Adrian Weir
As seen in:
MSN Ireland,
MSN UK,
The Morning Star,
Red Pepper (UK),
Left Foot Forward,
Tribune Magazine,
IER
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Articles by Adrian Weir
Education and Empowering Workers in Times of Crisis
There are so many things happening around us that are just intolerable. From killings in Gaza to scapegoating protesters and our youth in Britain. From broken promises and betrayals in Whitehall or Washington. But to see the intolerable is not enough. We must also see the possibility of something better.
Employment Rights Bill: is it merely good, can it be made great?
The Employment Rights Bill is, remarkably, possibly the only policy that has survived the transition from the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn to Labour under Keir Starmer. In the Corbyn era, in its earlier iteration, the Bill was a Green Paper known as the New Deal for Working People.
The Health and Safety at Work Act at 50
What follows constitutes an abridged version of the following forthcoming article in the journal Occupational Health [at Work]: Phil James and David Walters, ‘Whither the HSW Act? Reflections on 50 years of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974’, Volume 21/2, August/September. This can be found at https://www.atworkpartnership.co.uk/journal. The HSW Act became 50 years old on 31 July 2024. Over the period since its passing, the Act has been the focus of much positive press.
Sick pay – awaiting a fair and equitable policy - IER
Policy discussions around sick pay understandably focus largely on its importance as a source of income security. Its significance to worker health as a consequence is frequently insufficiently recognised. Yet international evidence highlights its importance in this regard, showing that the threat of income loss when ill leads workers to delay medical care, fail to attend hospital appointments, and attend work when ill, thereby potentially contaminating work colleagues.
The defeat of the miners strike 40 years ago ushered in the era of neoliberalism
It is one of the greatest honours of my life to be invited to speak by the Marx Memorial Library (of which I have the honour to be a trustee), here, where Fredrick Engels stood on March 17 1883 and gave the first oration at Marx’s graveside. A week ago, Nature magazine published a report of the finding of the earliest known human manufactured tool – no less than 1.4 million years ago. I say “human” but these were the ancestors of modern humans, Homo erectus.
Minimum service levels, minimum prospects
Under neoliberalism, work has become not only poorly rewarded but very insecure. Since the 1980s, successive laws have been introduced to cement precarity and inequality by limiting or preventing unions carrying out their essential functions: organising, bargaining and going on strike. The latest such law is the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act (MSL), which was approved by parliament in 2023.
Minimum Prospects: the Government's latest attack on Workers' Rights
Under neo-liberalism, work has become not only poorly rewarded but very insecure. Since the 1980s successive laws have been introduced to cement precarity and inequality by limiting or preventing unions carrying out their essential functions – organising, bargaining and going on strike. The latest is the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act (MSL) which was approved by Parliament in 2023.
The neoliberal backdrop to the miners’ strike
The miners’ strike of 1984-5 really began in 1947 when Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman and others developed a quasi-philosophical theory to justify the unbridled capitalism of the 19th century. It became known as neoliberalism.
GCHQ 40: the ban on trade unions in 1984
In 1984 no-one had heard of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the government’s then-secret intelligence-gathering centre — let alone that the staff were represented by trade unions. All that changed on January 25 1984, when Margaret Thatcher’s government announced its decision to impose a total ban on trade union membership at GCHQ. The decision came without warning or consultation, and it provoked a sustained campaign unparalleled in modern labour history.
P&O and Freedom of Association: Memo to Starmer
On November 2 2023, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) freedom of association committee released its report on the P&O case. Readers may recall that on March 17 2022, P&O Ferries dismissed 786 seafarers and replaced them with agency workers recruited overseas on terms and conditions of employment greatly inferior to those of the staff they replaced.
Labour’s Most Damaging U-turn
Tribune’s excellent article on Labour’s New Deal for Working People, Labour Turns Its Back on Workers’ Rights, highlighted the attempt by factions in the Labour Party to undermine this transformative policy document and, in particular, its commitment to a single status for workers. Since then, Labour’s Deputy Leader, Angela Rayner, has denied any watering down of the New Deal and reaffirmed Labour’s commitment to it. She is to be applauded for doing so.
Repeal of the Anti-Strikes Act must be an early priority of a Labour government
‘Neither Wanted Nor Helpful’ The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 became law in July, following a lengthy fight in the House of Lords. Imposing yet further restrictions on the right to strike, the legislation is appalling both in form and content. As to form, it defies every legislative principle laid down by the relevant Parliamentary Committees which examined what was then the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill before it finally received the Royal Assent.
