I have worked in an Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG) branded hotel for 14 years. I’m also a member of Unite the union’s hospitality workers branch. My colleagues and I are overworked and poorly paid. Some of us are bullied and verbally abused on a daily basis by managers working to impossible targets. I’m proud of my union membership. But it’s not something I can openly talk about at work – it’s pretty much a no go area at IHG. So is decent pay, working in a hotel means that we are among some of the lowest paid workers in the UK. Shockingly around 80 per cent of us are paid less than the real living wage, which is £9 an hour/ or £10.55 an hour in London. IHG made $27.4bn last year. It can afford to pay us a wage we can live on. It should also respect my union. In 2009, my employer signed up to the United Nations Global Compact, committing to uphold 10 principles on human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. I actually thought that things would be different because my employer is a signatory to this international UN agreement, but it’s not. After nearly a decade of my union trying to negotiate access to IHG’s London hotels, including Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza, we’ve had enough. Unite has now sent a formal complaint to the UN Global Compact. Please support me and my colleagues by signing and sharing this petition. Join us in calling on Keith Barr to work with our union, Unite. It’s only by working together with our union that we can root out low pay, insecure work, bullying and exploitation from IHG hotels in the UK. Tell him also that the UN Global Compact has got to be genuine. Promoting and protecting human rights at work needs to be more than a box ticking exercise. Thank you, John (name changed to protect identity)

I am Roland Zollner, a barrister from Liverpool, who has retired from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). It is now almost a decade since the Government announced swingeing cuts to the CPS, the Courts, legal aid and the entire Criminal Justice System. Real term pay-cuts of up to 42% are pushing lawyers away from criminal law towards more financially rewarding areas of practice. The explosion of digital evidence has put – as one FDA CPS member put it – “an almost intolerable burden on prosecutors”. Yet while disclosure has become more time-consuming since 2010, the budget of the CPS has fallen by 25% in the same period. As a result, 95.7% of prosecutors surveyed by the FDA now think the department does not have enough lawyers to deal with disclosure issues. “Due to many years of underinvestment, our Criminal Justice System is crumbling.” – Christina Blacklaws, President of the Law Society “A properly functioning Criminal Justice System is fundamental to the rule of law. It is a damning indictment of our times that those in power need reminding.” – The Secret Barrister “Our system of justice, which was once held up as world-class, is now very sick. But it would not take much investment to put it right.” – Richard Atkins QC, Chair of the Bar Council Help us put it right: sign the petition.

Every worker deserves fair pay and a secure job. But wage theft is widespread and pushing working people into poverty. Until March 2018, the Government was publishing minimum wage cheats quarterly but has since stopped reporting. And there are already fines when an offence is committed, that could easily be increased. If the Government is serious about the National Minimum Wage, it must do more to enforce it. A new report has found up to 439,000 people were paid less than their legal entitlement in April 2018, equivalent to 23 per cent of all minimum wage workers. And 135,000 people were still paid less than £7.20 an hour, the level at which the National Living Wage had been set in 2016. The Government must do more to tackle wage theft, by naming, shaming and punishing companies that break the rules.

South Yorkshire Fire Authority is planning to save up to £4 million a year by cutting the number of firefighters crewing a fire appliance from five to four. This change will see the loss of 83 jobs and put the lives of people in South Yorkshire at risk. Five is the minimum number of firefighters needed to safely tackle a blaze and to rescue a member of the public trapped inside a burning building. Committing fewer firefighters to an incident risks leaving those inside with less support in a life or death situation. South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service say the only other alternative is to slow down response times by reducing the number of fire engines immediately available. It is unacceptable that budget shortfalls will result in firefighters and the public being put at greater risk.

HMRC’s ill-considered office closure plans, which they still euphemistically call ‘Building Our Future’, will have a particularly heavy impact on PCS members working in International House in Ealing. Many members working in the office have been redeployed previously, some several times, before being based at Ealing having therefore already gone through the “torment” of earlier office closures. As a result many Ealing staff do not live in Ealing and this combined with a significant proportion of staff having caring responsibilities and/or disabilities - making it near impossible for them to commute to Stratford. The closure of International House, if the work there is not relocated locally to another premises will mean that HMRC will no longer have a presence in Ealing, leading to a detrimental local socio economic impact in the area, the impact to the local economy could be as much as £1million per year.

Having a job should guarantee your family doesn't live in poverty. But right now that's not the case. Millions of working people are trapped in low paying, insecure work with no path out. Not only is the percentage of those in poverty living in a working household at its highest since records began, but so is the percentage of children from working households living in poverty. Theresa May might think this is fine, but we don't. That's why on the 20th anniversary of the minimum wage, I'm calling on the Prime Minister to lift the minimum wage to at least £10 per hour and give a pay rise to 4 million people.

