Former TUC and ETUC General Secretary Lord John Monks sets out his views about the challenges facing the European Union and why trade unionists are right to protest tomorrow about the new treaty due to be discussed by Europe’s leaders at the summit at the end of this week. Tomorrow, hundreds of thousands of trade…
My eight year stint as General Secretary of the ETUC ends shortly and I will return to the UK to try to make sense out of a new role in the House of Lords. I leave with mixed feelings – regret at leaving active engagement in the exciting European project, coupled with pleasant anticipation about working…
At the end of 2010, EU leaders agreed a permanent crisis mechanism to try to safeguard the stability of the euro area. But the big risk now is that the EU will act towards weaker economies more in line with the punishment provisions of the Treaty of Versailles after 1919 than the generosity of the…
The intervention of the IMF in the British economy in 1976 cast a long shadow over the economic competence of Labour Governments. It was a time of national humiliation, a time that was not easily forgotten, and a time which dogged the Labour Party for over 20 years. I was in Athens last Wednesday (5…
Today is May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, a commemoration of the struggle for decent working hours in the 19th Century, when American trades unionists gained rights to an eight hour day in many industries – a key victory for secure and decent work worldwide. 121 years on from the first May Day…
The old joke “what’s a Greek urn?” has a new and depressing rejoinder: “a lot less than they did before the speculators arrived”. Throughout Greece, wages, pensions and services that ordinary people rely on are being slashed, and higher sales taxes are hitting their pockets, in an effort to compensate for the greed and speculation…