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

The FBU leader speaks to Ben Chacko about cuts, collapsing Starmerism and confronting the far right

Mehmet Turkmen, president of Birtek-Sen, has been cleared of criminal charges after speaking out against the high rate of workplace injuries and deaths in Gaziantep’s textile and carpet industry. OZLEM TEMENA reports

FRED BAYER says the cuts to the congress cycle could be disastrous for the Scottish trade union movement

Over 100,000 people are expected on Brussels’s streets today. Ben Chacko speaks to Belgian Workers Party’s PETER MERTENS on wage and pensions attacks that have united the fightback

Trade unionists and peace activists march across the country commemorating the centenary of 1926 General Strike

The General Strike exposed the power of the working class — and the limits of its leadership, writes Dr DYLAN MURPHY

The route to liberation does not lie in waiting for allies or chasing representation for its own sake – it requires consistent political strategy and collective struggle, writes ROGER McKENZIE

JOANNE THOMAS welcomes the Employment Rights Act as an instrument for the much-needed revitalisation of trade union membership and activism

On May 4, the MML opens its doors to marchers and visitors alike, celebrating a living tradition of working-class struggle. MEIRIAN JUMP invites readers to come along and explore the building and its collections

JOANNE THOMAS argues that unions’ political voice remains vital to winning stronger rights and protections for working people

As STUC Congress moves to a biennial format, TOM MORRISON warns of concerns over shrinking lay power

On Workers Memorial Day, EDDIE DEMPSEY calls for immediate action on our railways to make the network safer for all

A recent Union Street blaze showed firefighters at their best, but years of underfunding and job losses are stretching the service to its limits, writes JOHN McKENZIE

Dangerous conditions and political inaction still define the salmon industry, where BFAWU is pressing hard for change, says SARAH WOOLLEY

As the STUC gathers in an election year, the message to politicians is clear – continuing managed decline is unacceptable to Scotland’s workers, says ROZ FOYER

A major new report highlights the the dire state of our prison system – and demands urgent action from government, explains PHIL FAIRLIE

SYLVIA HIKINS welcomes a survey of successful contemporary worker co-operatives and economy-based co-operative systems

Outsourcing is at the heart of inequality. Only collective unity in the trade union movement can topple the Establishment’s obsession with it, says SAM GURNEY

Campaigners and TUC welcome government consultation on non-disclosure agreements

A major conference motion calls on educators to challenge far-right narratives and confront misogyny in schools. VONNI HARDMAN explains

Austerity is breaking the education system. We must unite to save our schools and pay our teachers properly, says NEU national president ED HARLOW

Marx’s early lectures on economics, together with Engels’s additions, provide a valuable introduction to Marxist political economy today, writes the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY

As the far right gains ground, Fire Brigades Union members are organising in workplaces and on the streets to defend public services and workers’ rights, says STEVE WRIGHT

Green Party leader Polanski slams Chancellor Reeves' ‘unbelievably weak response’ to the ‘enormous bill hikes facing households’

As delegates from the north-east, Yorkshire & Humber meet this weekend in Durham, TUC regional secretary DAVE PIKE speaks to Ben Chacko about the challenges ahead

Changing visa rules are pushing young migrant workers into precarious work and exploitation, report NUPUR PALIWAL and SOMIHA CHATTERJEE of the Student Federation of India

Prison Officers’ Association general secretary and TUC president STEVE GILLAN looks at what’s missing from the Employment Rights Act, and why we need further legislation

MAISE RILEY looks at the roots of sexist ideology and asks how unions can organise to fight it

PHILIP ENGLISH says military spending will not create the jobs young people need — instead, build an economy based around needs, not profit

Campaign group ITF Women C190 call for a full investigation

As women dominate public services yet face pay gaps, unsafe workloads and rising misogyny, this International Women’s Day and TUC Women’s Conference must be a rallying point, says ANDREA EGAN

The TUC’s NIKKI POUND says there are gains in the Employment Rights Act for women — but there’s a hell of a lot more to fight for 

FRAN HEATHCOTE looks at the persisting inequalities women face in the Civil Service workplaces as TUC women’s conference begins

LUKE FLETCHER outlines Plaid Cymru bold plans for wide-ranging policy consultations with trade unions in Wales

The biggest strike in global history is a template for our future. The silence tells you all you need to know, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE

Cuts in Oxfordshire will not stop at the county boundary, Fire Brigades Union warns