Strikes & the Law
At a very well attended fringe meeting called by the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom with the Institute of Employment Rights in Durham on Friday evening two central themes emerged from speakers’ contributions. Firstly, the importance of the current strike wave now entering its second year, and secondly, the need for resolute action in the face of the latest round of anti-union laws, the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill.
Labour’s Haringey Stitch-Up
Labour suspended its own rules to bar popular socialist candidates from standing in yesterday's election in Haringey. Members of its Local Campaign Forum explain why they have resigned following this latest attack on democracy. I very much agree with the sentiments of John Trickett’s recent Tribune and Morning Star articles, but he should note that the purge of left candidates for public office is not just a northern phenomenon.
Labour’s Haringey Stich-Up
Labour suspended its own rules to bar popular socialist candidates from standing in yesterday's election in Haringey. Members of its Local Campaign Forum explain why they have resigned following this latest attack on democracy. I very much agree with the sentiments of John Trickett’s recent Tribune and Morning Star articles, but he should note that the purge of left candidates for public office is not just a northern phenomenon.
Why it is crucial to oppose the anti-trade union laws
The government is attempting to push through new anti-trade union legislation that could severely limit the right to strike. It is doing this amid the biggest strike wave in this country for a generation. The backdrop is that the British economy is in a depression. The current economic crisis is the culmination of a prolonged period of low growth and stagnation. In response to this, the government is attempting two major strategies at once.
Older low-income workers far more likely to leave work due to ill health
Older people in poorly paid jobs are more likely to be forced to give up work because of long-term health problems, a damning new report has concluded. The TUC, which produced the report, warned that it illustrated a “stark class divide” weighted against low-paid older workers, especially black or minority ethnic (BME) people, who were found to account for 75 per cent of older workers forced out of their jobs by ill-health.
The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill is authoritarian, illiberal and illegal
Professor Keith Ewing is Professor of Public Law at King's College London. He has written extensively on labour law including recognition procedures and international standards. He is the President of the Institute of Employment Rights and a Vice President of the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom.
An affront to democracy and legality
As workers react to the cost-of-living crisis caused by the cartel of oil and gas producers ramping up the price of energy in order to make billions of dollars of extra profit, the government has reacted. Not by nationalising, requisitioning or even taxing the corporations who inflict this outrageous extraction of wealth but by attacking the resistance of the working class. This year alone, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act criminalised political protest.
Defend the right to strike
I On Friday of last week, the House of Commons supported two notable private members’ Bills. These dealt with the rights of hospitality workers to receive the tips left by customers, and with the right of parents to paid neo-natal leave. These measures were, however, wholly overshadowed by two government Bills which in contrast represent an unprecedented attack on the ability of workers to enjoy a decent, secure and dignified working life.
Minimum Service Levels: an echo of Mussolini?
Apparently, a theoretical justification for the Tory anti-union laws stretching back to the Thatcher years in the 1980s was to make real Hayek’s nostrum, set out in the Road to Serfdom, that to be free a state had the break the union monopoly over the terms on which labour is supplied.
Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill: More Government by Diktat
The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill is a short Bill of only six pages: seven sections (three of which are a single sentence), and a short schedule. It replaces the now redundant Transport (Minimum Service Levels) Bill which in contrast ran to 19 pages, despite applying to a single sector. Yet the new Bill extends to health services, fire and rescue services, education services, nuclear decommissioning, and border security, as well as transport.
They are coming for us – we’d better have a plan - IER
These are extraordinary times. As the Tory government teeters from one crisis to another, and the markets tumble, the trade unions are on the move. It feels like we are on the brink of a major struggle between the labour movement and those in power, but for many, it is simply a battle for survival.
We need root and branch repeal of Britain’s anti-union laws
"It makes no sense to promise repeal of just one or even two parts of this process, we need a root and branch approach to introduce a new framework of guaranteed rights and freedoms that will repeal the whole edifice of anti-union laws in place since 1980." The decision at the end of October by the Communication Workers’ Union to call off planned industrial action, seemingly in the face of a legal challenge by Royal Mail on grounds that at the moment have not been disclosed, shows the extent...
No safety without the unions
Last week, the gloves came off. The pretence of government consultation of unions was dropped with the vicious attack on the teachers who decline to go back to work without the assurance that it is safe for their members, their members’ families, the pupils and their families. Their view is shared by the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish governments and the British Medical Association. It is also shared by the leaders of English local authorities.
Cuba’s New Blockade
On 2 May 2019, the Trump administration implemented Title III of the 1996 Helms Burton Act. In doing so, it unleashed the most severe economic sanctions against Cuba since the blockade was first introduced by President Kennedy in 1962. Title III of the Helms-Burton Act enables Cuban-Americans to launch lawsuits in US courts against foreign companies accused of “trafficking” in property nationalised after the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
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