Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum

 

On Saturday while returning from a lovely break in Dorset, I made a stop at the Martyrs Museum in Tolpuddle.

I had visited a few years ago during winter, but it was closed. This museum is truly worth visiting. Located just a few minutes from the A35, it offers free roadside parking, a shop and a small yet highly informative exhibition detailing and arrest of six Dorset farmers in the 1830s. These men were "stitched up" by local landowners and transported to Australia, separated their families, for the "crime" of attempting to establish a trade union.

The museum also highlights the successful campaign to secure their return and pardons, along with the challenges they faced upon their return, including opposition from other landlords and clergy, which ultimately led most to emigrate with their families to Canada.

This museum is highly recommended. Entry is free, with a suggested donation of £2. Having worked as a housing officer in Tower Hamlets, where tower blocks were named after the martyrs, I found this visit particularly meaningful. The site has a number of high standard agriculture workers private homes attached which were built by unions in the 1930s. 

Although I have yet to attend the annual Festival in July John's Labour blog: Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival 2025 line-up poster!, the museum also provided additional information about time the Martyrs spent farming in Essex a topic I have previously written about. John's Labour blog: Greensted Essex Walk - start at "oldest Wooden Church in the World" (& Tolpuddle Martyrs connection)

Merry Christmas.🎄 The best gift you can give to your past, present and future self is to join a union!

 hat tip North West UNISON https://twitter.com/NorthWestUNISON/status/1474363981649358853

https://tuc.org.uk/joinunion #joinunison

@unisontheunion

Understanding Pensions: TUC Union Course

 

I can remember my first ever TUC pensions course held many, many moons ago at Congress House. Jonathan Jefferies has also been my tutor on other TUC courses. 

Next to pay, pensions are probably the most important of your terms and conditions at work. All Union reps need to have some knowledge of pensions. It is actually not that complex or difficult. You just need a bit of training, support from your branch or region and common sense. 

Staying safe at work Monday 6 June 2022 | 14:00-15:00

 

 

Workers should feel safe whilst working and when traveling to and from work.    Join experts from the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, to find out about their Stay Safe at Work campaign. We'll also hear from reps about their own union campaigns. Unite's Get Me Home Safely campaign and USDAW's Freedom from Fear initiative.

 

REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR

inUNISON - launch of brand new blogspace created by UNISON Activists for UNISON activists

 

"inUNISON is a brand new blogspace created by UNISON Activists for UNISON activists.

We aim to be a one-stop site, providing news and view’s on all things UNISON, but we also hope to do more than that. Over the last couple of years, due to the pandemic there has been far less opportunities for activists from all walks of life across our union to come together, and whilst the world has moved towards far greater use of online platforms, we wanted to ensure that the value of engaging with other activists isn’t lost. Therefore, we want inUNISON to be a community, a space for sharing experiences, knowledge, and best practice. A platform for keeping abreast of what’s going on, but also for learning from experiences of other activists organising across the unions nations, regions, service groups and self-organised groups.

inUNISON will be run by an editorial board, made up of a diverse range of activists, with different experience’s/roles with UNISON. In the coming days we hope to post a bit more about our editorial team including some brief bio’s.

All our posts/articles are dependent on contributions from activists, so if you have a post you would like to write, or have an idea for something you would like to see on inUNISON please contact us here!

You can sign-up at the bottom of our homepage to receive regular updates, and to ensure you keep upto date with all things UNISON.

"Trade unions are more vital than ever - so why is the government attacking them?"

Hat tip Frances O'Grady - TUC General Secretary "PoliticsHome"

"As 2022 begins, a pandemic is raging, nearly a million workers are on zero-hours contracts, two million workers have no right to sick pay and five million earn less than the real living wage. And yet the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, is making imposing new red tape on unions his workplace priority – and quietly tabling new anti-union legislation in Parliament.

The proposals would impose a levy on trade unions and allow five-figure fines for breaching complex trade union laws.

That’s money from the pockets of care workers, nurses and supermarket staff.

All the while, union members are on the frontline line of the coronavirus pandemic, working in schools, hospitals, shops, in public transport and in the services we all rely on.

Millions have turned to unions to protect their jobs, defend their rights and keep their workplaces safe.

Their unions have worked hard to support them in turn. But now valuable union time and money will be diverted, as unions are forced to jump through yet more hoops.

