TUC Women Chainmakers' Festival of Cradley Heath
Tired of working day and night for starvation wages, the Women Chainmakers of Cradley Heath in the Black Country in 1910, downed their hammers and stood up for their right to earn a living wage.
Led by the founder of the National Federation of Women Workers, Mary Macarthur, their ten week strike successfully established the right to a minimum wage.
The annual Midlands TUC Chainmakers Festival, held in Cradley Heath High Street on Saturday 1st July, is the largest celebration in Britain of women's political history.
It re-enacts the struggle and celebrates the achievements and strugle of the trade union movement both then and now.
Black Country People’s Assembly
UNITE the Union are running free transport to the People's Assembly National Demonstration
Saturday 1st July
To book call 0121 643 6221 surjit.chohan@unitetheunion.
There are three pick ups
7:45 am WOLVES UNITE office, (check exact coach pickup when booking) 6 Victoria Square, Wolverhampton WV1 1LD
next WB&DTUC meeting
Thursday 20th July 2017
Delegate Meeting
starts at 7-15pm ends 8-45pm @Wolverhampton Civic Centre (Wulfruna Street entrance)
at 8pm: speaker tbc
500 Wolverhampton jobs threatened by Tory cuts
The Conservative government announced that it was closing 150 Tax Offices, including the Wolverhampton office at Crown house, which employs over 500 staff. Employees will inevitably face redundancy, this office could be closed within the next two years.
The impact on Wolverhampton will be huge with the loss of £millions from the local economy.
PCS union members were joined by members of WB&DTUC executive committee to petition Wolverhampton on 28-05-17
Midlands TUC Health & Safety Forum
TUC Midlands Health & Safety Forum
13 July 2017
President's Report 2017
WB&DTUC President's Report
The President's report tends to focus on the political situation of the previous year whilst the secretary will report on the many and varied meetings, activities and campaigns of the Trades Union Council
In previous years at our AGM we have discussed the desperate situation faced by working people. The situation now is way beyond desperate and people are just not surviving. It is not uncommon to see regularly people forced to sleep and live on our streets across the UK and in Wolverhampton in freezing temperatures and all weathers. People are forced to beg for food to survive. I was approached last week by a young man who had been sleeping in the shop doorways at the Avion centre. He’d recently been in hospital with Pneumonia and as he explained his circumstance and experience to me clutching just a blanket worn thin, it left me worried and emotional. Raw and Angry. Cuts to public services, to Local Government and to the NHS mean people are falling through the cracks. Unemployment, Benefit sanctions, Bedroom tax, and lack of social housing, mean people are not surviving.
Understanding Size Diversity and Size Awareness free course
Understanding Size Diversity and Size Awareness, personal responsibility or a diversity Issue?
A free course designed for Trade Union representatives, branch officers, activists and people who aspire to be!
now Friday 30th June and 7th July 2017 9am till 3 30pm
Read more: Understanding Size Diversity and Size Awareness free course
Justice for the Shrewsbury 24 Pickets
Thursday 21st September - Shrewsbury 24 campaign speaker reporting on trhe long awaited outcome of the Criminal Case Reveview Commission.
organised by Wolverhampton TUC Civic centre Wolverhampton 7-15pm
The Campaign fights for justice for the wrongful prosecution of 24 building workers following their strike in 1972.
“We were not guilty of any crime... Any fair-minded person looking at the evidence would conclude there has been a miscarriage of justice.” Terry Renshaw
The Shrewsbury 24 were not guilty of conspiracy. They were the victims of one
Terry Renshaw at Dudley TUC March 2017
Real wages down in the West Midlands still
May 2017 - WB&DTUC delegates assisted Midlands TUC touring Wolverhampton and Dudley
WASPI
Women Against State Pension Inequality 
National, Local Waspi Demo' Day Friday 26th May 2017 held in Queen's Square, Wolverhampton
speakers included Lynn Trannah Wolverhampton, Cannock & Staffs WASPI
WASPI fights the injustice done to all women born in the 1950s affected by the changes to the state pension law (1995/2011 acts) raising pension age for women from 60 to 68 and to achieve fair transitional state pension arrangements. They raise awareness and offer speakers.