As the RMT Health and Safety Conference takes place, the union is calling for urgent action on crisis of work-related stress, understaffing and the growing threat of workplace assaults. RMT leader EDDIE DEMPSEY explains

As assaults on transport staff rise and the Scottish Parliament heads for dissolution, promised legislation to protect rail workers has yet to materialise, says ANN HENDERSON

Dockers from Italy, Greece and beyond will stage co-ordinated port blockades on February 6, declaring ‘we don’t work for war’ – in a call in solidarity with Palestine. ALFIO BERNABEI reports

The selection, analysis and interpretation of historical ‘facts’ always takes place within a paradigm, a model of how the world works. That’s why history is always a battleground, declares the Marx Memorial Library

Megapicket to shut down Birmingham’s refuse sites

The newly catalogued News International Dispute Archive ensures the history of the Wapping dispute – and the solidarity it inspired – is preserved, accessible and alive for future generations, says MATT DUNNE

Forty years on, TONY DUBBINS revisits the Wapping dispute to argue that Murdoch’s real aim was union-busting – enabled by Thatcherite laws, police violence, compliant unions and a complicit media

The once beating heart of British journalism was undone by technological change, union battles and Murdoch’s 1986 Wapping coup – leaving London the only major capital without a press club, says TIM GOPSILL

LAURA DAVISON traces how Murdoch’s mass sackings, political deals and legal loopholes shattered collective bargaining 40 years ago – and how persistent NUJ organising, landmark court victories and new employment rights legislation are finally challenging that legacy

As advertising drains away, newsrooms shrink and local papers disappear, MIKE WAYNE argues that the market model for news is broken – and that public-interest alternatives, rooted in democratic accountability, are more necessary than ever

LOUISA BULL traces how derecognition, outsourcing and digitalisation reshaped the industry, weakened collective bargaining and created today’s precarious media workforce

Unison Scotland’s BRENDA AITCHISON says her union won’t tolerate further cuts to public services 

A handful of journalists at The Times faced a stark personal and political choice in 1986 – cross the picket lines for cash and career, or stand with organised labour at great personal risk. BARRIE CLEMENT recalls why refusing to scab at Wapping was not just an act of union loyalty, but a stand for the future of journalism

Four decades on, the Wapping dispute stands as both a heroic act of resistance and a decisive moment in the long campaign to break trade union power. Lord JOHN HENDY KC looks back on the events of 1986

Enduring myths blame print unions for their own destruction – but TONY BURKE argues that the Wapping dispute was a calculated assault by Murdoch on organised labour, which reshaped Britain’s media landscape and casts a long shadow over trade union rights today

On the 40th anniversary of the Wapping dispute, this Morning Star special supplement traces the long-planned conspiracy that led to the mass sackings of printworkers in 1986 – a struggle whose unresolved injustices still demand redress today, writes ANN FIELD

NEU members at Woodfield School in north London are taking sustained industrial action against enforced cuts to learning support assistants’ hours and pay. MARY ADOSSIDES reports

From childhood summers in a post-industrial village to midnight picket lines in Glasgow, the promise of ‘social mobility’ rings hollow for MATT KERR

Take a read of the latest Unite Hospitality Glasgow Strike Bulletin and hear from workers fighting for better pay and dignity at work

Ten days after right-wing destabilisation attempts, Mexico’s leadership has emerged strengthened, securing historic labour and wage agreements, while opposition-backed protests have crumbled under scrutiny, says DAVID RABY

Amid the festive lights, Scotland faces a stark holiday truth: only real investment in public services and the workers who sustain them can lift communities out of poverty, argues LILIAN MACER

Labour, like the Tories, sees rising mental ill health simply as a spending problem — but it reflects a diseased society, argues DR DAVID MATTHEWS

Unions and left MPs slam government for cutting day one protections from unfair dismissal into the Employment Rights Bill

In part V of a serialisation of his new book, JOHN McINALLY argues that to confront capitalism’s escalating crises, unions must reorient toward class politics and help build a united, explicitly socialist alternative capable of representing the working class and its material needs

As President Javier Milei is set to unveil a radical rollback of Argentina’s labour laws, unions warn of an unprecedented assault on workers’ rights, says BERT SCHOUWENBURG

As unions sound the alarm on kafala-like dependence, FC Barcelona must decide whether their values extend beyond the pitch, writes KIVANC ELIACIK

Roger McKenzie talks to general secretary of Unison CHRISTINA McANEA about the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on members, the local government funding emergency and the threat of Reform UK

Solidarity is needed for the longest strike in NHS history, argues HENRY FOWLER of Strike Map

