Richmond Park MP Zac Goldsmith has caused his fair share of headaches for his party since he entered Parliament in 2010. He rebelled over the lobbying bill. He opposed the government’s plans to sell off England’s national forests. He took a leading role in the campaign against Heathrow expansion. However when he takes the stage…
Running in parallel with their controversial and wide reaching trade union bill, the government are currently trying to overturn a 40 year ban on employers using agency temps to cover for striking workers. Unions are rather obviously against this move, as it pretty comprehensively undermines a strike if workers can be replaced at the drop…
Ahead of next week’s Sports Direct company AGM, the company’s Chair Keith Hellawell is coming under increasing pressure from unions and minority shareholders
Cabinet Office Minster Matt Hancock MP took everyone by surprise with today’s last-minute addition to the Trade Union Bill. In revealing plans to abolish check-off (the process by which employers deduct union subscriptions directly from wages) arrangements for union members in the public sector, he set out a bullish case: “Public resources should not be…
The Trade Union Bill keeps getting bigger as the Government find more ways they can rebalance power away from the workforce. The rapidly increasing package of measures contained in the Bill seeks to reduce the capacity of unions to represent people at work and to undermine the basic right to strike. The latest last-minute…
David Cameron is launching a new election policy today, giving everyone working in a firm over 250 employees and all public sector workers, the right to three days’ extra paid leave every year to do voluntary work. He has described the pledge, which covers half the UK workforce as the “clearest demonstration of the Big…
The government should perhaps be a little more cautious over the level of public support they believe they enjoy for welfare cuts. We’ve got a new YouGov poll out today, which has found that those supporting the government approach are more likely to be those currently in a position of ignorance on the issues.
Take action:Sign the online petition now Next month, the little known UN agency the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is holding a conference in Dubai, to discuss regulating the Internet. The World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) is an event that could have serious implications for the freedoms we’ve become used to online. The ITU isn’t…
Another month and another gloomy set of employment results. We’ve been tracking economic indicators since the start of the recession in our Economic Reports series, but sometimes you need to take a step back from the snapshots to see the longer term trends as well, if you’re going to appreciate the depth of the hole…
Wages failing to keep up with inflation, tax and benefit changes and cuts in public services all combined are going to dramatically reduce the living standards of many British families by 2013, according to our latest research. In Unhappy Families, the first analysis of this ‘living standards gap’, we’ve looked at the effect on four…