Nigel Stanley
Legislation to introduce a flat-rate pension will not be introduced in this parliament Lord Taylor of Holbeach has told the House of Lords today.
The programme for this is not of a rushed implementation.
This is not likely to be something that will be legislated for in this Parliament but in some future Parliament.”
Owen Tudor
Tonight the Global Poverty Project held a reception (with tap water and food for only 33p per person) to mark the first Live Below the Line week in the UK. Live Below the Line encourages people to live for a week spending less than £1 a day on food and drink. Not to pretend we know what global poverty means, but to encourage people to know more about global poverty and take more action to end it.
The TUC is backing Live Below the Line as part of our strategy to raise awareness of international development and the Millennium Development Goals. Lord Jack McConnell, one of the speakers at the reception, and a participant, spoke about the potential to end global poverty in a generation. You can see the Live Below the Line presentation on Friday night at www.livebelowtheline.org.uk/how-to-participate/14-billion-reasons
Paul Sellers
“More time off” has always been a good trade union demand, which is one reason why the TUC has always been concerned with creating public holidays and making them fair.
Most employers simply paid their staff to take the day of the Royal Wedding as a day off, and honoured their contractual rights in cases where employees had to work. However, a miserly minority decided to treat the bank holiday as a normal working day, whilst some agency workers were sent home without pay.
The TUC has written to Business Secretary Vince Cable calling on him to changing the law on special bank holidays by making a simple amendment to the Working Time Regulations, so that the minimum statutory entitlement of 5.6 weeks paid leave and public holidays is increased by one day in years when a special one-off holiday is proclaimed.
Gill Stancer
On May 11th I’ll be travelling to London to join thousands of disabled people marching past the Houses of Parliament to express solidarity and anger at the cuts threatening our benefits. We will make sure our voices are heard and MP’s and Peers understand our message.
I feel so passionate that these cuts should not be instigated; after the march I will be one of many challenging our respective MP’s to vote against these cuts.
Campbell Robb
Hidden in Clause 68 of the Welfare Reform Bill are proposals that will have a profound impact on housing in this country.
The Clause itself is deliberately vague, talking of ‘liabilities’ and ‘rent officer determinations’. It is only by close examination of parliamentary questions and references in the emergency budget that it becomes clear that Clause 68 will be used to introduce the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as the means by which Local Housing Allowance (LHA) is adjusted from 2013.
Much has been made of the impact that switching to CPI will have on benefits such as disability living allowance and job seekers allowance, which until this month were calculated using the more relevant Retail Price Index. But less recognised is the unique impact that linking to CPI will have on Local Housing Allowance.
Owen Tudor
Behind the war of words over Iran’s Islamist regime – repressing democracy, developing nuclear weapons capability, interfering in local countries from the Lebanon to Iraq and the Gulf – there is a secret revolution going on. Independent trade unionists are fighting for the things most people in the world take for granted: the right to organise and bargain collectively, the right to get paid a decent wage, equality and jobs. And they are facing harsh treatment from a regime which claims to speak for the people but doesn’t appreciate it when people speak for themselves, and claims to speak for the poor but unceasingly backs the corrupt managers of rich factory owners agsinst their own workers. Workers are organising silently throughout Iran – sometimes for fear of reprisals if they become too visible, sometimes to avoid being tarred as revolutionaries or foreign agents.
Owen Tudor
May Day in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has often been celebrated by both official and independent trade unions. But this year’s celebrations – especially in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt – have a special resonance. For the first time, the Arab trade union movement that has spoken and marched this May Day is predominantly independent of the state, and linked to the International Trade Union Confederation that co-ordinated an Arab Countries Declaration for Democracy and Social Justice signed by 77 national and sectoral trade unions across the region. From Tunisia to Egypt to Bahrain, trade unions have been leading the struggle for democracy and social justice. Trade unions are usually involved somehow in the replacement of dictatorships by democracies – think Poland, Brazil and South Africa – but their role in the MENA region is also a clear indication that these are not merely political uprisings. They underline the essential truth of Bill Clinton’s electoral maxim – even in the MENA region, “it’s the economy, stupid!”