Now is the time to be working with unions, not undermining them

Let’s be frank. These reforms are based on ideology rather than being about solving the problems working people face.

Political parties don't pay a levy for the Electoral Commission. Charities don't fund the Charity Commission. Yet unions face a whopping seven-figure bill to pay for their regulator, the Certification Officer.

The government's own figures show that this levy will send dozens of unions into the red. And there is little to stop the Certification Officer hiking the levy year after year. Ministers have even dropped a promised review clause aimed at protecting unions from over-zealous regulation.

Then there are the huge financial penalties which could hit unions – fines of up to £20,000 for statutory breaches – which address a problem that doesn’t exist.

In the last financial year, the Certification Officer dealt with just 34 complaints. That's just one for every 200,000 union members. And not one of these resulted in an enforcement order requiring a union to take action.

That’s because unions are accountable to their members through their democratic structures and have a strong track record of complying with their legal duties.

What’s more, these changes would allow non-members to make complaints to the Certification Officer about trade unions. It doesn’t take much imagination to see the work of unions being hindered by vexatious complaints from hostile employers or campaign groups, particularly during legitimate industrial disputes.

The curious timing of these measures is underlined by the fact that this legislation is a relic of another age. Ministers at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy have dusted off long-forgotten measures from the Cameron government’s 2016 Trade Union Act that were not enacted.

It begs the question – why now? This isn’t the case of simply tying up loose ends. If it was, ministers would have dealt with another outstanding issue from the Trade Union Act 2016: boosting union members’ democratic participation by trialling safe and secure electronic balloting for more union votes, such as the election of general secretaries.

It is telling of the government’s real concerns that they can spend valuable parliamentary time on new anti-union rules.

But the long-promised employment bill, intended to tackle insecure work and promote flexible working in the wake of Brexit, is still nowhere to be seen.

It’s time this government got its priorities right. 

Now is the time to be working with unions, not undermining them. Around the world – from New Zealand to the US – governments are recognising the power of collective bargaining.

Next year, Parliament will debate and vote on these explicitly anti-union proposals. When that moment comes, MPs and peers should reject them wholesale – and instead join with unions and their members in delivering better pay and conditions for working people in every corner of the country".

 

Why Join a Union and A Christmas Carol

 

hat tip https://twitter.com/UnisonNbriaPol

Never been a better time to join UNISON. Click here: http://join.unison.org.uk

Labour Party Leaders on International Workers Day : May Day 2021

Keir and Angela promise to take on the Tories over Worker's' rights. 

BHP mine workers tell investors about their reality (and the "Shift of Death")

As a Pension trustee I took part in this virtual round table. It is shocking how badly supposedly "blue chip" responsible international mining companies treat their workers (and the environment!). Setting up "dummy" companies to outsource staff in order to avoid paying them proper wages and protecting their health and safety is just unacceptable and a massive financial risk to investors. 

"18 November, 2020IndustriALL Global Union and PIRC (Pensions & Investment Research Consultants Ltd.) hosted a virtual round table, bringing together BHP worker representatives with investors in the company to raise concerns over violations and mishandling of Covid-19.

The objective was to give voice to the concerns of workers at BHP operations in South America and to allow investors to engage in direct conversation with the workers. Major investors from the UK, France, Sweden and the Netherlands, as well as a number of key responsible investment service providers, participated.

Igor Díaz, president of IndustriALL affiliate SINTRACARBON, spoke about the situation at the Cerrejón coal mine in Colombia, jointly owned by BHP, AngloAmerican and Glencore, where workers have been on strike since late August.

Cerrejón has unilaterally – and illegally – imposed a schedule change that workers call the “shift of death”. It will lead to 12-hour workdays, increased working time, the elimination of benefits, the sacking of over 1,000 workers and serious impacts on workers’ health and family life. Far from driving productivity, the move threatens the well-being of miners and their communities.

Marcelo Franco, president of the workers’ union at BHP’s Cerro Colorado mine in Chile and head of the Coordinating Committee bringing together six BHP unions, discussed conditions at the company’s three owned assets in that country. Marcelo spoke of the mishandling of Covid-19 by BHP, with workers in many cases left to fend for themselves, isolated in squalid accommodations with insufficient food and medical attention or simply sent back to their families to be cared for.

The company took advantage of the government’s discrimination against workers with pre-existing conditions, leading to mass firings of these workers and their inability to find work elsewhere.

