The Tories introduced the 50% strike ballot threshold to make industrial action harder. MATT WRACK argues that a Labour government has no justification for leaving it on the statute book
WORKERS in our country have endured decades of stagnating wages.
Since Thatcher’s attacks on trade unions in the 1980s, more money has been going to shareholders in the form of profits and less has been going to workers in the form of wages. Successive governments have kept Thatcher’s labour market reforms intact.
The Conservatives’ policy of austerity and wage restraint in the 2010s caused the longest pay squeeze since the time of the Napoleonic wars. It took 13 years for workers’ wages to return to the levels they were before the global financial crisis of 2008.
Against the backdrop of the Durham Miners’ Gala, Matt Kerr talks to ANDY McDONALD MP about Labour’s mistakes, Burnham’s leadership and why raising living standards must come first
Economists estimate extreme poverty could be drastically reduced for a fraction of global defence spending, yet military budgets continue to expand year on year, says JON TRICKETT MP, ahead of the Stop the War International Conference on Saturday
The election offers a critical chance to shape the future of pay, care and community provision in Wales, says Unison’s JESS TURNER
We cannot refuse to abolish the unjustifiable two-child benefit cap that pushes children into poverty while finding billions of pounds for defence spending — the membership and the public expect better from Labour, writes JON TRICKETT MP


