This blog is written in a personal capacity. Its mission is to both maintain and reflect my interests in activist/worker education, as well as those areas of interest allied to my equalities and diversity role at Equity, the union for workers in the creative industries. No aspect of this blog reflects Equity policy.
The Daily Mail's rabid attack on the 'socialism' of Ed Miliband presages dire concerns about the approach of the media towards the Labour Party in the run-up to the general election 2015.
Celebrating VE Day, London 1945
As we approach a screening and panel discussion of Ken Loach's new film, The Spirit of '45, at Ruskin College this Friday (book free tickets here: https://spiritof1945.eventbrite.co.uk/), it is clear that the Tories, and their acolytes in the rightwing press, will do all they can to intimidate the electorate with revisionist scare stories of Labour in power, including an assault on the labour movement.
The Spirit of '45 is the obvious antidote to the Tory poison, but we are left with some profound questions about where that spirit exists in the modern Labour Party, if at all, and if not who acts as its custodian.
Joining us at Ruskin for a post-screening panel discussion will be Dot Pearson (National Pensioners' Convention) and Alex Gordon (RMT) who feature in the film and who will help kick-off a debate around the implications of the film for where we are now.
If you can join us please do for what promises to be a lively, entertaining evening.
The turnout on Sunday for the demonstration in support of the NHS (and everything else under assault by the Coalition) was fantastic, and so I just wanted to post some pictures. Naturally enough the turn out from trade union branches in the North West was particularly strong, but the the UK as a whole was represented really well.
What a stark contrast to the Daily Mail's vile attack on Ralph Miliband over the weekend to see thousands of trade unionists reject the narrow hatred of the right - both in government and the attack dogs in the media - by coming together and advocating so passionately and positively for a future that works. A future that offers stability, fairness, a living wage and ultimately some degree of dignity regardless of age, employment status, who you are and where you come from.
When we screen the new Ken Loach film, the Spirit of '45, to the new students at Ruskin on 11th October they will get some sense of what happens when a government commits to make those ideals a reality, not least by creating the NHS. What we must explore by extension however, is to how to maintain the fight against the Coalition and continue to defend public services across the UK.
Any student of labour and trade union studies will understand the nature of the global division of labour, and of the re-occuring displacement of migrant labour as a dominant feature of this. International sports events rely heavily on this fragmented, dispossessed underclass - the 'new helots' as defined by Robin Cohen in his profound analysis of migrants as a feature of globalisation (http://tinyurl.com/qg86q5y) reprising the degraded state of the slaves of Sparta in classical antiquity.
In Sunday's Obsever Nick Cohen (http://tinyurl.com/nrvgcwb) applied in a profound sense the notion of the new helot to the migrant workers toiling to build the new ground/facilities for the 2022 world cup in Qatar and the appalling conditions they face. The story is a prominent feature in today's Guardian (http://tinyurl.com/o7cbcqs) and has become a major campaign of the ITUC, TUC etc.
Sadly the plight of migrant workers in Qatar is nothing new in the global race to build better, bigger stadia for international sporting events, either as a measure of hubris - as indicative of the billions spent by Putin for the winter Olympics in Sochi - or more simply to rake in vast streams of revenue from advertising, ticket sales, tourism etc.
The conditions facing workers in Qatar are particulary horrendous and as reported across the global media workers face also the challenge of overcoming particularly pernicious immigration and employment laws which effectively make a worker the property of an employer and curtail the capacity of a worker to leave the country as means to escape exploitation. The footballer Abdeslam Ouaddou appears in the video clip above describing his own ordeal of being forced to stay in the kingdom following a dispute about his contract.
It appears that other factors (the heat: http://tinyurl.com/lqntt8g) may well spoil the ambitions of the Qatari royal family in hosting the games but I urge you to support the ITUC campaign (http://www.ituc-csi.org/fifa-to-discuss-moving-qatar-2022) and force the games from Qatar sending an unequivocal message that the abuse of workers for state-sponsored events will not go unchallenged.
In closing this post I am reminded of the quote from Bill Shankley about football being more important than life and death. Sadly, for far too many workers in the global economy, football, and the inordinate wealth wrapped around and within so many other sports create the conditions within which life and death become stark features of their daily lives.
As I write the world awaits the outcome of the Russian proposal to the US on Syrian chemical weapons as means to avoid proposed intervention in the long-running civil war. Clearly the implications of any intervention - and of the civil war itself regardless of intervention - have massive global implications and concern us all.
UN chemical weapons inspectors in Syria.
Little choice than to face hazards of work.
What we witness also in Syria is the vital role of UN workers. At the heart of the siege between the US and Russia sit the outcomes of the UN weapon inspectors. In those countries neighbouring Syria we witness the vital work of the weapon inspector's colleagues in the World Food Programme and the Refugee Agency, UNHCR.
No global conflict, disaster or civil crisis goes without the critical support of UN workers, and yet in August the UN's Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon has actively sought to de-recognise those unions representing UN workers as part of a wider effort to downplay the catastrophic dangers they face.
