Win £500 worth of Love2Shop vouchers with UIA (Insurance) Ltd.
Due to the huge success of their monthly shopping competition in 2009, UIA are pleased to offer UNISON members the chance to take part in their 2010 competition.
Simply let them know your home insurance renewal date and they will enter you into a free prize draw to win £500 worth of Love2Shop vouchers accepted at many retailers including Boots and Waterstone’s. Go to www.uia.co.uk/unisoncompetition and take a few minutes to provide your details for your chance to win.
What’s more you will only have to enter once and you’ll have up to 12 chances to win as they’ll be drawing a winner EVERY MONTH of 2010. Closing date 31 December 2010.
For full terms and conditions of the prize draw please visit www.uia.co.uk/UNISON/Competition/Competition-TCs/
The May issue of the branch “In UNISON” newsletter is now available. Click on the image below to view the pdf.
Increased workloads, a hostile working environment and an inability for staff to make meaningful contributions are all major stress factors at London Met; these were the main findings of the UNISON stress questionnaire, carried out at the end of last year.
The results of the survey were clear: we are experiencing considerable stress and anxiety associated with work and this is having a detrimental impact on our health. Over 66% of respondents reported frequently feeling exhausted and run down and significant numbers recorded sometimes having problems sleeping (34.5%), feeling irritable for no reason (32.4%) and having difficulties concentrating (43.6%).
In response to these results the branch is committed to taking this issue seriously. At this year’s AGM, members voted unanimously to make tackling stress and heavy workloads a key campaign for the union over the coming year. We’ll be pressing management to take on board their responsibilities as an employer and to treat these issues as important health and safety matters, starting by insisting that workloads are properly managed to allow us to take our work patterns entitlement to rest breaks, lunch breaks, time off in lieu and annual leave.
The campaign is being launched with “Reclaim your Lunch Hour” picnics: one at City and one at North campus. Too many of us work through our lunchtimes; the picnics are there to encourage us all to take what’s rightfully ours: a full lunch hour. So come and join us, de-stress and enjoy a FREE picnic lunch on Tuesday 8 June from 1-2pm. Picnic will be in Altab Ali park, Whitechapel High Street (City campus) and Highbury Fields, near the tree sculpture (North campus).
London Met UNISON is affiliated to both Unite against Fascism and the Hope not Hate campaign, and our members helped the successful efforts to stop the BNP in nearby Barking and Dagenham.
The racist, fascist BNP was standing Nick Griffin, the party leader, in a serious bid to win their first MP, and at the same time was campaigning to increase their 12 councillors in the borough.
The Hope not Hate campaign mobilised over 1,000 people to the area, including members of our branch, to encourage people to vote against the BNP and to expose their fascist propaganda as false. Gail Cameron, Assistant Branch Secretary, who took part in the campaign, said:
“The results in the Barking and Dagenham elections were just fantastic! After the BNP’s European election victories there was a real and justifiable fear that the party would grow in strength. But the campaigns of ‘HOPE, not Hate’ and Unite Against Fascism have borne fruit. Not only was Nick Griffin’s bid to become the first BNP MP roundly rejected, voters came out and made the local council a fascist free zone: all 12 BNP councillors were kicked out! It was just the most wonderful rejection of the politics of race.”
London Met UNISON members marched alongside thousands of others on Saturday 1st May to rally against the oncoming public sector bloodbath.
We marched alongside trade unionists and anti-fascists from all over the UK and from abroad.
A sea of red flags filled the streets from Clerkenwell to Trafalgar Square in a strong show of defiance against Britain’s cuts agenda promised in varying degrees by all the major parties.
The 5,000-strong celebration was led by a TUC ‘battle bus’ with a brass band playing the traditional Labour anthem the Red Flag.
Calling for public-sector general strikes to defend services, rail union RMT’s president Alex Gordon pledged that the trade union movement “will fight every step of the way” in the struggles ahead.
Veteran campaigner and former Labour MP Tony Benn focused on the importance of the younger generation taking up the struggle for a more equal world.
Read the full Morning Star report online here:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/89866
Go here for some history of May Day:
http://www.londonmayday.org/
