The Milburn review presents itself as a plan to help young people into work, but Dr DYLAN MURPHY argues it is laying the groundwork for a harsher benefits regime
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Emaciated Indian seafarers stiffen resolve for a minimum pay rise
Trade union negotiations have won a much-needed pay rise for seafarers. Nautilus International leader MARK DICKINSON reports
Campaigners from across the continent will gather in Brussels on June 14 to oppose Europe’s accelerating militarisation and cuts to public services, write MAGGIE SIMPSON and BOB ORAM of No Cold War Britain
National co-ordinator for General Strike 100, HENRY FOWLER, continues his nationwide tour of partner organisations by visiting the Modern Records Centre at Warwick University
GEOFF BOTTOMS recalls meeting Fidel Castro in the ’90s after joining a Pastors for Peace caravan to Cuba, and reflects on how international support is still vital to help the island withstand economic warfare
The Ivors Academy’s hike in entry fees could turn this respected peer-assessed event into an exclusive preserve for those wealthy enough to compete, warns BEN LUNN
Peter Murrell’s weakness for the allure of prestige goods is symptomatic of modern consumer culture, says MATT KERR
A FEW days before the seafarers’ minimum wage talks started in Switzerland, I received a troubling phone call.
It came from our Liverpool-based ship inspector. His International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) inspector duties had taken him to a cargo vessel moored at Bromborough on the Mersey.
There he had found two teenage Indian sailors who appeared to be malnourished, underpaid and terrorised by the rest of the crew.
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MARTYN GRAY asks TUC congress to endorse measures that would help stop the present exploitation of seafarers
The Bill addresses some exploitation but leaves trade unions heavily regulated, most workers without collective bargaining coverage, and fails to tackle the balance of power that enables constant mutation of bad practice, write KEITH EWING and LORD JOHN HENDY KC
It is only trade union power at work that will materially improve the lot of working people as a class but without sector-wide collective bargaining and a right to take sympathetic strike action, we are hamstrung in the fight to tilt back the balance of power, argues ADRIAN WEIR
