17 January 2015

By Aileen McColgan, Matrix Chambers and King’s College London

16 January 2015

By Linda Kaucher

It is not just TTIP, across the board the EU is bowing to business pressure to do away with ‘burdensome’ regulation – regulation that tends to save lives, protect consumers and ensure standards.

17 December

By Sue Konzelmann, a Reader in Management at Birkbeck, University of London and Frank Wilkinson, a founder member of the Institute for Employment Rights and Emeritus Reader, University of Cambridge.

Both Government and Opposition spokespersons offer the same dire warning. They claim that anything other than persistent austerity will “return the country to the 1930s”. Such claims demonstrate their complete ignorance of what was actually achieved in the 1930s.

15 December 2014

Below is a short blog by John Foster on a presentation given by Keith Ewing. The paper was initially presented in Dublin followed by an updated version in Paris. A copy of that full version is attached.

“As Delors had the wisdom to realise, without enforceable rights workers in some countries may rightly feel that they have no reason to support continuing membership of the EU. If Draghi is right that Social Europe is dead, then so is the EU. The latter message is one we have a duty to express loudly and clearly”.

5 December 2014

By Prof Nicole Busby from the Law School, University of Strathclyde

As Acas publishes statistics on the first six months of compulsory Early Conciliation, Nicole Busby analyses what they tell us about the scheme and its consequences.

1 December 2014

By Steve Ludlam, Steve Ludlam is Senior Lecturer in Politics at The University of Sheffield

Commentary on Cuba’s economic reforms highlights the growing private sector, implying a transition to capitalism. This ignores Cuba’s dominant state sector, its planning system, and the role of private enterprise in socialist transition. For socialists, the defining innovation of capitalism is not private property, but systematic exploitation of ‘free’ wage labour. The reforms give management more autonomy, and diversify the world of work. So what about the workers and their unions? What is in the 2014 Labour Code, and other recent legislation, and what about salaries and job security?