Aslef general secretary DAVE CALFE looks at how rail workers and miners stood together against wage cuts 100 years ago – and why the legacy of collective action endures today
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The New Deal for Workers – a focus on ‘rights’ but what about power?
Labour’s long-awaited Employment Rights Bill does not do nearly enough to remove the restraints on trade unions or to give them the powers they need to make a significant difference to the lives of the millions of workers, write KEITH EWING and Lord JOHN HENDY KC
As Africa’s progressives aim to consolidate its anti-colonial programme, VIJAY PRASHAD reports on the US getting a military foothold in Ghana
KERRY FLECK explains how the annual event unites thousands in a celebration of workers’ power, culture and collective resistance
The former Nato chief stirred up dark historical undercurrents with his call to cut welfare for military spending, says SOLOMON HUGHES
The life of a modest Norfolk organiser contrasts with the dramatic rise and disappearance of a controversial figure in US labour, says MARK SEDDON
JACK YOUD explains how Salford City Council has taken on rogue landlords and won, setting an example to the rest of the country
THERE is no doubt that the government should be praised for the significant improvement to employment rights set out in the Employment Rights Bill, published on October 10.
However, it must also be said that these proposals, set out in 119 sections over 105 pages and a further 43 pages of Schedules, come nowhere near the transformational proposals which Labour adopted in 2021 and 2022: A New Deal for Working People.
The bitter truth is that what working people (half the total population of Britain — with most of the rest dependent on them) need is not more individual rights, welcome as they may be, but greater power.
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The unions are unhappy with the Employment Rights Act 2025 and with good reason. KEITH EWING and Lord JOHN HENDY KC take a close look at why the Bill promised more than it delivered
Employment lawyer ALICE BOWMAN warns ‘day one rights’ include an undefined ‘initial period’ and the zero-hours contract fixes create baffling fixed-term loopholes. If the Bill doesn’t work properly and deliver, Labour is doomed
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