‘New deal’ becomes the deal that never was as workers’ ‘switch-off’ rights binned
Unite union general secretary Sharon Graham has been heavily criticised, even by former supporters, for her long and increasing cosiness with right-wing Labour leader Keir Starmer and her financial and political support for his regime, which has led to complaints of her dismissing Israel’s genocide in Gaza and allegations of her waging war on anti-genocide activism inside and outside the union.
Starmer had already demonstrated his contempt for Unite even as the cash was rolling in, blocking Unite-backed prospective candidates during parliamentary selections in the run-up to last year’s general election – and now has put it on full display by announcing that Labour will dump the ‘right to switch off’ that it had promised as part of its supposed ‘new deal for workers’, in order to please the business lobby. Starmer had already had to be forced almost a year ago by union leaders to back off watering down the rights package to near-meaninglessness in the approach to the general election as he brown-nosed big business. The right to ‘switch off’ was supposed to free workers from being required by employers to be ‘always on’ and available for work-related communication.
It’s becoming unclear whether Graham will disapprove of Starmer’s move, except perhaps performatively – as she is already allegedly engaged in her own war on workers within the Unite union, who are in dispute with Unite’s management over complaints of abuse by Graham’s husband Jack Clarke, who was promoted to run the disputes department Graham created after she became general secretary, despite being on a final warning for his conduct after previous bullying and misogyny complaints.
At least three and by some reports four of the five women working in Clarke’s department have quit and Graham and her team have been accused by furious workers of employing union-busting tactics to break up the strike, including having allies join the GMB union that represents staff working for Unite to try to vote down the strike action, an allegation that the union’s sector committee has demanded be investigated. Unite’s officers have also accused her of using anti-union legislation to stop them organising collectively.
And in a stunning development exclusively revealed by Skwawkbox last December, lawyers acting for Unite and Graham also confirmed Skwawkbox’s reporting that the union had destroyed evidence gathered by staff, particularly women, who had recorded Clarke’s behaviour in their 2018 complaint that he was behaving abusively and misogynistically.
After initial 2021 reports, shortly after Graham’s election, that Unite was going to cut its financial support to Labour, funding in fact increased. In eleven months from October 2023 to September 2024, Unite donated some £1.7 million to Starmer’s party.
Skwawkbox needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (Skwawkbox will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount as it has to be entered by us). Alternatively, if you prefer to make a one-off or recurring donation by simple card payment, please use the form below:
Make a one-time donation
Make a monthly donation
Make a yearly donation
Choose an amount
Or enter a custom amount
Your support is hugely appreciated.
Your support is hugely appreciated.
Your support is hugely appreciated.
DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearlyThanks for your solidarity so Skwawkbox can keep doing its job of inconveniencing the right and helping to build the left!
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so, but please include the donor information above – see here for more.
*cough*
‘Green paper…what’s NOT to like?’
*cough*.
Toffee – You’re the one who is making silly statements that you can’t substantiate. 🤔
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Evidently. 😏
🎶You only got one finger left
And it’s pointing at the door
And you’re taking for granted
What the Lord’s laid on the floor
So I’m picking up the pieces
And I’m putting them up for sale
Throw your meal ticket out the window
Put your skeletons in jail
‘Cause Lord only knows it’s getting late
Your senses are gone so don’t you hesitate
To give yourself a call let your bottom dollars fall
Throwing your two bit cares down the drain
Invite me to the seven seas like some seasick man
You will do whatever you please and I’ll do whatever I can
Titanic, fare thee well, my eyes are turning pink
Don’t call us when the new age gets old enough to drink
‘Cause Lord only knows it’s getting late
Your senses are gone so don’t you hesitate
To move on up the hill well there’s nothing dead left to kill
Throwing your two bit cares down the drain
Odelay, odelay, odelay, odealy odelay, odelay
Just passing through
Odelay, odelay, odelay, odealy
Going back to Houston
Do the hot dog dance
Going back to Houston
To get me some pants🎶
Bob Dylan? Or is it They Might Be Giants again?
