It’s International Women’s Day again. A time of year that often leaves me reflecting on why we still need a special day each year to highlight the lack of equality in our society. It is 55 years since Barbara Castle, as Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity, introduced the Equal Pay Act 1970. The catalyst for that legislation was …
Continue readingThe All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Fair Elections launched with the backing of 100 cross-party MPs, including many on the Labour benches. You can see the full list of supporters here. In marketing terms these are the innovators and the disruptors, challenging the status quo, building and refining the arguments to make the case for a better democracy. The …
Continue readingOver 200 people joined us online to hear Guardian columnist Zoe Williams in conversation Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester to talk about where next for our democracy. Here are my five takeaways: Andy referred to analysis by Sir John Curtice that said trust in politicians is at its lowest and as a result people are now looking at proportional …
Continue readingThe future of work is going to look very different from the world of work at the end of the last century. When trade union membership was at its peak in 1980, jobs were more likely to be full-time, secure and accompanied by a pension and other benefits. Unions helped workers to maintain and improve their terms and conditions. A …
Continue readingWe’ll have a general election within the next year and elections for Councillors, mayors, Police and Crime Commissioners and the London Assembly, in May. With all this activity going on, it feels like democracy is in action, but over the last few years, there has been a raft of legislation that has changed the way our representatives are elected and …
Continue readingA question we get asked a lot at Politics for the Many HQ is why proportional representation (PR) is good for trade unions. Heart Unions Week offers an opportunity to reflect on how our voting system has negatively impacted trade unionists and to embrace the opportunities that a fairer voting system might hold. The trade union movement has always led …
Continue readingThe former Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell MP, addressed a packed room at our event to promote proportional representation at the TUC Congress in Liverpool. A growing number of unions are now backing a proportional voting system (PR) because they can see the current system isn’t working for working people. Most recently public service workers union Unison and shop workers union …
Continue readingIn the Commons, the prevalence of ‘safe seats’ under Westminster’s First Past the Post voting system, means that once a seat is in an MP’s hands, it may be their’s for decades. It’s no wonder so many people feel disengaged from politics – in hundreds of seats, only one candidate seems to stand a chance. This has the dual negative …
Continue readingGoing on strike is always an action of last resort; but you’d be forgiven for thinking that so many working people taking to the streets to say ‘Enough is Enough’ might get the Government working out how to fix the underlying causes of the problems. A logical response to such a visible cry from the people who keep our financially …
Continue readingThe government’s Strike (Minimum Service Levels) Bill is “a full-frontal attack on working people and the trade unions they organise within.” say Unison in an article ‘Three things you need to know about the anti-strike bill.’ Since 1980, there have been no less than fourteen employment and trade union acts, restricting and then to a degree, clawing back trade union …
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