The new Employment Rights Act is a step forward, but restoring collective bargaining and union power remains essential to tackling insecurity, outsourcing and low pay, says PAUL WHITEHOUSE
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Another Tory council goes bust
PETER FROST takes a seaside break on the sunny English Riviera to see another Tory failure in Torbay
WARPED PRIORITIES: Despite having over 2,000 families on their housing waiting list beach huts, like these at Meadfoot Beach
[N Chadwick/Creative Commons]
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Unison director of organising KEVIN LUCAS explains the Organising to Win strategy, its successes to date and key tests on the union’s horizon
IN FEBRUARY of this year I reported that my own county council, Northamptonshire, had quite simply gone bust. Now it seems, just as I predicted, that another Tory council, Torbay in Devon, has run out of money too.
In Northampton Tory government cuts had driven this Tory council to issue a section 114 notice — the nearest thing to bankruptcy for a local authority, which by law are not allowed to actually declare themselves insolvent.
At 10 to five on Friday evening, when most staff had packed up and were heading for home, the cowardly management — some of whom would later get even more in golden handshakes — announced the news that the County of Northamptonshire had gone bust.
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