Communicator | Online Strategist | Considered Opinions
University of Warrick academic Jeremy Waddington and UNISON national officer Allan Kerr authored a fascinating article for the Industrial Relations Journal, Membership retention in the public sector. The article examines membership retention in one of the United Kingdom’s largest public sector unions, UNISON, with over 1.3 million members. Waddington and Kerr surveyed 5000 members to [...]
The battle to preserve collective bargaining in America is taking place in Wisconsin, after a Tea Party backed Governor announced budget cuts – not only to pensions and pay – but also to basic human rights. The big risk – and this is why it’s so serious – is that if unions lose in Wisconsin, [...]
I was reading an interesting ebook about the future of UK Labour (pdf) and came across an interesting policy of having worker representation on boards: So policies like a cap on interest rates, worker representation on company boards or policies for a living wage are good ideas. But we need to explain why they are things we, [...]
The Federal Government has announced that it will no longer support the Australian Services Union’s test case to get equal pay for women. The excuse for this backdown is that funding the decision would impact the Federal Budget bottom line: THE federal government has put the budget surplus ahead of equal pay for women, telling [...]
Tony Abbott said that he won’t change the Workplace Relations Act in his first term of government, and Eric Abetz says the only “tweaks” will be to regulations. Significant changes to the industrial relations regime in Australia is possible through regulation changes, and to amendments to other Acts. For example, the Higher Education Workplace Relations [...]
I have recently ordered a HTC Desire (the latest touch screen Android smart phone), so was disappointed to learn that HTC is one of a number of companies engaged in anti-union behaviour. Via LabourStart: Workers at Young Fast Optoelectronics (YFO) in Taiwan urgently request your support for their struggle to defend their union and basic [...]
The ITUC has launched a new online campaign highlighting the exploitation of workers and children in the third world. The campaign’s website – Change the World - is very professional, although it is unfortunately flash-based meaning that it takes a long time to load. The campaign’s posters are amazing – very confronting and stark in [...]
Back in 2003-04, David Peetz and Barbara Pocock (from Griffith University and the University of Adelaide) conducted a survey of 2500 union delegates to examine the power of workers in their workplace. You can download the paper here (pdf). The paper on the report is definitely worth reading and at 11 pages (many of which [...]
Workforce Daily has a few interesting takes on Eric Abetz’s elevation to the IR portfolio as part of the new Opposition Shadow Ministry. (No link unfortunately, as it’s an email newsletter). Abbott: Abbott praised Abetz for his “long-interest in employment issues and his record of standing up for the rights of employees and small business [...]
For all you inspired unionists out there, I strongly encourage you to enter the LabourStart Photo Competition. It’s a great initiative, and there are already some really good photos that have been submitted. This year I entered the photo you see here. It’s a picture I took in December 2008 of a protest out the [...]
Subscribe to updates from my blog or follow me on Twitter.
© 2012 Alex White. All Rights Reserved.
Powered by WordPress. Designed by 
Recent Comments