Marcelo Franco also underlined the company’s weakness in handling gender mainstreaming, including pushing male miners out to make room for female counterparts, and the lack of necessary adjustments made for women workers, such as adapted PPE for mining and appropriate health and safety conditions to protect women in the workplace.

Conditions for women workers at Cerrejón mine are also poor, with no childcare or breastfeeding facilities.

IndustriALL mining director Glen Mpufane said:

“BHP – along with AngloAmerican and Glencore – continues to claim that it cannot control what happens at Cerrejón, as it is only a part-owner. But they cannot reap the profits without taking any of the responsibility: as companies that have endorsed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, they know that claims of “minority ownership” are no longer acceptable excuses for avoiding accountability. And while the other two MNCs have at least agreed to a dialogue with IndustriALL, BHP will not do even that.”

The round table touched on corporate governance and human rights-related risks to which BHP is exposing itself: namely, the disjuncture between its handling of Covid-19 in the global North versus the global South, and its extensive use of contract workers.

These workers have been particularly vulnerable during the pandemic, as they often cannot access sick leave or medical insurance, nor are they likely to speak up about health and safety at worksites due to the fear of losing their jobs.

The Australian Fair Work Commission recently threw out an appeal by BHP regarding its outsourcing model, Operations Services, and agreed with the CFMEU and several other IndustriALL affiliate unions that genuine agreement with the workforce had not been demonstrated and that the agreements may not pass the “better off overall test” compared with the industry award, as it is based on lower pay for the same work by contracted workers.
While the Australian unions had recourse because of a strong regulatory framework and judiciary, unions in the global South generally do not have access to remedy in the face of human rights abuses by foreign multinational corporations.

The main “ask” of investors at the round table was that they engage BHP on the concerns raised.

As Kemal Özkan, IndustriALL assistant general secretary said:

“The company must face the risks to which it is exposing its workforce, and address poor labour, environmental and governance practices at the South American assets that it either owns or co-owns. BHP has repeatedly refused to enter into direct dialogue with IndustriALL, thus closing off a major route to resolving problems locally.

“The question arises as to why the company is so willfully avoiding sitting down with workers and their representatives.”

Photo 1: Igor Díaz, president SINTRACARBON, Colombia, on the virtual round table.

Photo 2: Marcelo Franco, president of the workers’ union at BHP’s Cerro Colorado mine in Chile and head of the Coordinating Committee bringing together six BHP unions.

Christina McAnea for UNISON General Secretary - By closing date over 200 Nominations

"Hugely grateful to get 226 nominations. This includes the NEC, 9 regions, 5 service groups and 211 branches. Onwards and upwards. Lets turn this into votes. A massive thank you to everyone who helped get this and to everyone who has supported me. #ourfutureinunison

Join us: http://votechristina.org

Fight to Save Historic East End Matchgirl’s Grave

"We have written to the Secretary of State for Justice and await his reply. Please rally your MP to help us at least pause this brutal mounding process...

The Matchgirls Memorial

Patrons: Anita Dobson, Diana Holland, Barbara Plant

www.matchgirls1888.org

The Matchgirls Memorial: Registered Company Number 11858820
87 Brookvale Road, Highfield, Southampton, Hampshire, SO17 1QY

NEWS RELEASE

Fight to Save Historic East End Matchgirl’s Grave

Support from Parliament to Theatre

MPs, Peers, Unions, and Academics are fighting to save a Matchgirl’s grave from JCBs. Manor Park Cemetery is the resting place of working women’s rights campaigner, Sarah Dearman (née Chapman) but the private Cemetery want hers, and other graves, brutally levelled and ‘mounded’ with additional soil to make way for new money-making plots.

Sarah Chapman was a leader of the famous 1888 Matchgirls Strike in London’s East End. The women worked at the Bryant and May factory in Bow and are seen as the founders of modern unionism and inspiration for the Dockers Strike. The Matchgirl’s story has been told in plays and musicals around the world and was commemorated at the 2012 London Olympics.

Historians, women’s groups and unions have joined Sarah’s family to stop the destruction of this important heritage site. However, the Cemetery Directors will not speak to the family or campaigners and intend to cover her paupers grave within weeks. The family have now written to the Secretary of State for Justice and are supported by MPs, Peers, Academics and Unions. Newham Council has asked the Cemetery for discussion. A petition has 7,000 supporters, including star of stage and screen Anita Dobson, herself a Stepney East End girl.

