Category Archives: Trade unions

Train strikes to halt most trains in south-east England on Tuesday

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Commuter routes in and out of London hit as train drivers begin three days of rolling strikes amid six-day overtime ban

Most trains will not run in south-east England on Tuesday – including on key commuter routes in and out of London – after train drivers embarked on three days of rolling strikes at national rail operators.

Drivers in the Aslef union are striking for 24 hours at each English operator between Tuesday and Thursday, while continuing a week-long nationwide overtime ban that started on Monday, as part of a long-running pay dispute.

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Rail strikes restart as Aslef train drivers embark on new action

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Union to roll out 24-hour strikes across England’s train operators for three days this week and six-day overtime ban from Monday

Rail passengers face a week of disruption as train drivers embark on another round of industrial action on Monday, despite tentative attempts by the industry to restart talks.

Drivers in the Aslef union will strike for 24 hours at each of England’s national train operators over the course of three days from Tuesday until Thursday, while an overtime ban will apply nationwide from Monday until Saturday.

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Farmer confidence at lowest in England and Wales since survey began, NFU says

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Union cites extreme wet weather and post-Brexit phasing-out of EU subsidies as main reasons for slump

Farmers’ confidence has hit its lowest level in at least 14 years, a long-running survey by the biggest farming union in Britain has found, with extreme weather and the post-Brexit phasing-out of EU subsidies blamed for the drop.

The National Farmers’ Union warned there had been a “collapse of confidence” and that the outlook was at its lowest since the annual poll of its members in England and Wales began in 2010.

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Unite warns it will hold back funds if Labour weakens plan on workers’ rights

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Union leader Sharon Graham says Keir Starmer risks ‘limping into Downing Street’

Labour’s biggest union backer has warned it may divert election funding earmarked for the party, amid claims that Keir Starmer is diluting plans to overhaul workers’ rights.

In an interview with the Observer, Unite’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, said the Labour leader risked “limping into Downing Street” if he backed down in the face of intense lobbying from businesses.

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Labour’s ‘new deal for workers’ will not fully ban zero-hours contracts

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Exclusive: Revised proposals will allow employees to choose a zero-hour option, prompting fears of undue pressure from employers

Labour is facing criticism over plans for a loophole that would allow employees to work under zero-hours contracts, despite the party having pledged to ban them entirely.

Keir Starmer’s party is preparing to announce details of its promise to overhaul workers’ rights if it gets into power – a centrepiece of its early plans for government, but subject to fierce lobbying from businesses.

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Real terms average pay lower in most UK local authorities than in 2008, TUC finds

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Union body says austerity is to blame for longest squeeze on wages since Napoleonic era with most ‘wage black spots’ in London

Pay packets are smaller than they were in 2008 in most local authority areas in the UK, according to analysis by the Trades Union Congress, which described the findings as a “damning indictment” of the Conservatives’ economic record.

The TUC, which includes 48 unions with more than five million members, said stagnating wages meant British workers were in the midst of the longest squeeze on wages since the Napoleonic era.

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Heathrow expects summer holiday season to be ‘busiest on record’

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Passengers numbers this year predicted to hit 82.4m but airport’s future uncertain, with proposed £6bn sale in doubt

Heathrow is expecting its busiest ever summer holiday season but faces uncertainty over its long-term future as the proposed £6bn sale of the UK’s biggest airport remains in doubt.

The airport said on Wednesday that the summer getaway this year was expected to be “the busiest on record” and promised to have “robust” plans in place to keep the airport “running smoothly”, even if staff strikes held last year are repeated.

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Menopause training should be mandatory for all school leaders, says UK union

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Women with symptoms are being penalised, National Education Union’s annual conference told

The UK’s biggest teaching union is to lobby for menopause training to be made mandatory for all school leaders, saying women with symptoms are being penalised for sickness absence and disciplined on competency grounds.

Older staff were at greatest risk of “capability procedures”, delegates at the National Education Union’s (NEU) annual conference in Bournemouth were told, while others were being forced out of their jobs, affecting not only their income but their pensions.

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Support positive masculinity in England and Wales schools, union conference told

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Boys and young men need guidance – not punishment – to avoid ‘manosphere’, teacher tells NEU

Teachers should promote positive masculinity in schools in England and Wales in order to support boys who might otherwise feel demonised and end up turning to “the manosphere” for hope, a union conference has been told.

Charlotte Keogh, a secondary school English teacher from Worcestershire, said boys and young men needed support and guidance as they grappled with ideas about masculinity, rather than being punished and silenced.

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Gillian Keegan criticises union for ‘inappropriate’ Israel-Palestine motion

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Education secretary says conference proposals describing Israeli government as racist ‘reflect NEU’s divisive ideology’

Gillian Keegan has strongly criticised the National Education Union over a motion to be debated at its annual conference describing Israel’s government as “racist” and “guilty of apartheid policies”.