Perversely, Ki-moon's actions coincided with the annual date when fallen UN workers are remembered. The memorial service on 19th August coincided with a meeting of the UN staff unions and Ki-moon to discuss his proposals to abandon long-standing negotiating and industrial relations practices within the UN.
I have had the great privelege to work alongside UN staff when delivering training for a number of UN staff unions and have been amazed at how strong these unions have become despite the relatively weak framework of bargaining rights and employment protections they have.
Ian Richards heads the UN staff union delegation to UN headquarters and said this of Ki-moon's wilful attack on trade union rights:
“The UN has removed negotiating rights for staff on security and safety at exactly the time
when frontline staff are facing fatal threats and ever-increasing danger, particularly in Africa
and the Middle East. UN staff have become a target in the course of their work to increase
peace and security around the world and they should be guaranteed the protection their hard
work deserves.
“It is vital that the UN leads by example. The UN should set a global standard in working
towards a more peaceful and tolerant world based on promoting human rights for everyone,
everywhere. Being guilty of double standards would stain the UN’s good reputation.
“By refusing to sit down with his staff and talk things out whilst publicly advocating the virtues
of open communication and negotiation, Ban Ki-moon is not practicing the labour standards
that the UN preaches."
Please follow the ITUC link to send a message of support to the UN staff unions and add pressure to this vital campaign.
Just about back from leave, but extremely happy to report that on Saturday I had the great pleasure of welcoming Alex Gordon (ex-President of the RMT) to Ruskin College to award the MA ILTUS 2010-12 cohort their MA certificates at a truly glorious graduation ceremony. This was the first MA group that I had overseen in my role as MA programme co-ordinator and so it was a particularly rewarding for me.
Alex Gordon kicks off the MA ILTUS graduation event with a rousing
speech underlining Ruskin's tradition of radical labour education.
As you can imagine the graduates celebrated in true labour movement style ending the evening dancing to the Pete Fryer band at the Florence Park Community Centre in Oxford. Pete is a long-standing UNISON activist and was very happy to announce our celebrations to the assembled locals.
Here are a few pictures - and in the next post a comment on a particularly nasty development, brought to us by the Coalition on the day before Parliament disbanded for the Summer recess and surely to become a major battle for the UK trade union movement and a wider body of campaigning and civil society organisations.
Just a brief post before I sign off for a couple of weeks for a holiday with my family. Very happy to stay in the Uk to support the economy, although will be doing the usual and asking bar/hotel staff how they are employed and if they've heard of a union. Although the replies/discussion is not often what I want to hear the many young people (and usually it is younger workers employed seasonally) I speak to yearn for better work and standards.
It is for these reasons that I remain ever optimistic of a future for organised labour and so want to leave readers with a good news story, as there are always plenty if you look.
And so over in the US we have been witnessing the rise of strike action, and other forms of mobilisation, on the part of fastfood workers - and as ever, from a UK perspective it if a form of action well worth observing and analysing for lessons to be learnt.
One of these is how much easier it is in the UK for pro-labour coalition bodies to emerge to develop and sustain such campaigns. Although we are witnessing this more in the UK now (witness London Citizens, People's Assembly etc) the US has a history of spontaniety and vibrance that we would do well to embrace and replicate.
Jobs with Justice (http://www.jwj.org/about/index.html) is a relatively new coalition of organisations with a strict focus on justice for workers, and they have grown rapdily on the back of a series of successes aross the UK - follow the link to read more.
As we approach in the UK the 30th anniversary of the miners' strike it is important that we look widely and broadly for the means to recapture a means to pursue a concerted, direct response to a Conservative government in power hell bent again on destroying the culture, spirit and institutions of the working class. The lessons are in the UK, but they are being played out elsewhere also.
This shocking new video on the production of distressed jeans has been created via a collaboration between War on Want, SACOM and the Clean Clothes Campaign.
As the research, Breathless for Blue Jeans, confirms although the chemical practice of creating jeans with the distressed look is accepted as posing significant health hazards, the process has now gone underground:
The research reveals that workers are at high risk of contracting silicosis, a deadly lung disease, while blasting abrasive sand on to denim under high pressure. Employees work in sandblasting units for up to 15 hours a day, with little or no protection. The sandblasting process is fast and cheap, and can increase product value tenfold. Although sandblasting has been banned by major brands, the practice continues behind closed doors, or through subcontracting to less traceable or illegal factories, workers commented.
Despite an awareness of the clandestine nature of this, it does not stop retailers from purchasing the garments.
Justin Jin / Panos Pictures
What's needed therefore is a profiling of this research, and the video, to raise awareness on the part of consumers and to make demands of retailers that they use their financial power to force manufacturers to eliminate the hazards in the process and improve terms and conditions.
Follow-up on this item read the research and raise this issue within your trade union as a way to support this critically important new campaign.