Beck.
https://youtu.be/p3CFYCyE_1Y?si=Ec32j6pTzi_EQPC5
Toffee – Are we supposed to be impressed and if so why? 😏
🥱
Wee gobshite hasn’t even got the stones to come and defend his defence of keef and the ‘green paper’ that he (wee knobend) was prepared to blow his stack on.
Instead he wants to obfuscate on keef’s stance over Palestinian genocide on a other thread.
https://y.yarn.co/e1fa227c-6e5c-4329-84c4-a630fd80d9e1_text.gif
Toffee – It is not my problem that you have no understanding of the purpose of a ‘green paper’. 😔
Oh, I understand a green paper and the associations that go with it.
In fact, I’ve regularly schooled you on the matter, and the topic of this thread proves once again that you’re blinded by your keefist obsession, you sadsack.
So, what’s the next hill you’re prepared to die on, wee bellend?
Which Golgotha are you gonna self crucify upon for the fuckteenth time with your blind faith gobshitery and idolation of the greasebucket known as keef?
I know!? How about the 1.5m new homes promised by the end of the parliament? That
loada shiteforlorn hope might last for a while; gives you a bit of value for wriggle room.Beats the 100 days we were promised for your miraculous Green paper. (And that one’s down the shitter as you’ve been consistently and persistently told it would be)
And, it only works out to 800+ new homes to be built PER DAY over the parliament, despite a skills shortage, and a funding shortage due to smarmerite-imposed austerity.
…Which means it’s now more than that 800+ daily total because they’ve built sod-all as yet.
But then again, when it fails to materialise (and it’s another grandiose scheme that has no bastard chance of even getting close to) you’ll be able to blame someone other than keef. (Odds-on Corbyn’ll enter the equation somehow)
Or at least you’ll try.
And fail.
Again.
On that housing point, there exists any number of brownfield sites from what is left of the UK’s industrial base now that the economy is well on the way to being almost fully financialised and based on valueless rentierism.
Yet this bunch of sock puppets continue to sing to the tune of the lobbyists by redefining the green belt to the grey belt so their paymasters can make more money.
https://www.edie.net/government-progresses-planning-overhaul-to-unlock-housebuilding-within-greenbelt-land/
Quite how those targets are going to be met without massive – perhaps even 100% – government subsidies for these leeches whose poor quality over priced crap is beyond the means of most people struggling to keep up with inflated prices of everything which are a direct result of the obsession with supporting a bunch of neo-Nazis to grab the vast resources of Eurasia by plunder is yet to be seen. And may not materialise ever, given the amount of rapidly diminishing blood and treasure these clowns keep trying to pile on the dwindling fire of their own vanities.
The only beef I have with your post, Toffee, is the suggestion that Billy no mates ever goes to the front line to die on a hill. Like those on whose behalf he shills – like a Penny Dreadful Lord Haw Haw – it is us he would prefer to die on the dystopian hill they have created.
Toffee – I guess we’ll both have to wait and see who is proved right. 🌞
ps – I’d almost forgotten about him, where is Corbyn, he’s been very quiet lately?
Toffee – I guess we’ll both have to wait and see who is proved right. 🌞
No we won’t, soft shite. You’ve been told continually that your miracle green paper would look nothing like it’s original format, and true to form – it doesn’t.
Oh! So you ARE pinning your desperation on smarmerust labour’s 1.5m new homes pledge – that will take the entire parliament.
Or so you hope. Well k ow a LOT sooner than. You’re praying for, oldies.
820+ new homes PER DAY for the entire term of this parliament.
No.
Fucking.
Hope.
Are you on about that woman without morals she’s a Robert plant by the establishment just like the cuckoo in the nest of toerags party yet id hoped for at least some resemblance of a labour leader but no he hasn’t even shown nowt about helping the peasants but trample them down with more taxes
Unions are like revolutions. They just replace one bunch of corrupt people with another.
“Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss”…
timfrom – Given the exceptionally low turnout for many Union official’s ballots there should be some very easy wins for those on the left. Why is it that the left can’t get their vote out and enthuse enough people to vote for them when the numbers required are so relatively low because of turnouts which are often in the low teens?
The same applies, to a lesser extent, for by-elections (particularly local elections). Where are the left’s candidates