Ex-John Lewis boss calls for action against Britain’s ‘sick note culture’ as unions fear proposals target disabled

Real action is needed to make sure tragedies like that at Huntingdon never happen again. TSSA leader MARYAM ESLAMDOUST suggests some practical, achievable steps to be taken

Unions say government and train operators must act quickly to review security, support affected workers and ‘ensure nothing like this happens again’

The visa system traps workers with abusive employers, creating a vulnerable workforce scared to complain for fear of deportation — that is why we’re campaigning for a ‘common sponsorship’ model instead, writes FAVOUR DAVIDKING

ANN HENDERSON looks at the trailblazers of the Women’s Trade Union League and their successful fight for female factory inspectors — a battle that echoes in today’s workplace campaigns

HENRY FOWLER puts the strike of public-sector workers in New Zealand in the wider context of deteriorating employment conditions throughout the world’s major economies

Labour could break pledge to equalise minium wage, warn campaigners 

Witnessing a war of words at a meeting on tackling militarism at The World Transformed, BEN COWLES spoke to a union rep who is organising against war from inside the arms industry itself, to hear about worker-led solutions to ending weapons production

Call comes as unemployment rate hits highest level since early 2021, the height of the pandemic

MAT COWARD looks back to a 1931 protest against mass unemployment featuring a young Ewan MacColl

Organised workers at the notoriously anti-union global giant are scoring victory after victory, and now international bodies are pitching in to finally force this figurehead of corporate capitalism to give in to unionisation, writes EMILIO AVELAR

KIM JOHNSON MP places the campaign in the context of the history of the working-class battles of the 1980s, and explains why, just like Orgreave and the Shrewsbury Pickets before it, justice today is so important for the struggles of tomorrow

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

TUC hits back at banking boss who suggested public-sector pay should be curbed because the economy falling

Speaking to the Morning Star’s Ceren Sagir, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists LAURA DAVISON outlines the threats to journalism from Palestine to Britain, and the unique challenges confronting the industry through the rise of AI

Labour’s watered-down legislation won’t protect us from unfair dismissal or ban some zero-hours contracts until 2027  — leaving millions of young people vulnerable to the populist right’s appeal, warns TUC young workers chair FRASER MCGUIRE

MARTYN GRAY asks TUC congress to endorse measures that would help stop the present exploitation of seafarers

On the eve of the 157th Trades Union Congress, MICK WHELAN, general secretary of Aslef, the train drivers’ union, celebrates victory in his campaign to get dignity for drivers at work

MATT WRACK issues a clarion call for a rejuvenation of public services for the sake of our communities and our young people

Seventeen years after losing her council job due to needing endometriosis surgery, Michelle Dewar’s campaign for paid menstrual leave gained 50,000 signatures in a week, reports ELIZABETH SHORT

Government urged ‘to tackle the root causes’ of the NHS crisis and improve ‘social care services’

All major Las Vegas Strip casinos are now unionised in a historic victory for labour, says RIO YAMAT

Laughter has always been how workers cope and fight back, but university-educated union reps now scold members for calling bosses ‘money-grabbing bastards’ and label everyday humour ‘problematic’ — this needs to be stopped, writes MARK JONES  

Mr Smalls and 13 other Freedom Flotilla Coalition activists who tried to break Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza aboard the Handala ship remain in detention and on hunger strike

 Birmingham’s striking bin workers and supporters bring waste sites to a standstill

ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the legal case behind this weekend’s Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival and the lessons for today

TUC general secretary urges Bank of England to cut interest rates

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

‘People up and down the country are asking whose side is the Labour government on and coming up with the answer: not workers,’ Unite general secretary Sharon Graham says

MIKE QUILLE applauds an excellent example of cultural democracy: making artworks which are a relevant, integral part of working-class lives

RICHARD BURGON MP points to the recent relative success of widespread opposition to the Labour leadership’s regressive policies as the blueprint for exacting the changes required to build a fairer society

The Big Meeting isn’t simply nostalgia, it’s a happy day and a day to show resistance. HEATHER WOOD explains why

Incoming Usdaw general secretary JOANNE THOMAS talks to Ben Chacko about workers’ rights, Labour and how to arrest the decline of the high street

Durham Miners’ Association general secretary ALAN MARDGHUM speaks to Ben Chacko ahead of Gala Day 2025

Club failed to pay senior players on time for third occasion in last four months on Monday

BEN CHACKO reports on the struggles against sexism, racism and the brutish British state that featured at Matchwomen’s Festival this year