Two motions from London Region were assembled into a Composite, opposing the Government’s EU Law Revocation and Reform Bill. I have clipped the video, the words of the motion and Bismilla’s speech identify the rights at risk, and I talk about the move to a government by decree with the repeal of laws being at the whim of ministers, who also gain the right to amend the laws if they so chose. The Union passed the Composite.
…GMB23: defending a new deal for workers
Congress Composite C11 concerned Labour’s “A new deal for working people”. Hours before, Starmer had promised that this would be legislated for in the first 100 days. The motion, or the part of it that comes from London Region was designed to make it clear that there must be no backtracking and that the weaknesses in the proposals must be remedied. You can find Labour’s Policy statement here., the new deal for workers starts on P18 and cross references the green paper.
In my speech, see below or watch the video, I said,
The best defence against poor working conditions and low wages is a strong union movement, it has been since the Labour Party’s foundation that political and legislative programmes are also needed. There are many wrongs in UK employment protection law, and those members whose cases I help manage are often deeply upset that Britain the home of “fair play” has so few remedies for the poor treatment that they are suffering.
These are good documents but we need to ensure that the promises make it into a manifesto and into Government.
Apart from the failure to promise the repeal of pre-2016 trade union laws, the major disappointment is that the New Deal document promise on the minimum wage is unlikely to increase it. GMB policy is that this must be £15 per hour, we must reiterate this. The document is also sadly silent on statutory sick pay and redundancy compensation. It is necessary to rectify these injustices. The motion was carried, with qualification.
As in my other reports on GMB Congress, I have reproduced the motion, the qualification and the notes for my speech, which are below/overleaf. … …
GMB ’23, Workers and the World Trade
I seconded a motion on world trade governance, the motion welcomed Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which legislates for a Keynesian reflation and implements a state aid scheme which may be in contradiction to the World Trade organisation rules. The motion calls for reforms that will make the WTO treaties ‘worker centred’, oddly quoting the US Trade Representative, a role not well known as being in favour of workers or consumer rights. In my speech, I called this out, by saying, “We should be careful of the initiatives of the US in the areas of international trade, its commitments to workers’ rights abroad are to say the least variable. “
Heather and I worked on a proposing speech, but Heather was asked to use a speech written by the person that proposed the motion at the branch. I think ours was better, and some of what was said I disagree with. It’s a bit too autarkic.
Below/Overleaf is are a link to the video, the words of the motion and my notes for the speech. …
LOTO speaks to GMB23
The Congress Political Speaker this year, was Sir Kier Starmer. The text of his speech is available from the Labour Press Office; like Corbyn he is not a great orator but that skill is exceptionally rare in today’s parliament. I feel the speech was tuned for a GMB audience, but no harm in that, provided the commitments offered are genuine, and not part of “I’ll say what it takes to win” strategy, although you’d have look very hard to find any new promises.
The video of his speech starts here, on YouTube. After the speech, GMB Congress asked each region to pose a question to Sir Kier. This year questions were posed on, the new deal for workers, the minimum wage specifically in social care industry, plans for energy industry infrastructure manufacture, plans for in-sourcing, public procurement and anti union firms, the blocking of new offshore mining licences, and finally, the regulation off hire & fire especially by firms in dispute with their union, but interestingly, despite a CEC special report on pubic sector pay, nothing on public sector pay nor on the public sector disputes,
The issue of the politics of energy supply and the GMB was fore-shadowed in an article in the Guardian, where Gary Smith, the GS, strongly criticised Labour’s plans to ban new North Sea drilling licences, in what might be called a “shot across the bows”.
Smith is quoted in the article as saying,
“We are critical friends of the Labour party and I think this is just a lack of intellectual rigour and thinking about where they have got to on oil and gas,” he said on Sophie Ridge On Sunday on Sky News. “They are focusing on what they think is popular rather than doing the proper thinking to understand what is right for the country.”
Below/overleaf I have posted the video of the Q&A session, and written a précis of the session. … …
Bye Bye Raab
Dominic Raab has had to resign from the government, due to an investigation into allegations of bullying having found that there was sufficient evidence to justify an adverse finding. Sorry about the complexity of that sentence, but he has not been found guilty, only that he has a case to answer. There was some question as to whether the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak would fire him or not. Raab saved him the problem by resigning in an extraordinary, apology free self-justifying resignation letter. There have been two parliamentary responses, the first is that the Liberal Democrats have rightly referred these events the parliamentary commissioner on standards, the second by some Tories that they rewrite the rules governing ministers’ behaviour towards civil servants.
The rest of this article, overleaf, looks what bullying is and the strange absence of its criminality. I also comment on the weakness of the parliamentary response. ...
On Musk and Twitter
Elon Musk has taken over twitter; I wrote a short piece on LinkedIn on the deal, its funding, and the technology. Since then some, including the FT (£) have commented on its funding, not the least the bank loans and thus collateral required. The linkedin article and this has some interesting links commenting on the deal, or at least I think so. Also I quote some sources about the fear of the world's town square being owned. For more, use the "Read More" button ...
Fair Pay!
The press are full of stories about Google looking to reduce the pay of those who continue to work from home as the public health restrictions are lifted. This is unjust; if there’s one lesson learnt during the pandemic it’s that essential workers are under paid, but the idea of the world’s most profitable companies trying to restore/boost their profitability by reducing the wages of their workers is, while not unexpected, pretty appalling. In the UK, this may open an employer to equal pay suits.
Google claims to be a global talent company and it would surprise me if they don’t pay the market rate for the job wherever! I know that Sun Microsystems, in its last few years came to the view that the talent market was global and set up HQ offices around the world with Labs in Grenoble and St. Petersburg and a location in India. It bit them the arse when they came to close the offices, French redundancy consultation laws are a bitch … we could do with some laws like that. (In fact a game I played with my US managers and peers, was asking which country in Europe is it hardest to fire people in, and they all thought it was Germany. The answer was in fact Italy, where the comrades went on unofficial strike. Germany was 4th, after Italy, France and the Netherlands.)
Marxists argue that employers will seek to pay the minimum wage with crudely speaking a floor of the replacement cost of the labour; they also argue that all the value is created by the labour and that it’s the appropriation of surplus value is the driver of the class struggle. Classicists argue that now that labour has transformed from animal effort, there is a supply and demand for skills and experience and there is an equilibrium grate of wages. I suppose the cost to commute vs the born cost of provisioning the workplace are factors in determining replacement cost and/or the supply curve, but they are also part of a 21st century trend of dumping cost elsewhere. Let’s note that when employees work from home, Management save the cost of office space. Here the employer is seeking to reduce wages by clawing back the employee’s travel to work costs and also make savings by reducing its office costs.
You need a Union, see also Less money for working from home? at GMB London General X58 Branch …