A new local group of Cannock, Stafford and Wolverhampton WASPI has been established,
Wolverhampton Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Over 1,500 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel have been participating in the hunger strike led by senior Fatah official Marwan Barghouthi since April 17 to protest the torture, ill treatment, and medical neglect of prisoners at the hands of Israeli authorities, as well as Israel’s widespread use of administrative detention -- internment without trial or charges. The hunger strike is largely being ignored by the western media.
Read their demands here: http://www.maannews.com/
Write to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, request it urgently raises the hunger strike with Israel, and ends its violations of international law and human rights conventions in the treatment of Palestinian prisoners.
http://palestinecampaign.
PALESTINE HUNGER STRIKE solidarity Protest Vigil FRIDAY 19th May, Queens sq, Wolverhampton
Trade union courses locally 2017
We had confirmation recently from the Skills Funding Agency that we will receive 50% funding for the TUC programme. After a very positive meeting with Shrewsbury Colleges’ senior management team, I can confirm that we are open for business. 50% funding is a cut on what we received last year so it’s important that we maintain viable classes. We cannot let the collective resource, capacity, knowledge and experience that is found in the college trade union studies disappear. Nothing can substitute for the classroom experience of representatives coming together and learning from each other, facilitated by a tutor. The message is ‘Use us or lose us’! Once we have gone there is no going back.
Thanks for your continued support, please do all that you can to send your representatives on our courses.
In solidarity Mike Edwards - Trade Union Studies
Union Reps Stage 1 10 x Mondays from 18 Sept 2017 at Shrewsbury College & GMB Offices, Hanley, Stoke on Trent
Health & Safety Stage 1 ten weeks 9 am – 4 pm 10 x Tuesdays from 19 Sept 2017 at Shrewsbury College & GMB Offices, Hanley,Stoke on Trent
courses will take place in Wolverhampton if sufficient demand
These are available for all courses from Trade Union Studies at Shrewsbury College, London Road, Shrewsbury SY2 6PR
Tel: 01743 342531 [*This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.*]
Stop Arming Saudi
UK-made weapons are being used in Saudi Arabia's devastating bombing in Yemen, and the government continues to license further arms exports – despite overwhelming evidence of repeated breaches of international humanitarian law.
The UK's continued supply of arms to Saudi Arabia during its bombing campaign in Yemen is a flagrant breach of UK arms export regulation.
The UK government admits that Saudi Arabia is using UK weapons in its attacks on Yemen: warplanes, bombs and missiles – but it has repeatedly ignored and denied evidence of violations of international law.
The government consistently puts arms sale sales promotion before human lives and has stopped at nothing to keep the weapons flowing to Saudi Arabia. We have been supplying Saudi-led attacks on Yemen since March 2015 backed by UAE, Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Egypt.
National Minimum Wage rates increase
- adult hourly rate of the national minimum wage 25 years+ is £7.20. From 1st April 2017, the hourly rate of the national minimum wage for those of 25 years and over only increased to £7.50. It will rise again 1st April 2018.
- adult hourly rate of the national minimum wage 21-24 years is £6.95
- development rate (which covers workers aged 18-20 years) is £5.30
- rate for 16 to 17-year-olds is £4/hour
- for apprentices under the age of 19 and those aged 19 and over in the first 12 months of their apprenticeship, the apprentice minimum wage rate is £3.40 per hour
- For those working aged 16-24, their rates are due a rise 1st October 2017
Don't lose your right to vote
register ready for the next elections
Monday 1st May 2017 May Day Wolverhampton Workers' Day
Read more: Monday 1st May 2017 May Day Wolverhampton Workers' Day
Morning Star the left's daily paper, is co-operatively owned by it's readers and essential reading for all trade unionists
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