paulrutland's blog

ABOUT WAGE CONCERN

On Friday 15th May, the Employment Opportunities Bill will be debated in Parliament. The Bill has been put forward by Conservative backbenchers and it would enable employers to ‘opt-out’ of the Minimum Wage brought in by the Labour government ten years ago.

If passed, the system would be wide open to abuse by unscrupulous employers. For instance an employment agency could write a Minimum Wage Opt-Out into any contract potential staff would have to sign.

Unbelievably, they tried to claim it was against people’s ‘Human Right to work’ to have a Minimum Wage.

April 2009 TfL No.1 BRANCH April 2009

NEWSLETTER

Despite the overwhelming majority voting for industrial action to force management into meaningful talks on both pay and job cuts, London Underground (LUL) have threatened to silence the membership by having its lawyers use legal loopholes contained in the anti-trade union laws to deny the democratic right to take action.

The RMT will not allow its members to be treated in this way, and will now re-ballot with a campaign for an even bigger majority 'YES' vote. TfL members will also re-ballot to maintain unity throughout any action.

Dear Colleagues

There has been a lot of news in recent days about the proposed 30% sell-off of Royal Mail to a private concern, the most notable forerunner being TNT. This is a company most notorious for it's strike breaking antics at Rupert Murdoch's Wapping plant in 1986.

TNT has a track record of cutting jobs to boost profits and works on the basis of 10 part-timers to one full-timer to cut costs.

In the last 9 months of 2008 the postal service made £225 million profit whilst TNT's profits have collapsed.