Category Archives: Industrial action

One in three young teachers in England skipping meals to make ends meet

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NEU survey also finds one in five teachers aged 29 or under have taken on a second job as pay fails to keep up with cost of living

One in three young teachers in England are skipping meals and spending less on food because their pay has failed to keep up with the rising cost of living, while others are taking second jobs, a survey has found.

More than 8,000 state school teachers in England contacted by the National Education Union revealed that 34% of teachers aged 29 or younger said they have been forced to skip meals to make ends meet, with one in five saying they have taken on a second job in addition to teaching full-time.

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Critically ill patients ‘will inevitably die’ due to junior doctors’ strike

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Exclusive: leading heart surgeons urge BMA to exempt staff working on critical care units in England

Critically ill patients “will inevitably die” because hospitals are having to cancel surgery as a direct result of next week’s junior doctors’ strike in England, leading heart surgeons have warned.

There were bound to be fatalities among people with serious heart problems whose precarious health meant they were “a ticking timebomb” and needed surgery as soon as possible, they said.

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BBC journalists to strike during local elections over radio cuts

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NUJ members’ 24-hour stoppage on 5 May will coincide with the reporting of poll results

BBC journalists in England have announced a second 24-hour strike, to run from midnight on 5 May to coincide with the reporting of local election results, in a dispute over cuts to local radio.

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) said the broadcaster’s management want local radio stations to share programmes across the network from 2pm on weekdays and at weekends, going from more than 100 hours of local programming on every station each week down to 40.

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Ed Miliband accused of misrepresenting reason Labour banned Jeremy Corbyn from being candidate – UK politics live

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Latest updates: Diane Abbott says Miliband and Keir Starmer have given different reasons for Corbyn’s ban

Nadia Whittome, the leftwing Labour MP, has said this morning that she hopes the party’s national executive committee throws out the motion that would ban Jeremy Corbyn from being a candidate for the party.

Labour has now sent out the full text of Ed Miliband’s speech to the Green Alliance this morning. We have already covered the main points (here and at 10.55am), but it was a substantial, serious speech, and here are some futher things he said.

Miliband confirmed that Labour would issue no more licence for oil and gas fields in the North Sea. This is from my colleague Fiona Harvey.

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Royal Mail workers poised for strikes after Easter as talks fail

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CWU union lines up action as MP brands bosses’ threat to put service into administration as ‘scandalous’

Postal workers at Royal Mail are poised to stage a fresh wave of strikes after Easter as talks stalled, amid a “scandalous” threat by bosses to put the company into administration.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU), which represents about 115,000 postal workers, is close to agreeing multiple strike dates to take place later in April, the Guardian understands, in the long-running dispute between the company and union. A formal announcement of the strike dates is expected this week.

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British Airways cancels 300 flights during Heathrow staff’s Easter strikes

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Airport security staff due to hold 10 days of strikes over pay, forcing airline to axe 5% of its schedule

British Airways is to cancel more than 300 flights to and from Heathrow over the Easter holiday period due to strikes by airport security staff.

The airline is axing about 5% of its schedule, with 16 return short-haul flights cancelled daily. It said the majority of affected customers would be booked on to alternative flights within 24 hours, or could be fully refunded.

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Union leader urges TUC to unite in defying planned anti-strike law

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Fire Brigades Union chief says joint action needed to oppose ‘pernicious’ minimum service levels bill

A leading trade union has called for a concerted campaign of defiance and civil disobedience against the government’s planned anti-strike laws.

Matt Wrack, the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), urged a coordinated campaign among trade unions of “mass non-cooperation and non-compliance” against the minimum service levels bill.

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Amazon UK staff plan more strikes as they reject pay rise as an ‘insult’

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Online retailer has increased minimum hourly pay for warehouse workers by 50p an hour to £11

Amazon workers in the UK are planning further strike action as they dismissed as “an insult” a 50p an hour increase to its minimum hourly pay for warehouse workers to £11.

The company said the pay rise announced on Wednesday, which will be implemented this weekend, meant minimum pay had risen by 10% in the past seven months, putting it ahead of the legal minimum wage for those aged 23 or over, which will be £10.42 an hour from April.

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North Sea oil and gas workers vote to strike amid bumper profits

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Series of actions planned this spring as union members call for more pay since firms are ‘raking it’

Oil and gas workers have voted in favour of a series of large-scale North Sea strikes amid bumper profits for fossil fuel firms.

About 1,400 workers across five rig-servicing companies plan to strike between late March and early June as part of a dispute over jobs, pay and conditions – potentially shutting down platforms in the region.

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NHS union members step up campaign to reject ‘paltry’ pay deal

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Cross-union group sends out leaflets and hold online calls to persuade staff to vote against package agreed by leaders

Members of Britain’s biggest health unions are organising a campaign to reject the pay agreement being recommended by union leaders, in a move that threatens to destroy the tentative truce between the government and NHS staff.

A cross-union group called NHS Workers Say No has sent out thousands of leaflets, held online calls and started WhatsApp networks in an effort to persuade members to vote against the 5% increase hammered out during months of talks.

