Well, you will not be surprised that the FT is reporting the shadow cabinet is now discussing ways of responding to lobbying by the corporate sector by weakening or diluting commitments to workers rights previously made by Labour...
Behind the 'New Deal for Working People' is a lot of consultation & 'clarification with businesses. leading business representative to claim they are now more 'relaxed' about the proposals.
“We need to know who is going to stand up with us! And this choice is clear. Joe Biden bet on the American worker, while Donald Trump blamed the American worker”
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain
Although this clip is a few months old the sentiment is still true
If you truly are moral, if you truly care about the American worker then you must vote Joe Biden
@flexghost Even more significant IMHO, is #LinaKahn & the FTC #NonCompeteAgreementBan —which I would amend from “FTC bans noncompete agreements, making it easier for workers to quit” to making it easier for #Workers to compete, innovate & help level the playing field for the American #WorkingClass 🙌 💙🇺🇸
Watching Emily the Criminal last night (which is an enjoyable & blissfully concise film), I was interested to find in the middle a great take down of unpaid internships in the creative sector.
apologies in advance that the fullest clip I could find was via FB)
The GMB is right - Amazon is out of control in its ongoing & extensive campaign to fight unionisation here & elsewhere.
When a firm (here Amazon or elsewhere such as in the gig economy), so fears unionisation, you know that whatever their claims around technology, really their business model is built on exploring & under-paying labour.
A new report from the Resolution Foundation examines the spread & extent of flexible working in the UK.
Perhaps unsurprisingly it finds one of the chief drives of business adoption of flexible contracts is a response to demand fluctuation - in other words forcing the costs of market volatility onto the workforce.
But, many firms seem to recognise that if workers rights were strengthened to limit such contracts, other company strategies could/would be found!
Before I retired (and sometimes since) I have talked with students & ex-students about their careers & how they would like them to move in a different direction;
at the centre of most of their disquiet & aspiration for change(s) is a desire to be doing 'meaningful' work.
However, its not always clear (even to themselves) what that might actually mean. Here Caleb Althorpe (Trinity College) has a pretty good go at making sense of that desire.
Well, that didn't take long.... less than a day after the US FTC moved to ban non-compete contracts, a business coalition led by US Chambers of Commerce has launched a legal challenge to the ban....
So for those who have argued that these non-compete clauses are not really enforceable, the argument that business still like them as a scare tactic seems to hold true - they want to be able to still deploy them (accepting that the legal aspects are different in the USA & UK)
"The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday banned #noncompete agreements for most #US workers with a new rule that will bar employers from enforcing clauses that restrict #workers from switching employers within their industry...
There is always quite a lot of discussion about universal basic income in my timeline, and its an approach that has its supporters & detractors.
So, for those with time on their hands you might want to look at Ellis Winningham's pretty comprehensive series on UBI posted last year @BylinesScotland
There's lots to get your teeth into & I hope you find it helpful.
Hmmm... while currently (often) prohibitively expensive, the slow expansion of the automated warehouse, looks to be indicative of another area of entry-level work being removed from the labour market.
Given the back-breaking & often long-hours worked by warehouse staff we might think automation would be their saving... but this leaves many low(er) skilled workers with even less choice about potential work.
We need to better equip such workers for the future!
Q. have P&O had a change of heart as they agree to abide by new French legislation on seafarers' wages, or are they just biding their time before they find a new wheeze to exploit their workforce to pad executive pay & profits?
You'll also note that the French legislation in this are has come into force quicker than the UK version (hmmmm... I wonder why?)
"People recognize for the first time in a long time, on a mass scale, there's gotta be some changes and some of the power and stuff that's gone to the corporate world needs to come back to us little guys."
Leafing through one of the few books on Prunella Clough I came across this painting that brings together hrw quasi-leftist interest in workers as subjects, and her move towards tentative abstraction in the 1950s
As Jennifer Dixon (Health Foundation0 concludes, for the next Govt. the recover of the NHS,
'depends on investment — no industry would expect to improve productivity without it. UK capital spending on health has fallen to half the OECD average since 2010. New fiscal rules must allow more. There is also a strong case for protecting spending on preventive health'!
Without locking in a renewed compact on health funding, England's plight will continue to worsen!
25% of all UK workers are employed under contracts with non-compete clauses (sometimes requiring workers not to 'compete' by getting a job in the same sector for a year or more).
Not only does this stifle career building, it means that even in a sideways move such employees cannot utilise their skills & experience to gain new/different jobs in the same sector, without a wait when their tacit knowledge may degrade lessening their potential earnings!
With inflation now down to just over 3%, but rents last month hitting a new high of 9% rises (annually), the idea that it is workers who are driving inflation is dealt another blow.... rather renters (who as Posted yesterday are often also in insecure work) are being squeezed further by pay rises outside their ability to deal with.
But of course, a Govt. of landlords will not being doing anything to try & retain such behaviour!