Social Items

TPQ
Showing posts with label Unite Trade Union. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Unite Trade Union. Show all posts
UnHerd ✒ This mercenary trade unionist helped make the party middle class. 

James Kirkup

When he was 20 years old, Len McCluskey lied to get money. Having broken his arm playing football at the dock where he worked, he claimed he’d been injured on the job due to his employer’s negligence. This false account to the Medical Appeal Tribunal brought him £250 — about £4,000 in today’s terms.

51 years later McCluskey, now the leading trade unionist of the last decade, shows no regret as he reveals this scam in his memoir, Always Red (published to coincide with the annual conference of the Labour Party he helped to ruin). Indeed, he seems almost proud of getting away with it — his account mentions no comeuppance for the con. That’s fitting for a man whose career in politics and public life has been defined by two things: indifference to the consequences of his own actions, and the power of money.

Other people’s money, that is. Until recently, McCluskey headed Unite, and his liberal use of the union’s funds is a motif of this book.

Continue reading @ UnHerd.

The Man Who Destroyed Labour

UnHerd ➨asks if Unite is playing into the hands of Keir Starmer.

Paul Embery

“I have no doubt if things start to move in different directions and ordinary working people start saying, ‘Well, I’m not sure what Labour stands for,’ then my activists will ask me, ‘Why are we giving so much money?’”

That was Unite general secretary Len McCluskey’s warning shot to Sir Keir Starmer following the union’s decision to reduce its financial contributions to the Labour party by a reported 10%.

McCluskey was especially critical of the party leadership’s decision to apologise and pay damages to members of staff who had co-operated with a BBC Panorama investigation on anti-Semitism, but he made clear that his discontent with Sir Keir and his team runs much deeper than that particular grievance.

To the question, however, of whether Unite’s remonstrance is likely to cause any serious worry to the Labour leadership, the answer is almost certainly no.

Continue reading @ UnHerd. 

McCluskey Is Playing Right Into Starmer’s Hands

BBC News ➨ A meeting of the Unite union executive has decided to cut its affiliation money to the Labour Party by about 10%, BBC Newsnight understands.

Lewis Goodall

Unite is the Labour Party's single biggest donor, providing the party with millions in funding every year.

But there is anger in the union about Labour's direction under Sir Keir Starmer with a source saying he and his inner team were "just not listening".

Sir Keir said he enjoyed "strong relations" with Unite.

The party and the union would "continue campaigning side-by-side and shoulder-to-shoulder" on "important" issues facing workers, he added. 

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey was a major ally of the former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and is a stalwart of the party's Left. He is due to stand down as general secretary in 2022.

Ahead of the meeting of Unite's executive, he told Newsnight another cut in funding might happen if the party changed course too drastically under its new leader.

He said: "I have no doubt if things start to move in different directions and ordinary working people start saying, 'Well, I'm not sure what Labour stand for,' then my activists will ask me, 'Why are we giving so much money'?"

Continue reading @ BBC.

Unite Decides To Cut Labour Affiliation Money Amid Frustrations

Praise for British armed forces from Unite The Union, despite their record of massacres, torture and brutality against people Ireland has elicited disappointment from Irish citizens including trade union activists.

Among their number are those whom have experienced first hand the "contribution" of British troops at the behest of their government, Labour and Tory alike. 

The same armed forces have spread their "contribution" to other societies such as Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan with horrendous results for the people targeted. 

An Irish republican in a Facebook post which drew attention to the Unite stance commented:

I'm wondering what the Irish members think of this great union now, when you consider the atrocities that these same armed forces committed on the streets of Ireland?

As a trade union Unite has done many good things to protect workers from the worst effects of greed in both Ireland and the UK and will continue to do so.

But this lack of international solidarity is for many a step too far.

Can it be made right? 

Is there a proportionate response which can avoid throwing out the baby with the bathwater? 

Or should it be a red line point of principle for Irish trade unionists including those currently with Unite? 

Have your say.  

 

How To Disunite A Union


From The Guardian, a Manchester based trade unionist complains about the leader of Unite. .

I Am A Union Organiser. Len McCluskey’s Migrant Clampdown Will Only Benefit Bosses  
By Ewa Jasiewicz

The Unite leader’s claim that a crackdown will help the white working class is wrong. Only solidarity can end exploitation.

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey’s recent claim that clamping down on migrant workers will make Labour more attractive to the “white working class” doesn’t reflect a trade unionism that I and many other organisers – migrant and UK citizens – believe in.