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Rail strikes to severely disrupt travel in Great Britain this weekend

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RMT staff at 14 operators to take action, affecting LNER, Avanti, LNER and Southern among others

Rail travel around Great Britain will be severely disrupted again this weekend after the second 24-hour strike in three days started on Saturday morning.

Thousands of members of the RMT union working as train staff at 14 operators are on strike in the long-running dispute over pay and jobs.

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No 10 refuses to give details of how £4bn pay deal for health workers will be funded – as it happened

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Downing Street reveals cost of improved pay offer for nurses and paramedics but will not say where the money will come from

Downing Street says the improve pay offer for health workers in England announced yesterday will cost around £4bn.

At the morning lobby briefing, a No 10 spokesperson said the “non-consolidated element for 2022-23” – the one-off payments worth up to 8.2% – would cost an extra £2.7bn.

Analysis showed that in two years’ time - by which point Labour could have won a general election - two million people could face paying taxes of up to 55 per cent on their pots as a result of [Rachel] Reeves’ policy.

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Health unions hail victory after government’s new pay offer for NHS staff in England

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Offer includes two one-off payments – 2% bonus and 4% Covid payment – plus pay rise of about 5%

Health unions hailed a historic victory on Thursday, after Steve Barclay made a significant new pay offer aimed at ending NHS strikes in England, in a climbdown that could embolden other unions at loggerheads with the government.

After months of rolling strikes involving thousands of NHS workers including nurses, ambulance staff and physiotherapists, the government ditched its claim that this year’s pay deal could not be reopened and offered a one-off bonus worth up to 8.2%.

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NHS workers expected to be offered one-off payments worth up to 6% as part of revised pay offer – UK politics live

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Health secretary expected to announce a formal pay offer to key unions later today

Sinn Féin’s US fundraising arm has caused a row by calling for a referendum on Irish unity in adverts in the New York Times, Washington Post and other US publications.

The half-page ads were paid for by Friends of Sinn Féin and ran on Wednesday urging support for unity referendums in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. “It is time to agree on a date,” it said. “Let the people have their say.”

They’re ads from Irish American organisations whose view on reunification is well known and held for a very long time and they take out ads every year. So, the focus now needs to be on getting back to work [at Stormont].

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NHS strikes: Steve Barclay expected to announce formal pay offer

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Offer to unions involved in strikes in England expected to include one-off payment of up to 6% for this year

The health secretary, Steve Barclay, is expected to announce a formal pay offer to key unions involved in NHS strikes in England, including a one-off payment of up to 6% for this year, in an effort to end months of industrial action.

Last-minute talks between the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the unions were understood to be continuing on Thursday morning, but an offer was expected to be made public later in the day.

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UK rail strikes: what would a deal mean for passengers, unions and operators?

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We look at who might be the winners in the industry’s biggest industrial dispute in decades

After 23 days of national strikes, two years of talking and hundreds of thousands of cancelled trains, rail workers are contemplating a pay rise that barely catches the coat tails of inflation. The rail industry’s biggest industrial dispute in decades may be approaching its final chapter – but with little chance of a happy ending for anyone involved.

The pain for passengers is not yet over – four more 24-hour strikes across 14 operators by train and station staff in the biggest rail union, the RMT, start next Thursday, 16 March.

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Labour pledges to overhaul England’s school ratings with ‘report card’

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Shadow education secretary to announce policy aimed at giving parents more information than Ofsted’s current system

School ratings such as outstanding and inadequate would be scrapped in England under a Labour government and replaced with a “report card” aimed at helping parents, the shadow education secretary is to announce.

Bridget Phillipson will tell a headteachers’ conference in Birmingham on Saturday that Ofsted’s current system of ratings “is high stakes for staff but low information for parents” because it fails to convey important details about a school’s strengths and weaknesses.

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Teachers’ strikes in Wales called off after revised pay offer

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NEU members had been due to strike for two days next week but will now consider Welsh government’s proposal

Two days of strike action by teachers in Wales next week have been called off after the Welsh government proposed a revised pay offer.

Members of the National Education Union (NEU) were due to stop work on 15-16 March in a dispute over pay.

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Scottish teaching union EIS suspends strikes amid 12% pay offer

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Educational Institute of Scotland urges members to accept deal worth 12.3% by April and up to 14% in 2024

A Scottish teaching union has suspended its industrial action and urged members to accept a new pay offer.

The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) union is to ballot members on a revised pay offer from local authority employers and the Scottish government. The union has recommended they accept the deal.

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Medical students urged to fill gaps when junior doctors strike in England

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Exclusive: Several NHS organisations have asked unqualified medics to provide support during strikes later this month

Unqualified medical students are being urged to provide clinical support in English hospitals when tens of thousands of junior doctors go on strike this month, the Guardian can reveal.

The NHS faces the prospect of unprecedented disruption to services from 13 March when junior doctors strike for 72 hours in an increasingly bitter row over pay, morale and safe staffing levels.

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