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Recognition of Palestinian State Good for Peace Process
Posted on March 18, 2015
In the aftermath of the Israeli election - won by the Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party - Sir Vincent Fean argues that official recognition of the Palestinian state will bolster efforts to bring a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Sir Vincent served as British Consul-General in Jerusalem from 2010-14. He writes here in a personal capacity.
Parliaments across Europe – including both Houses of the Irish Parliament – have moved to revive the prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
They have done so by demanding that governments officially recognise Palestine on the 1967 borders with a view to stimulating a negotiated peace deal.
Sweden’s recognition of Palestine last October can be followed across Europe in 2015.
Permanent link | Categories: Palestine • recognition • settlements • Israel
Women's Lives Matter
Posted on March 04, 2015
Eileen Dinning*
If we are over 50% of the population, where are we in the power game ?
Well, not that prominent, if truth be told.
Media wise we see increasingly more women in positions of power. From senior politicians, NHS Chief Executives and Chief Constables, women’s profile is higher than it has ever been.
And yet, there is no significant improvement in women’s lives. If anything the trend is backwards.
Low pay persists and there is no sign of the gender pay gap closing.Women are paying out more on private childcare than on their mortgage payments, while the care system is creaking due to lack of funding and an increase in violence against women and children.
Permanent link | Comments (0) | Categories: Women's Day • STUC • Equality
Decent Work at Heart of Ethical Society
Posted on February 26, 2015
Guy Ryder, Director General of the International Labour Organisation
With 12 million of the more than 23 million unemployed Europeans looking for work for one year or more, many people do not have what some may consider the 'luxury' of a job.
The financial crisis that began in 2008 is still causing pain for many people in the European Union, and its effects have hit the Irish economy and labour market particularly hard.
While Ireland’s GDP is now expected to grow at above the EU average and the situation may be moving in the right direction, the jobless rate in Ireland is still higher than the EU average.
Permanent link | Categories: Guy Ryder • ILO • Ethical Workplace
Inequality a Natural Outcome of Austerity
Posted on February 20, 2015
David Begg, Congress General Secretary
The Yale Professor, Robert Shiller, used his 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics acceptance speech to state that: “The most important problem that we are facing now today, I think, is rising inequality in the United States and elsewhere in the world.”
The truth of this was captured in one statistic from an Oxfam report in January 2015, which revealed that the 85 richest people in the world have as much wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest.
Likewise, finance ministers attending the recent G20 meeting in Istanbul warned for the first time that the widening gap between rich and poor, following the 2008 financial crisis, may threaten economic and political stability.
Permanent link | Categories:
Defending the Right to Strike
Posted on February 11, 2015
Sharan Burrow, General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation
In towns and cities, court rooms and corridors, workplaces and street corners the battle lines have been drawn for workers to hold on to their right to strike.
On February 18, a global day of action in support of the right to strike will demonstrate the will of working people to keep the right to withdraw their labour.
The day of action is in response to an audacious move by employer groups at the International Labour Organisation to end the international legal basis for the right to strike. It is shaping up as a major test of the power of employers and big business to dictate wages and working conditions to employees.
Permanent link | Categories: Right to Strike • ITUC
Ulster Unions Say No!
Posted on February 06, 2015
Peter Bunting, Congress Assistant General Secretary
On a cold Monday in January, the Belfast Telegraph reported that a ‘straw poll’ of local employers agreed that a big cut in Corporation Tax in NI would be good for them. Hold the front page.
The unscientific poll was concocted at a seminar organised by ‘tax experts EY’ (the trendy rebrand for Ernst & Young). Most present agreed with each other that “any cut to NI’s block grant should come out of a reduction in public spending.”
Permanent link | Comments (0) | Categories: Northern Ireland • Stormont House Agreement
Who Remembers Charlie Hebdo?
Posted on January 29, 2015
NUJ Irish Secretary, Seamus Dooley outside the Charlie Hebdo offices, Paris
Séamus Dooley, Irish Secretary, NUJ
Every morning I click on the International Federation of Journalists’ website.
On the top right hand corner there’s a black countdown clock. It details the number of journalists and media staff killed so far this year.
As I write – on January 29 - that number stands at 22.
This week my NUJ colleague Jim Boumelha, President of the IFJ condemned the brutal murder of Mexican journalist Moises Sanchez Cerezo, from the town of Medellín de Bravo, in the state of Veracruz.
Permanent link | Comments (0) | Categories: Charlie Hebdo • Media • NUJ • Freedom of Expression
Why European Year for Development is a Trade Union Issue
Posted on January 22, 2015
David Joyce, International Development and Equality Officer, Congress
David Joyce, Congress Equality Officer
President Michael D Higgins was guest of honour at the Irish launch of the European Year for Development (EYD) in Dublin Castle, which was an appropriate way to mark this potentially critical year – for trade unions and wider society alike.
Over the course of 2015 two United Nations summits will effectively define the parameters for future international policy making:
- In September, the UN will agree new goals to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – a new ‘Sustainable Development Framework’ – to tackle poverty, inequality and environmental destruction,
- In December, the Climate Change Summit in Paris will set new climate action targets, to replace the Kyoto Protocol.
Permanent link | Comments (0) | Categories: Development • Equality • Global Solidarity • Climate Change
Freelance Workers to Regain Union Rights
Posted on January 12, 2015
Esther Lynch: Legislation & Social Affairs Officer, Irish Congress of Trade Unions
Esther Lynch, Congress Legislation & Social Affairs Officer
A new ruling from the European Court of Justice (CJEU) may force authorities across Europe to reverse policies that have resulted in the effective denial of full union rights to freelance workers, for over a decade.
The ruling – delivered by the court in December - arises from a case taken by Dutch unions which challenged the classification of freelance musicians as individual business ‘undertakings’.
Under competition law this meant they were not entitled to bargain collectively with their employer.
Permanent link | Comments (0) | Categories: Freelance Workers • Collective Bargaining
The Charter of Corporate Rights
Posted on December 12, 2014
David Begg
Sometime in the not too distant future an Irish government could move to increase the minimum wage or introduce a living wage (http://www.livingwage.ie/), in order to boost growth and living standards.
Nothing very extraordinary in that, except perhaps that it runs counter to current orthodoxy which claims that driving down wages is the only way to secure recovery.
But after six years of this self-defeating nonsense, we are left with embedded depression and over 26 million people out of work across the Eurozone.
In such circumstances, it is entirely rational for electorates and governments to think anew about policies and politics that might actually work.
That would be the norm in any modern, democratic society.
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