back end of the 19th century was looking at the Tories and Liberals and saying ‘I can’t really see a difference there, we need a Labour Party’.
We’re now looking at the Labour Party and the Tories and the Liberal Democrats and saying ‘well I can’t see much difference in that overlapping agenda, we need a new political voice for the working class’.
And he pointed out that the left is already sowing seeds in this general election for the creation of the mass movement that the country sorely needs right now:
After the election, I think there will be discussions taking place, both within the trade unions but also across the trade union movement and the left campaigns that exist. I suspect… Jeremy’s Peace and Justice Project will be part of if not central to the bringing together of those discussions.
Again, what we’re doing in this general election: we’re sowing seeds in all our local areas trying to build up networks, hoping that there can be a better collective discussion and approach that brings forward a new party. Exactly what form it will be, exactly what it’s programme will be, will take negotiations and discussions and so on.
What it can’t be, by the way, is one individual at the top and it being a top-down organisation. It has to have democracy, it has to have accountability. And in my view, it has to fight and win a battle amongst the rank and file of the trade union movement to move trade unionists in there and if possible trade unions into that new structure. Because in my view, that’s what will give it weight and longevity
His message of hope and urgency, meanwhile, is that this movement must be democratic, and it must come into being as soon as possible:
We have to get together in large numbers. The new party we need has got to have millions of votes eventually. It’s got to have hundreds of thousands of people actively supporting, at least tens of thousands of people… putting their main effort into supporting it. And I think that is possible.
So that’s my message of hope, if we can get the organisation, the conferences, the meetings and so on… If we don’t do that, then we do face that problem – having to confront the far more confident and authoritarian far-right populists like Farage and others. It is an urgent job… Labour will begin to disappoint certainly within one or two years, possibly within months of taking office.
For more on Nellist’s comments see the full interview on our YouTube channel:
Watch and read all our #CanaryCandidates interviews here.
The boss of Royal Mail’s parent company looks set to make £5m off the back of the sale of the company to a Czech billionaire – despite the postal service’s disastrous record since the Tories allowed it to be privatised. The CWU has obviously hit back – while concerns about the deal continue to mount.
Royal Mail: another day, another calamity
In May, Royal Mail accepted a takeover proposal from Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky worth £3.6bn. It came after Kretinsky’s conglomerate EP Group formalised an improved offer to parent company International Distribution Services (IDS).
“The IDS board believes that the offer from EP is fair and reasonable,” IDS chairman Keith Williams said in a statement posted on the London Stock Exchange.
EP already has a stake of 27.6% in IDS. At the time, it described IDS as “a strong business with solid foundations and the potential to become one of the leading postal logistics groups in Europe”, subject to modernisation that includes USO reform.
At the same time, Kretinsky said his group “has the utmost respect for Royal Mail’s history and tradition”. He noted that owning a business with more than 500 years of history:
will come with enormous responsibility – not just to the employees but to the citizens who rely on its services every day.
EP said it would honour a commitment by IDS management not to impose compulsory redundancies at Royal Mail until April next year. It also said it was “exploring” the option of some sort of worker share agreement – giving staff a stake in the business.
However, it’s now come to light that IDS boss Martin Seidenberg will be getting a healthy payout from the deal.
Fat cat bosses creaming off Royal Mail
As This Is Money reported, Seidenberg could get over £5m from the sale due to his shares in Royal Mail. It noted that:
The figures were revealed in a formal offer document as IDS and billionaire Daniel Kretinsky push ahead with a controversial £3.6billion takeover.
The filings also showed that bankers, lawyers and other advisers will take home £146million in fees for working on the deal.
All this comes on top of the millions that IDS has paid its bosses over recent years – despite Royal Mail’s catastrophic performance. Again, as This Is Moneyreported:
Five successive chief executives shared £15.2m between the delivery group’s privatisation in 2013 and the end of its latest financial year in March 2024, according to analysis by this newspaper.
Think tank the High Pay Centre has condemned the figures. It said:
Given the service the public have received from Royal Mail, most people would be outraged to hear of these huge sums being paid out to failing bosses.
CWU: it’s not over yet
Understandably, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) has hit back. It told the Guardian:
We’re looking for a serious stake in the company but also a serious voice in the running of the company.
We’re not interested in profit payouts that are at the mercy of a board – we want workers’ influence at all levels. Not just the main board, but the remuneration committee, the recruitment committees – to make sure we don’t recruit people who don’t have the interest of postal workers at heart.
Where Royal Mail will head next is unclear. But what it clear is that already, bosses are milking the company for all it’s worth – just as they always have.
The so-called TUSC umbrella group are fielding candidates in this year’s general election. But ahead of that, a major trade union conference this weekend will look at the Labour Party manifesto, and ask what workers will need to do post-4 July in an effort to bring Keir Starmer’s party into line. Interestingly, speakers from trade unions, Jeremy Corbyn’sPeace and Justice Project, and the Green Party will be there – but Labour has declined to send anyone.
TUSC: gearing up to fight Labour
One of the few time-specified promises in Starmer’s 136-page manifesto unveiled on 13 June appears to be the commitment to “introducing legislation within 100 days” drawing from what it calls ‘Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering a New Deal for Working People’.
But a reading of that document, published on 24 May, shows it full of talk of ‘reviews’, “comprehensive consultations” with businesses, and references to many areas “of the New Deal [that] will take longer to implement” than others. Never mind the substance of what’s actually in it.
The whole thing more than justifies the comment of the Unite general secretary Sharon Graham that it “has more holes in it than Swiss cheese”. And that workers will have to fight every inch of the way for any gains they get.
That fight must include establishing their own mass political vehicle, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) chairperson Dave Nellist will be arguing alongside an official speaker from Unite, from the platform at the conference of the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) on Saturday 22 June.
NSSN’s yearly conference
When the Labour government does present its Employment Rights Bill, its Procurement Bill, and the other non-primary legislative instruments and reviews in the New Deal plan, Dave will say it will be vital that union pressure to ‘fill the holes’ has its own independent political arm.
The NSSN conference will, as usual, be giving a platform to leaders and rank and file reps from unions involved in industrial disputes to build support and solidarity for their action.
So far, the confirmed speakers are:
Ian Hodson, BFAWU National President.
Annoesjka Valent, NAPO National Official.
Jared Wood, RMT London Transport Regional Organiser.
Dave Semple, PCS National Vice-President (personal capacity).
An official speaker from Unite.
Jason Wyatt, Unite Tata Steel shop steward.
Labour: prepare to fight
But this year, with the conference being held just days before the general election, the event has also been opened up to debate what needs to be done politically – on polling day but even more importantly in the battles that will follow.
Speakers have also been confirmed from Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project, the Green Party, and TUSC, with George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain also invited.
But, significantly, no Labour spokesperson has agreed to attend – a foreshadowing of how the battlelines will shape up after the coming Tory rout on 4 July.
save the NHS
(@srobb68) 
funding across UK politics…