I lost my job, but found an occupation!

Colleagues,

This is my last post for 2011, as I am calling it a day from tomorrow afternoon.

And what a year it has been! Both of the major strikes this year have sent a clear message to the government that they simply do not understand the anger across the public and private sectors and the frustration with the corrupt notion that we are somehow all in this together.

That this anger has manifest itself as part of the international occupy movement is something that we should all be justifiably proud of - and I hope that the movement continues to grow during 2012 and beyond.

There has of course been many other reasons for optimism amngst trade unionists in particular and from a global perspective, and I hope my blog has been able to capture some of this momentum during 2011.

I will continue to provide a method to survey global developments across the spectrum of interests for trade unionists in the UK and internationally.

I do hope that you have a good break over Christmas and I extend a hope for continuing solidarity during 2012.

In Solidarity

Ian

Support SOLIDAR

Colleagues,

Multinationals think they can get away with anything - and this includes Nespresso in its coffee-growing activity in Latin America. Support the campaign by the fine people behind SOLIDAR buy watching the video and sending an e-mail to George Clooney.

SOLIDAR backs its campaign against Nespresso with the following statement:

“Solidar Suisse has been committed to improving these intolerable conditions on the coffee plantations in Nicaragua for years. And we have been successful. Last year, we advised more than 15,000 people and were involved in over 4,000 court cases, 95 per cent of which reached a successful conclusion. And we are not going to give up. Not until the last plantation owner notices that every plantation worker is a human being and not a slave. And when all the multinational coffee dealers ensure that coffee pickers finally earn a decent wage, too.”




In Solidarity

Ian

N30: from DC to Dhaka

Colleagues, although there was great media coverage of the national public sector strike last week, there was less attention paid to global solidarity action.

There is a good, short summary note on the blog of the International Labor Rights forum website: http://laborrightsblog.typepad.com/international_labor_right/2011/12/from-dhaka-to-dc-global-solidarity-for-striking-uk-workers.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2FILRF%2Finternational_labor_right+%28Labor+Is+Not+A+Commodity+Blog%29

In Solidarity

Ian

N30: Oxford



Ruskin Staff on our unofficial picket line





Guy, Fergus, Rachel and Nige

 


Our very own UCU banner






Showing Solidarity with Oxford Univ UCU



Nige and Guy do the Banner Proud



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He has to get his photo in!



4,000 strikers March in Oxford



Oxford Brought to a Standstill



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We Say Fightback! (Unless you are that nice woman from NASUWT who harangues PD for upsettting a 'nice civilised, middle class march')

  

To return home safe

Colleagues,

Just announced is the outcome of the Lofstedt review which prefigures the Coalition's bonfire of health and safety law in the UK.

Coming on the back of my last post about protected conversations it is clear that the trajectory of the Tories is a wholesale attack on the relatively minor protections that UK workers have in comparison to workers across the Continent.

Details of the Lofstedt predictions on what must go are in a BBC news item: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15919238

What is clear is that, regardless of what conclusions Lofstedt has arrived at, the Tories are adopting their historic 'it's elf and safety gone mad' mantra citing banned conkers and village fetes as a smokescreen for further weakening the HSE and freeing up employers to quite literally get away with murder.

And where, oh where, are the Labour Party in response? Answers on a postcard - if you do indeed get an answer.

By the way, the title for this post comes from a quote I remember being cited years ago by MSF (and I am sure used across the movement) of the simple position we take as trade unionists on the issue of workers' health, safety and welfare, which is that the simple guarantee a worker wants from their employer is to be able to return home to their home and family as safe and free from ill-health as they left home that morning.

Follow this story, the outcomes will not be good.

In Solidarity

Ian

Protected Conversations: A License to Intimidate

Colleagues,

As simple evidence of the malign, haphazard approach this coalition has reducing even further the bare framework work statutory employment protections UK workers have, on the same day I was delivering the GFTU's Advanced Employment Law course the government announced its consultation exercise on 'protected conversations'.

Dressed up in the usual illegitimate guise of motivating unproductive workers, the protected conversations will allow employers to intimidate, bully and victimise workers with impunity as the substance and nature of the conversation will not be permissible as evidence at a tribunal.

The old Etonian that heads this ramshackle coalition is quoted in the launch of the consultation exercise as saying:

“We want businesses to create jobs, but if employers are so concerned about the prospect, for instance, of being taken to tribunal that they don’t feel they can have frank conversations with their employees many companies just won’t feel able to create those jobs in the first place".

Obviously intelligence and knowledge isn't a feature of this proposal as any good TU rep would reply that most workers chances of getting a strong case to an ET is limited already - these proposals present a monumental setback to the landscape of legal protections in the UK.

An article from the FT on this is here: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b217db36-0bbd-11e1-9861-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1eQjP721D

In Solidarity

Ian

Out with a Bang

Colleagues,

I will be away for a few days on bereavement leave, but want to post an item out of huge respect for my brother-in-law Joe Weston, who died suddenly and expectedly on Saturday 5th November.

Joe was a distinguished academic and worked in the Planning Department at Oxford Brookes.

One of Joe's academic disciplines was in the field of environmental impact assessment (EIA) and here's a link to a thought-provoking article he wrote on the nature of EIA in a risk society: http://tinyurl.com/bwqsy8m

Joe was also a serious thinker on the broader front on the future of environmental politics which led to his editing of the book Red and Green: The New Politics of the Environment.

Behind all of this however, Joe was a lifelong environmental campaigner. In tribute to this 2011 ironically marks the 20-year anniversary of one of his greatest successes.

In 1991, and working through Friends of the Earth, Joe was part of a campaign that successfully thwarted the plans to route the M40 extension through an area of oustanding natural beauty, Otmooore.

Adapting techniques used to defend areas of the Brazilian rain forest from logging the campaign was a historic success. More detail is here: http://tinyurl.com/79mm2ke

Joe's obituary appears in today's Oxford Mail and tomorrow's Oxford Times. It reads:

It is with overwhelming sadness that the family of Doctor Joe Weston (PHD, MSc, MRTPI) announce that he went out with a bang at our firework party. He left us while singing and dancing with friends and family. No words can describe the loss felt by those closest to him.

Funeral service will be held at the Oxford Crematorium at 3pm on Tuesday 15th of November. Joe leaves his wife, son, daughter and a wealth of loved ones to carry his memory.

No flowers please. All donations to The Rain Forest Foundation (http://www. rainforestfoundationuk.org/) 'Dress to go down to the pub'.

Although we didn't speak to one another often enough, and this usually and simply down to work pressures, I shall miss Joe immensely.

My heartfelt condolences go to my sister-in-law Anna, nephew Mike and neice Alice.

In Solidarity

Ian