Anita Dobson said “Sarah and these women fought for our workings rights and to destroy her resting place is abhorrent. People want to come here to pay their respects and remember what she and the Matchgirls achieved for us all”.

Mounding is not recommended by the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management. They normally offer advice on alternative methods to increase burial space. In the past, skulls and bones have been visible at the Manor Park site after similar destruction work. The grounds also contain WWII civilian graves including some from the 1943 Bethnal Green tube disaster.

If you have concerns, have family buried at Manor Park, or just want to help, please
CONTACT: Sam Johnson 02380 552 009 matchgirls1888statue@gmail.com

Costa Coffee "stealing" money from their staff

Check out this BBC report

Costa Coffee: Employees call £200 deductions for training 'unfair'

This is outrageous and I hope people boycott this @CostaCoffee in Upminister (& any other employer who steals from its workforce). 

This sort of things is what tends to happen in employers who do not recognise trade unions. 

Why join a union?

"Everyone deserves fairness, equality and justice at work. That's what trade unions stand for. When you join a union, you join a movement that's 6 million strong.

Working people are stronger when they act together. And together, we can make the working world a better place for everyone".

The relationship between you & your employer is not one of equals...Being in a union fixes the imbalance!

Hat tip TUC

This Heart Unions Week - thank a union member

What have the trade unions ever done for me?

"UNISON celebrates becoming the UK’s biggest union"

"UNISON is marking becoming the UK’s biggest union by launching a month of recruitment activity today to reach out to every worker in the country providing public services.

The union has now more than 1.3 million people in its membership who work in education, local government, the NHS, the police service and the energy sector. Members work in both the public and private sectors.

But there are still tens of thousands of public sector workers who aren’t part of a union. During the month of November – renamed Grovember in UNISON – the union’s reps will be working hard to attract new recruits in every town and city across the UK".

Great initiative by UNISON to build our Union. Non members need to realise that the more of us in the union - the better the deal the union will always get for its members. 

Hat UNISON release

What have the Trade Unions done for us?

"Ever wondered what the trade union movement in Britain has done for us? Equal pay, equal opportunities, maternity pay and flexible working hours".

A great update for the young by the TUC on an old idea.

Watch the original monty python inspiration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7tvauOJMHo

"Union reps are good for workers and employers and we can prove it"

Check out TUC risks and link to Stronger Unions response to the latest nonsense from the Tax evaders alliance.

"The TUC has ripped apart the latest attempt by a right-wing lobby group to claim paid release for union reps comes at a cost. TUC national organiser Carl Roper said the annually regurgitated claim by the Taxpayers’ Alliance that union volunteers are a drain on the public purse and taxpayers gets picked up uncritically by sections of the media, despite the irrefutable evidence proving precisely the opposite. 

Writing in the TUC’s Stronger Unions blog, he points to research and government publications showing the union role in the workplace is good for business, the economy and the health of workers. He says this establishes five areas that benefit from the activity of workplace union reps: skills and training; exit rates, labour turnover and dispute resolution; productivity, and worker safety. He said in workplaces where there is direct trade union health and safety representation there were much lower injury rates, translating to between 34,000 and 52,000 fewer working days lost. 

“There are just 170,000 union representatives in the UK amongst a workforce of around 25 million. It would be difficult to find another group of employees who in addition to carrying out their regular job make such a significant contribution to the UK economy as a result of volunteer activity,” Roper concluded. 

“It is a role acknowledged and valued not just by unions and their members, but also by some of the UK’s biggest and most successful employers. Jaguar Land Rover, British Aerospace, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, British Airways, Morrison’s, Asda to name just a few all have and provide paid time off to union reps. Their contribution is also acknowledged by the CBI. The case for union reps and the small amount of paid time off that they receive is conclusive.”

Ÿ TUC Stronger Unions blog. TUC guide to the union safety effect. The Guardian.

Newham mayor ‘trigger ballot’: GMB union says it followed the rules as it affiliates more branches locally

Check out former Guardian journalist, Dave Hill's website "OnLondon" about the latest twist in the Newham Mayoral Trigger saga. Leaving aside this important issue for the moment, what is happening with excessive trade union affiliation to local Labour Party's is a national issue which in my view threatens to completely destroy members democracy in the Party.

