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Owen Tudor

Owen Tudor

I’ve been the Head of the TUC’s European Union and International Relations Department since 2003 and have worked at the TUC since 1984. I’ve been a member of the Health and Safety Commission, the Civil Justice Council, the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council and now I’m on the Wilton Park Advisory Council. I’m particularly interested in the trade union movements of Australia, Iran and Iraq, the Middle East and the USA, and I’m interested in migration, trade, and building trade union capacity. I’m the Secretary of TUC Aid, the TUC’s charitable union development arm and on the Robin Hood Tax campaign steering committee.

  • International

    Food and hunger summit: there’s enough food, but money’s too tight to mention

    8th June 2013 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Today the UK government hosted a summit on food and hunger which produced an impressive list of pledges and a long list of signatories. Alongside the big (but not Make Poverty History scale) NGO mobilisation in Hyde Park, it means you’ll be hearing and reading a lot about hunger this weekend. Maybe over your supper this evening, or breakfast tomorrow…

    If that sounds a bit cynical, then I plead guilty. The trade union movement has not been part of the Enough IF campaign as we were central to Make Poverty History, and we weren’t even asked to take part in the Food & Hunger Summit or the Hyde Park event. From the start, we’ve had significant concerns about the way the campaign was run (a wholly ’aid charity’ activity, unlike the broader ‘development’ coalitions including unions and green groups), and about the focus on hunger, despite the policies on tax that we would largely agree with.

    Because – as the “Global Nutrition for Growth Compact” issued today reveals – this has been a campaign about food, rather than poverty. And since there is more than enough food in the world to feed even the 7 billion mouths there now are, that’s a bit strange. Despite what the Compact says about hunger and malnutrition stunting economies, it’s actually the other way round. Poor people are hungry because they’re poor.

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  • International

    As EU slows down austerity, attack on workers’ rights speeds up

    6th June 2013 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    As the IMF accepts it trashed Greece by mistake – a staggering admission that yielded only half the media stories today that China’s impending wine trade war with Europe did – the European Commission has begun to realise its austerity fetishism has failed.

    Speaking at an European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) conference in Dublin yesterday, TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady expanded on her argument about the UK implications in the Guardian earlier this week, and warned that, as austerity becomes less and less convincing, the right-wing dominated Commission has fallen back on the tired neoliberal dogma of ‘structural reform’, which is, of course, code for attacking workers’ rights.

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  • International

    Robin Hood fortnight in the Financial Times

    30th May 2013 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    (Warning: this blog contains lots of links to the paywalled sections of the Financial Times.)

    When we launched the Robin Hood Tax campaign in 2010, the one paper we really couldn’t crack, we were surprised to find, was the house mag of the City of London, the Financial Times. It may have been the celebrity heavy launch or the sheer improbability that we would make any sort of progress as zombie neoliberalism struck back after the global financial crisis. But while even the Sun and the Star featured our campaign to make the finance sector pay its fair share of the damage it had wreaked, we couldn’t even get the Pink ‘Un to attack us!

    We began to think Chris Giles had been frightened by a man in green hose when he was young…

    This last ten days couldn’t have been more different (maybe it’s the general sense of saturnalian anarchy that has resulted from David Cameron having a week off, or maybe it was George Osborne taking the European Commission and 11 EU member states to the European Court over their Robin Hood Tax plans.)

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  • Economics

    This is not the end of European austerity. But is it the beginning of the end?

    29th May 2013 — Filed under: Economics, International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    The European Commission has issued ’country specific recommendations’ for most of its member states today – including the UK, although they only have legal force in eurozone economies - spinning the plans as taking the foot off the austerity brake. Clearly unnerved by the impact of its own economic policies, the Commission has given six countries more time to reduce their deficits.

    But what the Commission gives with one hand, it takes back with the other. Even though the countries are still required to cut their deficits a bit more slowly, the Commission’s alternative is to take away job security, wage rises and pension rights, all in the name of restructuring to create more competitive, dynamic economies. So although union campaigns against austerity - and the sheer waste of a generation of young people on the dole – are beginning to have an effect on the wilder reaches of deficit fetishism, the Commission’s apparent change of heart is far too little, far too late. 

    And in its recommendations for the UK, the Commission even appears to be demanding deeper, faster cuts (£45bn by 2014/15 according to NIESR’s Jonathan Portes) and increases in VAT.

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  • International

    Europe: while Tories burn, unions must do more than fiddle

    19th May 2013 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    One-time FT journalist Stefan Stern recently blogged some advice from Napoleon about how to respond to the Conservative implosion over Europe. “Do not interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake,” was the broad thrust, and it is wise advice. As someone who started referring to “swivel-eyed” europhobes way back in January when Cameron made the European speech that his coterie crowed over but which may turn out to be his biggest error, I am well aware of the dangers of entering the Conservative-UKIP ‘debate’.

