PUBLIC service and teaching unions in the US state of Wisconsin have scored a major legal victory with a ruling that restores collective bargaining rights that they lost under a 2011 state law, which sparked weeks of protests.
That legislation, known as Act 10, effectively ended the ability of most public employees to bargain over wage increases and other issues and forced them to pay more for health insurance and retirement benefits.
Under the ruling by Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost, all public-sector workers who lost their collective bargaining power will have it restored to what was in place before 2011.
Ben Chacko talks to RMT leader EDDIE DEMPSEY about how the key to fixing broken Britain lies in collective sectoral bargaining, restoring unions’ ability to take solidarity strike action and bringing about the much-vaunted ‘wave of insourcing’
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
Incoming Usdaw general secretary JOANNE THOMAS talks to Ben Chacko about workers’ rights, Labour and how to arrest the decline of the high street