For whatever reason the GMB has recently decided to affiliate 26 branches to West Ham Labour Party. I understand that a similar number of GMB branches was also affiliated to East Ham.

What this will mean that it will be pointless for any local Labour Party wards or Branch to vote in future MP or other Trigger ballots since they will be completely outvoted. In West Ham there is only 10 branches. They will be completely swamped by the 26 GMB branches or maybe Unite or another union might affiliate say 50 branches? It only costs £6 for a trade union to affiliate each branch.

Also, it will be a complete waste of time in most Local Labour Parties for its members to turn up to its Annual General Meetings since they will be outvoted by trade union affiliates. This happened recently in the East Ham Labour Party AGM, when all positions and nominations were decided purely by GMB delegates.

I am strongly in favour of trade unions being involved in the Party but this makes us look at best ridiculous. The Labour Party is already in a mess and unless this issue is sorted it could even finish it off and destroy us.

This is a Labour Party issue and the party needs to urgently review its rules on affiliations.

"A London GMB official has explained why he believes his union followed correct procedures in the Labour Party process that led to the selection of Sir Robin Wales to seek a fifth term as Newham Mayor but which 47 party members in the borough have claimed contained many “procedural irregularities” that “made a material difference to the result”.

Gary Doolan, a GMB political officer, says his union was fully entitled to its four votes in the affirmative nomination or “trigger ballot” process, all of which backed Sir Robin going forward unopposed as Labour’s mayoral candidate for 2018, and that he suspects the challenge to it is largely the product of “old political battles” and “twitchiness” arising from local political circumstances. Sir Robin won the ballot, conducted between 25 October and 4 December last year, by 20 votes to 17.

In a sometimes strongly-worded letter sent to Labour’s governing national executive committee (NEC) in January, the 47 complainants listed three alleged “major failings” in in process, including the fact that some affiliated unions, the GMB among them, cast votes for each of their branches affiliated to Labour locally while others cast only a single vote no matter how many of their branches had affiliated.

They stated that “it is not our purpose, in general, to question the internal affairs of affiliates” but asserted: “It cannot be right that the NEC accepts this stark variation in practice within the franchise of the process,” which they attributed to “a different interpretation of the rules” brought about by “unclear” procedural guidance. The NEC declined their request for an inquiry to be held into the running of the process and some votes to be declared void or held in abeyance pending its outcome.

Doolan said his union correctly followed its own rules relating to all trigger ballot processes, which sitting MPs too must undergo. These include votes to which branches of the union become entitled when they affiliate to Labour CLPs being cast on their behalf by the London region rather than by the individual branches themselves.

Another locally-affiliated organisation, Newham Fabians, have been informed by the Fabians at national level that their procedure for deciding how to vote in the ballot breached the society’s own rules. The union Bectu, which had a branch affiliated in Newham at the time of the ballot (but which has since disaffiliated from Labour altogether), has said that no affiliation fee was paid in 2016.

Both Newham Fabians and the Bectu branch voted “yes” to Sir Robin going forward automatically. It is understood that the 47 complainants, who are drawn from both of Newham’s CLPs, West Ham and East Ham, are awaiting legal advice before deciding on their next move.

In January, the GMB increased the number of its London branches affiliated to Labour in Newham by more than 20 as part of what Doolan says is a new political strategy for increasing working class participation in grassroots politics across the capital and wholly unconnected to the dispute over the trigger ballot process. He wrote to West Ham CLP in mid-January listing 26 branches that wished to affiliate to it, enclosing a cheque for £156 to cover the required fees.

Many of the 26 branches are in workplaces outside Newham, including Barking, Bromley, Hendon, Woodford and the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, but Labour Party rules permit branches to affiliate to CLPs if a member of it is also party member who is “resident or registered as an elector within the constituency”.

The trigger ballot process allowed each of Labour’s 20 wards in Newham a single vote and 17 in all for affiliates. Two others unions cast more than one vote and four cast only one. Of the 20 wards, 9 voted “yes”to Sir Robin going forward automatically with 11 preferring the alternative, an open selection battle in which other hopefuls could have contested him for the nomination. The affiliates, comprising unions and other organisations, voted “yes” by 11 to 6.

The complainants’ letter to the NEC argued that “if trade union affiliates are allowed more than one vote, it presents a situation where trade union affiliates are able to affiliate as many branches as they want to any CLP, thereby completely out-voting party branches and the democratic expression of branch members’ wishes”.