    But unions need to beware of standing on the sidelines. The stakes are too high. We need to shift the terms of the debate back from Britain’s relationship with Europe to the economic crisis. As ATL General Secretary Mary Bousted put it last week “I wish they’d obsess about jobs, instead of Europe!”

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  • International

    Dhaka deaths: what made companies sign up for change?

    16th May 2013 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Our development arm, TUC Aid, has today launched an appeal for funds to help the families of victims of last month’s disastrous factory collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh (please give generously). Over at Stronger Unions, Rosa Crawford has set out why, having pressurisised the companies, we’re now moving on to humanitarian relief.

    But it’s worth reflecting on why 34 of the world’s biggest retail and textile companies have finally agreed to sign the global union Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. And why so many of the companies signing the deal are British, rather than from the USA or continental Europe. In part at least, it’s because of years of engagement with corporates on supply chain strategies, eg through the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI).

    Of course, one grisly prompt for action has been the deaths of at least 1100 ready-made garment workers (that’s the point at which the authorities stopped counting – in fact, it’s likely that over 2,000 died). But even that horrific statistic hasn’t been enough yet to persuade Wal-mart or the Gap to sign up. Piles of corpses alone don’t seem to be enough for some companies. We should look at why there have been more sign-ups in the UK than in the two other main textile markets – the US and the Eurozone – although there are significant signers there like Inditex (Zara) and H&M, and more may follow eventually.

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  • International

    Labour’s international development scorecard – how are they doing?

    16th May 2013 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    I blogged on Tuesday about what I wanted to see in Ivan Lewis’ major speech on international development, and now that it’s been delivered, I thought I’d assess it against the targets I set for it (see below for detail). The four issues against which I thought the TUC and unions would want to judge his speech were global leadership; structural change; putting people rather than governments first; and decent work.

    The speech addressed all those issues (and more) and I think that what Ivan set out on those issues was pretty much exactly what we’d want to see. There is still work to be done on how some of the challenges he acknowledged are addressed (such as tackling inequality within emerging economies, ensuring decent work is deeply embedded in DFID priorities), but I think Ivan has made significant progress in identifying how a Labour-run DFID would be different from the current incarnation, especially how he would deal with consultants and business, as was trailled in the Daily Telegraph (online only, unfortunately.) He needs to flesh out Labour’s response to Tory policies on promoting private sector development, the numbers game on things like bed nets, and how DFID should address fragile and conflict-affected states. On the latter point he announced a positive new initiative led by Lord McConnell which the TUC welcomes and will engage with.

    I think he has done enough to demonstrate a cross-party consensus on aid volumes (even if the Tory right aren’t comfortable with being in that consensus) although I also think that more needs to be done to flush out Liberal Democrat differences with the Conservatives over development policy. That may not really be Ivan’s job though!

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  • International

    What would a progressive international development policy sound like?

    14th May 2013 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Labour’s Shadow International Development Secretary, Ivan Lewis MP, is giving a keynote speech later today setting out what he’d want to do if he replaced Justine Greening as Secretary of State after the next election. I’ll be tweeting as he gives it (@TUCGlobal – why not follow?) but I thought it might be a useful exercise to set out in advance what the TUC would like to hear him commit to:

    • global leadership;
    • structural change, not just sticking-plaster aid and peacekeeping;
    • putting people first, rather than concentrating on countries or political elites; and
    • decent work - simply, a world where the Rana Plaza factory disaster won’t happen again.

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  • Economics

    Would a Robin Hood Tax be bad for business? No.

    9th May 2013 — Filed under: Economics

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    That’s the short answer, but, given the recent leaking of a letter by Business Europe (the ETUC’s employer equivalent, to which the CBI belongs) and the protests from German blue-chip businesses reported in the Financial Times (£), it may be worth explaining why.

    In fact, a Robin Hood Tax on financial transactions would be good for the real economy, encouraging long term investments rather than short term gambling. Because the tax would fall mostly on the high ferquency trading that sees trillions of pounds simply whizzing around the exchanges never actually making anything (except more money, which is then leeched off in fat finance sector bonuses), longer term investment in real businesses would become relatively more profitable. So the money would go into productive economic activity, rather than betting on the markets.

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  • International

    Consumers aren’t to blame for poverty in Bangladesh – it’s the multinationals

    9th May 2013 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Ever since the disaster at the Rana Plaza textile factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, some commentators have been trying to guilt-trip cash-strapped western consumers for the terrible conditions of workers in Bangladesh’s Ready-Made Garment (RMG) sector, where wages are as low as £27 a month. We’ve been told that our insatiable desire for cheap clothing is what keeps wages down, and working conditions so poor that factory fires are endemic and corners cut so badly that buildings collapse, as Rana Plaza did. But we think cash-strapped consumers aren’t the problem, and we’ve researched and published a quick graphic to explain:

    T-shirt graphic

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