General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
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Education for the whole trade union movement
From AI to class-struggle unionism, the the GFTU's new courses aim to equip activists with skills to take on employers and halt membership decline, writes HENRY FOWLER
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After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
Bizarrely, Trump’s latest attacks now include the National Zoo, but his real and racist agenda is to strip everything black from the country’s cultural institutions, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
The transformation of a stable secular state into a fractured ruin largely ruled by Western-backed fundamentalists exposes the hollow nature of ‘multipolarity’ and the absence of principled anti-imperialism today, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
The economic value of disability benefits far outweighs their cost, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
As tensions rise in the Middle East, the role of Iran in the region’s political balance becomes ever more significant. STEVE BISHOP assesses the current situation
TODAY the General Federation of Trade Unions Educational Trust launches its 2024-25 programme at the annual Durham Miners’ Gala. Building on the success of our programme in 2023-24, in this our 125th anniversary year, we’re clear that our mission is to be a place for education for the whole trade union movement.
As we look back at the last few years, with increasing levels of strike action, ballot after ballot “smashing” the anti-union thresholds, we have seen a renewal in our activist base and also a renewed sense of hope across our movement. This is all backed up by a historically strong show of support for trade unions and the action they are taking across society, characterised by the ongoing YouGov tracker polls.
Despite this incredible period for our movement, the most dynamic since the 2011 united front against the cuts to public-sector pensions, as workers and unions across the economy began to extract better offers from various government and private-sector employers, we have seen the acceptance of deals from unions and an ebb in the levels of formal strike action.
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