I worked as an organiser for Unite on and off for seven years between 2005 and 2014. I’ve worked with warehouse packers and pickers, meat-processing workers, cleaners, baggage handlers, cabin crew, waiters and drivers, in the north-west, south-east and London. My parents were immigrants from Poland - my dad trained with the RAF after spending years incarcerated in a gulag in Siberia, and my mum came in the early 1970s to marry my father and see life on the other side of the iron curtain. Friends and family followed suit over the years, every time for “bread”, working on construction sites, in hospitality, tailoring, whatever they could find.

My job, as a trade union organiser, was to organise with workers. All workers. One class: the working class. They had different languages, different religions, different beliefs, but one common experience of exploitation by a system that treats them all as labour, giving some more status than others, but all under the same boot when it comes to the needs of capital …

... United Voices and IWGB, on shoestring budgets, are uniting all their members to strike for their collective interests, without classification or reservation. They’re a model for what united unions can look like. The older unions, by contrast, remain stuck in an industrial past. 

When will Unite live up to its name? 

Continue reading @ The Guardian, 

Len McCluskey’s Migrant Clampdown Will Only Benefit Bosses

From The Sunday Times, Two newly elected MEPs have rebuffed a move from the trade unions to open up their party platform by Stephen O’Brien, Political Editor.




Clare Daly and Mick Wallace have rebuffed an approach by Unite to open up their Independents4Change party to candidates from across the trade union movement and the Right2Change platform.

The MEPs have not acknowledged or replied to a letter from Brendan Ogle, Unite’s senior officer in the Republic, seeking a meeting with them. Ogle also proposed that the meeting involve Joan Collins, an Independents4Change TD, and Declan Bree, a socialist councillor in Sligo who is chairman of a Unite branch.

Daly and Wallace, who had been TDs for Dublin Fingal and Wexford respectively, have now left the Dail having being elected to the European parliament.

This weekend Ogle said:


The success of Mick and Clare’s election and the size of the vote they got could have been a real boost to the efforts to deliver a progressive government on the left. The fact that that hasn’t been allowed to happen is just something we will take on the chin and we will move on. We will continue to try to deliver a progressive government for as long as we are here.


Continue reading @ The Sunday Times,

Clare Daly And Mick Wallace Snub Unite Approach


The Guardian reports: Allegations focus on union officials passing information to bosses about potential ‘troublemakers.’


Britain’s biggest trade union has launched an inquiry into longstanding allegations that union officials colluded with a clandestine blacklist which was run and funded by large construction firms to prevent specific workers from getting jobs.

The inquiry set up by Unite will examine claims that union officials privately passed information to construction industry managers who compiled secret files on thousands of workers.

Previously confidential documents have suggested that union officials warned company managers not to employ some of their own members because they were considered troublemakers. Managers involved in the blacklist have claimed that union officials gave them information as they wanted to prevent disruption on construction sites.

The inquiry has been commissioned by Unite’s leader, Len McCluskey, following pressure from blacklisted workers who said the allegations were a “running sore” for the trade union movement.

Continue Reading @ The Guardian.

Unite To Investigate Claims Of Collusion With Construction Blacklist

Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) /UK  welcome a move by Unite to back the BDS campaign.  


July 13, 2019 - In a major victory for the Boycott HP campaign, the second largest British and Irish trade union, with 1.2 million members, Unite the Union, joined the campaign. Unite joins Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging (FNV), the Netherland’s largest trade union, with 1.1 million members, which dropped HP as a partner in their offers to their members in April. The Boycott HP campaign and the trade unions concerns’ focus on HP and HPE’s provision of equipment and technology for Israel’s army and police, and for the population database that Israel uses to enforce its system of racial segregation.

Unite, in its Executive Council meeting in June, passed a resolution to end buying of HP products and replace existing ones. Unite the Union noted this as a step in the direction of setting their standards for solidarity to global campaigns for justice and support for all workers.

Continue Reading @ BDS.

Unite, UK's Second Largest Union, Will #BoycottHP

Tributes have been paid to a Northampton man who railed against the blacklisting of workers after his years on the picket line saw him denied work.


Brian Higgins, originally from Glasgow, passed away at the weekend having served as the secretary of the Northampton UCATT branch.
During his life, the bricklayer became a prominent figure in the fight against the blacklisting of construction workers who were denied work because of their union ties.
In the 1970s more than 40 construction firms hired consultants to draw up a list of union 'troublemakers' - many of whom spent long periods unemployed as a result.
It was later revealed some of the information fed to the consultants came from union officials themselves ... 
... He was also one of the many blacklisted construction workers to write an open letter to the UNITE union calling for an investigation into its officers colluding in the formation of blacklists.

Northampton Bricklayer Who Became 'Most Blacklisted Construction Worker In Britain' Dies


Newry Rally Against Hate Crime

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)