TRADE union themes are at the centre of two events during the 2021 Sheffield Festival of Debate: Trade Unions, Workers’ Rights and the Media tomorrow, May 5, and Wapping: The Workers’ Story on May 12.
Both of them are timely. We saw during March huge publicity about the attempt to organise a union at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama.
Here in Britain, the trade union Unite has just launched a national campaign against the pernicious “fire-and-rehire” tactic used by employers where workers are sacked and rehired on inferior pay and conditions.
Recently 400 British Gas engineers lost their jobs because they refused to sign up to contracts which would have meant longer hours for the same pay.