News

Scottish militancy wins inflation-busting offer (343 words)

Scottish local government workers, who have been in a pay dispute since last year, are considering an inflation-busting four-year pay deal while their English ...

College pay talks resumed (225 words)

Industrial action by staff in higher education has persuaded employers to retain national bargaining and re-enter pay talks. ...

Unions say "no" to privatisation (247 words)

Government policies on part privatisation are creating industrial unrest in three of the sectors affected. ...

Factory workers strike back (208 words)

The company-wide 24-hour strike called by the T&G transport union last month was the latest in a series of union initiatives designed to make ...

Organising at amazon.com (139 words)

The GPMU print and paper union has been organising at the Milton Keynes distribution warehouse of e-commerce giant Amazon.com, where conditions are anything but ...

Unemployment tumbles again (67 words)

Unemployment in the UK has fallen steeply to 1,004,800. Official figures show the number of people out of work and claiming benefit fell by ...

UK inflation at record low (196 words)

The annual rate of inflation in the UK has fallen sharply to 1.8%, the lowest level since the current system of measuring consumer prices ...

Corus considers rescue plan (397 words)

Steel giant Corus, which hit UK manufacturing for six last month with the announcement of over 6,000 redundancies, is considering a rescue plan put ...

Features

KEY ECONOMIC INDICATORS (322 words)

FULL-TIME AVERAGE WEEKLY EARNINGS ...

Injunction ruling will affect ballots (846 words)

Last month's injunction against rail union RMT, which prevented it from holding a strike over the future of the London Underground, has set a ...

LAW Q&A (742 words)

* Our employer has begun consulting us over possible redundancies. Some members would like to take time off now to look for work. Can ...

NHS slow to act on race equality (183 words)

The country's largest employer, the NHS, still has a long way to go before it can claim to be delivering on racial equality, according ...

What do parents really want? (2258 words)

As the government concludes its consultation on family-friendly measures, a Labour Research survey of union reps indicates that working mothers and fathers want to ...

The icing on the director's cake (1297 words)

Top executives in Britain's leading companies can look forward to huge pension entitlements on retirement after enjoying "fat cat" salaries during their working lives. ...

It really is cheaper to sack people in Britain (1926 words)

Recent months have seen a mass of job losses in manufacturing. Often, as at ...

MSF victory in forced ballot (252 words)

Professional and technical union MSF won an important recognition ballot at Saudi Arabian Airways last month by getting a 91% "yes" vote in the ...

MSF-AEEU merger (45 words)

Members of two large TUC unions - manufacturing, science and finance union MSF and the AEEU electrical and engineering union - are to vote ...

Fair deal (39 words)

The GMB general union has signed a single union deal with the government's Rent Service, which carries out fair rent assessments around the UK. ...

Call centres (66 words)

Call-centre staff were last month invited to report bad bosses to the TUC via a freephone hotline. ...

Bank recruitment (324 words)

An ambitious recruitment drive by finance union UNIFI has seen it signing up 500 new members at Lloyds TSB in two months. The attractions ...

French two-year deal averts pension crisis (320 words)

Unions and employers in France have reached a deal on pensions, which ensures that people can continue to retire at 60. But the agreement ...

Spanish civil servants seek back pay (216 words)

Civil servants in Spain have started a campaign to regain the pay they lost when the government imposed a pay freeze four years ago, ...

Contracts cause Italian clash (271 words)

Relations between Italy's two largest union confederations, CGIL and CSIL, have become increasingly tense following difficulties in negotiating new rules on fixed-term contracts. ...

Skills shortages bite (1625 words)

The government is now so concerned about the thousands of job vacancies going unfilled in the UK due to skill shortages that it is ...

Events (237 words)

* Friday 2: Repetitive Strain Injury - practical workplace management. Conference, London. Organised by IRS. Details: 020 7420 3500; www.irseclipse.co.uk ...

Law Matters

Part time workers win pension victory (280 words)

Part-time workers who were denied the right to join company pension schemes have won a major victory in the courts. In a long-running case ...

Agency regulations (82 words)

Draft regulations on employment agencies were published last month, placing restrictions on organisations that only provide free work-seeking services if the individual also uses ...

Special advisors (64 words)

The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has reversed an employment tribunal ruling which held that the Lord Chancellor, the government's chief legal officer, had discriminated ...

Compensation payments (71 words)

The amounts that can be awarded in employment compensation claims went up on 1 February 2001. All new redundancy claims will be based on ...

Government to review consultation law (211 words)

The government has announced that it will review the law relating to collective redundancies in the wake of recent decisions by multinationals such as ...

Health & Safety Matters

Draft code on corporate responsibility published (256 words)

Measures to increase corporate responsibility for health and safety moved a step closer with the launch of the Health and Safety Commission (HSC) draft ...

Workers' Memorial Day events (144 words)

The event originated in Canada in 1985 and has since been taken up by unions in many countries. The TUC formally adopted the day ...

Report a fault (107 words)

As part of a campaign to improve the safety and quality of the working environment, the CWU communications union is issuing a "Report a ...

TUC calls for HSC committees to reflect workforce (187 words)

The TUC wants more female, black and disabled union reps to sit on the Health and Safety Commission's (HSC) 21 advisory committees and is ...

Health & Safety Back-up

TUC campaign to clean up workplaces (812 words)

A recent compensation award for a school cook who developed asthma caused by her work highlights the effects that a poor working environment can ...

Equality news

Working parents need cash for childcare (569 words)

An independent body looking into childcare provision has called on the government to provide generous financial support for caring for children during the first ...

Qualified but not legal (95 words)

Only 53% of young men of Caribbean origin with qualifications are in employment, compared with 81% of white men in the same 18-30 age ...

Workplace Back-up

Union membership brings a premium (643 words)

From a union perspective the benefits of collective bargaining may seem obvious, but what evidence is there that unions produce a premium on pay ...

News from LRD

News from LRD (115 words)

Celebrate May Day with Labour Research ...