Philip Pearson

The Energy Secretary’s statement to the Commons on May 17 2011 made two key points: committing government to a 50% reduction of our CO2 emissions by 2027 and to negotiating a low carbon plan for manufacturing during this year. Government has taken the necessary and welcome decision to follow the independent, science based advice of its Committee on Climate change (CCC). But, because it places the UK well out in front of the rest of the EU, both the Treasury and BIS had blanched at the threat to the UK’s competitiveness.

Whilst the government is evidently sincere in wishing to dig itself out of the hole of its own making, much work remains to be done this year to secure a strategy for the energy intensive industries.

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Scarlet Harris

Earlier this year Sarah Veale, Head of Equality and Employment Rights at the TUC, blogged on this site about the impact of changes to the State Pension Age on women.

Since then campaigns by Rachel Reeves MP, Age UK, Unions Together, and individual unions have all gathered momentum. Even some coalition partners have got in on the act with some Lib Dems expressing concern over the departure from the coalition agreement that these changes represent.

Just to recap, the Coalition Agreement said that the state pension age (SPA) would rise to 66 but this would “not be sooner than 2016 for men and 2020 for women.” Since then the Government performed a dramatic U-turn and published draft legislation to accelerate the equalisation for women by 2018, and then increase both men and women’s state pension ages to 66 by 2020.  Women aged around 56 and 57 are set to lose the most from this shift in the goalposts, with very little time to prepare or amend existing plans.

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Anjum Klair

On Monday our analysis showed that the Scottish industrial heartlands of West Dunbartonshire and East Ayrshire have overtaken inner London boroughs to become Britain’s worst employment blackspots. The unemployment data released today shows that while West Dunbartonshire and East Ayrshire still rank highly in the top 10 employment blackspots, Merthyr Tydfil is now the hardest place in Britain to find a job, where over thirty dole claimants are chasing every vacancy.

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Anjum Klair

New analysis by the TUC shows that the Employment Zones of the 1980’s had very little effect on unemployment.

The analysis shows that from January 1984 to 1999, unemployment in the UK fell by 57% and unemployment in the Employment Zones fell by 59%;  the difference being very marginal. By 2001 unemployment had fallen by 66% in the Employment Zones since 1984, this fall was exactly the same as the fall in UK unemployment; the overall result therefore being no change.    

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Scarlet Harris

Today’s labour market statistics present a mixed picture of women’s unemployment. On the one hand the news is good. The number of unemployed women (ILO measure) fell by 5,000 on the quarter to just over 1 million. Although this is welcome it’s still a notably smaller fall than men have experienced (31,000 on the quarter) although male unemployment levels remain far higher than female levels. Correspondingly, the employment rate for women aged 16-64 was up 0.3% on the previous quarter.

Yet the claimant count measure of unemployment paints a less rosy picture. According to the government’s figures, the number of women claiming Jobseekers Allowance increased by 9,300 to reach 474,400 – the highest it’s been for 15 years. Worryingly, this appears to be a trend: this is the tenth consecutive rise in the number of women claimants.

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Janet Williamson

The High Pay Commission (HPC) – whose commissioners include TUC Deputy General Secretary Frances O’Grady – has brought out its interim report. It includes a blizzard of charts, figures and tables that clearly establish that executive pay has increased rapidly over the last fifteen or so years and has left the pay of average workers trailing far behind. Average FTSE 100 CEO total pay was 145 an average worker’s salary in 2010, and the HPC calculates that if current trends continue by 2020 the multiple will be 214.

The report also shows that rapid rise in executive pay does not reflect company performance or returns to shareholders: earnings per share actually fell by 1% per year between 1998 and 2009, while earnings of FTSE 100 CEOs rose 6.7% per year over the same period. To sum up: executive pay awards are neither fair nor linked effectively to performance. In other words, the current system is not working.

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Richard Exell

Today’s inflation figures are depressing enough – the government’s favourite Consumer Price Index shows prices 4.5% higher than they were a year ago, up from 4.0% last month and the Retail Price Index is still over 5% (though it is down slightly from last month). Transport costs are still rising very quickly, rising 2.8% in just one month, 9.8% over the past 12 months; petrol at £1.34 a litre and diesel at £1.41 are at record levels.

One particularly worrying item is the figure for the CPI excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco.

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Maria Exall

This Government’s Free Schools and Academies programme could be putting in jeopardy some of the massive steps forward that the last decade has seen on equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people.

The equal civil rights for LGBT people that were brought in under the previous Government have been accompanied by an increased awareness of the continuing problem of homophobic bullying in schools, and the persistence of homophobic attitudes among many young people.

But the setting up of Free Schools and Academies with a licence to disregard the requirements of current good educational practice may end up creating islands of homophobia – schools where pupils, their parents and teachers are subject to ongoing discrimination and prejudice without challenge.

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Anjum Klair

Analysis by the TUC has revealed that the worst employment blackspots in the capital are also experiencing the biggest cuts in government spending.

The analysis, published ahead of the latest unemployment figures this week, ranks the City of London and each of the 32 London boroughs by the number of Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) claimants for every Jobcentre Plus vacancy from March 2005 to March 2011. The analysis also ranks the reductions in government grant for 2011/12 by London borough and finds that six of the ten worst employment blackspots – those with the biggest claimant to vacancy ratios – are also in the top ten areas facing the biggest spending cuts. 

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Owen Tudor

A standing ovation greeted Tunisian trade union leader Abduljessam Jerad when he addressed the ETUC Congress this morning about the trade union role in the Arab Spring. He quoted a century-old poet much cited by demonstrators; “When a people demands to be left in peace, destiny can only bow to their will.”

He said that the large, democratic, popular movement which arose spontaneoulsy in his country included the active involvement of Tunisian unions.

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