The education secretary said the motion and amendments were “wholly inappropriate and completely ignore the horrific terrorist attacks committed by Hamas on 7 October … These motions reflect the NEU’s divisive ideology, which I don’t believe is representative of our teachers.

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Goldsmiths academics to strike over ‘incomprehensible’ redundancies

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Union says cuts will make the creative powerhouse unrecognisable and risk unprecedented industrial unrest

Staff at Goldsmiths, University of London have voted to strike over plans for an “almost incomprehensible” number of redundancies, a trade union has announced.

More than 87% of University and College Union (UCU) members at the south London institution voted for strike action in a ballot with a turnout of 69%, as well as backing action short of a strike, such as a boycott on marking papers and submissions.

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Labour says it will stick with workers’ rights plans despite Mandelson remarks

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Party says it is committed to policies such as zero-hours ban after peer warned against ‘rushing’ changes

Labour has said it will keep its ban on zero-hours jobs and improvements to workers’ rights after the party peer Peter Mandelson warned against “rushing” through changes championed by trade unions.

Anneliese Dodds, the Labour chair, said the party was committed to the package to “make work pay” and get more money into people’s pockets, but that it would “continue to discuss” the plans with business and unions.

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Heathrow Border Force staff vote to strike in dispute over shift patterns

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No dates announced for industrial action, but stoppages could begin as soon as 8 April, says PCS union

Border Force staff at Heathrow have voted to strike in a dispute over shift patterns.

The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) said 600 of its members, who carry out immigration controls and passport checks, voted 90% in favour of strike action.

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Government urged not to resurrect fees for UK employment tribunals

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Unions and workers’ groups say return of fees, scrapped in 2017, will send wrong message to employers

Unions and workers’ rights groups are urging the government to reconsider plans to reintroduce fees for employment tribunals amid fears it will encourage exploitation.

A coalition of 48 organisations, including the TUC, Citizens Advice, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Fawcett Society and Maternity Action, said bringing back fees, which were ditched in 2017, meant “bad employers are being given the go-ahead to undercut good ones”.

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‘Daylight robbery’: two in five UK teachers work 26 hours for free each week

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TUC survey finds teaching staff perform the most unpaid overtime of any profession, losing out on £15,000 a year each

Teaching unions have accused ministers of “daylight robbery” after a new survey by the Trades Union Congress revealed that teachers perform the most unpaid overtime of any profession.

The TUC survey – published to mark its Work Your Proper Hours Day on Friday – found that two out of five teaching staff in the UK worked 26 hours for free each week, for a combined 5.5m hours a year.

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Rishi Sunak accused of personally holding up deal to end doctors’ strikes

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Exclusive: Sources say PM has blocked talks due to concerns about knock-on effect of more generous pay offer

Rishi Sunak has been accused of personally holding up a deal to end doctors’ strikes in England despite warnings from the health department and NHS England that waiting lists will continue to soar unless the industrial dispute is resolved.

Sources told the Guardian it had been made “abundantly and repeatedly” clear to the prime minister that there would be no progress on his pledge to drive down NHS waiting lists until a deal was struck.

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GMB members support ballot on strike action over allegations of bullying within union

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Union has been implementing recommendations of 2020 independent report that found it institutionally sexist

A row has broken out at the GMB, one of the UK’s biggest unions, after members of its largest region supported a move towards industrial action over “serious allegations of bullying and harassment”.

Staff in the north-east, Yorkshire and Humberside (NEYH) region overwhelmingly supported a consultative ballot on strike action – used as a shot across the bow when members want to raise a serious issue.

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‘Hypocrisy’: Tata builds vast India furnace despite Port Talbot emissions claims

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Owner says shutting Welsh blast furnaces will cut emissions, but it is opening a new one in India

The owner of the Port Talbot steelworks has been accused of “gross hypocrisy” as it prepares to open a new blast furnace in India, while citing a cut in carbon emissions for its decision to close two blast furnaces in south Wales, costing thousands of jobs.

Tata announced last week that up to 2,800 jobs would be cut under plans to close Port Talbot’s two huge blast furnaces and replace them with an electric arc furnace.

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Video game developers union membership in UK soars after thousands laid off

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Around 900 of the estimated 11,100 job losses in the workforce last year were in the UK’s £5bn a year industry

Mass redundancies in the video game industry, with thousands of developers losing their jobs, have led to a record surge in workers joining unions, organisers have told the Observer.

The fledgling Game Workers branch of the IWGB union saw its membership jump by almost half between December 2022 and December 2023 as job cuts worsened in the sector, including at the studios behind bestselling games such as Fifa, Skyrim and The Witcher.

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Port Talbot steelworks owners expected to confirm blast furnace shutdown

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Union representatives protest over ‘crushing blow’ to workers and industry, with 3,000 jobs at risk

The owners of the Port Talbot steelworks are expected to confirm the shutdown of its blast furnaces on Friday morning, putting almost 3,000 jobs at risk.

Trade union representatives have gathered outside the gates of the works in south Wales to protest against the decision, which members have said will be a “crushing blow” to workers and UK steelmaking.

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