In the annual budget set by Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), MPs are to receive an above-inflation pay increase of 2.7% while MPs staffing budgets rise by 1.5% - below the level of inflation. This equates to a real-terms cut in staffing budgets and a below inflation pay rise for staff if their employer chooses to pass this on in wages. IPSA have justified the 2.7% pay-rise for MPs by stating that it is based on the average increase in public sector earnings published by the Office of National Statistics (ONS). In contrast, the increase for MPs’ staffing budgets falls significantly below the public sector average. Not only this, it also fails to keep pace with the rising cost of living. By its own admission, IPSA sees any potential for a real-terms increase in the pay of MPs staff as counter to “value for money to the tax payer”. It is clear that the IPSA view staff as little more than additional office costs, rather than workers who have to live on the wage paid to them through the staffing budgets afforded to their employers. It’s also clear that little to no consideration has been given to the challenging nature of our role and the ever-increasing complexity and volume of the work we are faced with. Aside from the lower levels of pay afforded to MPs staff, it’s well known that we are offered limited options for career progression within their chosen role and until recently have had extremely low levels of employment protections within our workplace. This is against the backdrop of the bullying and sexual harassment that has been widely reported recently and evidenced in the Dame Laura Cox inquiry. Staff of MPs deserve better. We deserve to be paid properly for the work that we do and the vital role we play in the day-to-day workings of our employers and the lives of the constituents they were elected to serve. We are extremely disappointed at the apathy displayed by IPSA towards MPs staff, and the dismissive attitude it has taken toward our repeated calls for fair pay.

We are the workers from Honda Swindon. We urgently need your support. Honda has said that in 2021 it will close the plant in which we work. 3500 direct jobs and possibly 12,000 jobs or more across the country will be lost as a result. The fallout will be felt in jobs and communities across the south west and the UK. But we believe that this economic and social catastrophe can be averted. Our workforce at Honda are skilled, dedicated and efficient and together with the supply chain we are dedicated to making this company succeed. Yes, these are challenging times for this industry but with vision and commitment, the UK can be the world leader in the new technology car manufacturing needs to thrive. Honda is well positioned to benefit. So we are urging Honda to think again. Honda, do not turn your back on a world-class, loyal workforce determined to bring you continued success. We have dedicated our working lives to Honda Swindon. Through our hard work this company has thrived - all we ask now is the chance to make our case for the future we deserve. Please help us fight for - and win - a brighter future.

Only 6% of Britain's airline pilots are women. And almost every UK airline offers the absolute statutory minimum maternity pay provision. This is despite the fact that pilots have to repay their training loans – amounting to over £100,000 in many cases – even when on maternity leave. That means that women pilots on maternity leave lose up to 90% of their earnings and end up spending more money on their training loan repayments than they bring in in maternity pay – let alone anything left over for living costs. We need to make the piloting job more family friendly and attractive to women if we want to increase the number of women applying to become pilots. Many of the hardships associated with an 80-90% reduction in pay are obvious, particularly those which coincide with the extra expenditure involved in preparing for a new baby. Many women pilots are the highest earners within their families – the traditional ‘breadwinner’ role. Some are single parent families. Increasingly, women pilots are also servicing debt from the costs of higher education and flight training, along with saving for the costs of buying a first house. Women pilots have told us : “The current maternity package does not encourage women into aviation and in my case is stopping me from having the freedom to start a family when I am ready.” “The statutory maternity provision is less than half my loan repayment.” “Ultimately we found ourselves debating whether it would be better to keep the baby and move out of the home we have just settled in to, or have an abortion and spend a few years figuring out a financial plan”

Japhet Moyo, General Secretary of Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) has been arrested. The trade union leader’s arrest follows the violent repression of protests, which saw police open live-round fire on civilians, resulting in the death of 12 people and the reported imprisonment of over 200. After opening fire on its own people, the police are now targeting trade unionists with arrests, intimidation and violence. The world is watching, and President Emmerson Mnangagwa needs to take immediate steps to restore a climate free of violence and fear. The protests – centred on a three day ‘stay away’ from work called by the ZCTU - were a response to massive price hikes for essential goods and services after the government unilaterally imposed a 150% increase in the cost of fuel. Read the ITUC’s letter to President Mnangagwa: www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/20190121_ituc_protest_letter_following_arrest_zctu_gs_en.pdf

The Major Motion Picture Agreement (MMPA) between PACT and BECTU came into effect in April 2018. This agreement holds many benefits for our members, however since its implementation, many junior grades are now finding themselves significantly financially worse off as a result. Previously the trainees, assistants and runners were paid a customary £35 (non-camera) and £50 (camera) for their overtime. Under the new agreement, these thresholds have been stripped back reducing annual income for many. The long-term consequences threaten a reduction in the diversity of the industry, and a loss of skilled people coming into the industry. Talks between BECTU and PACT will reopen later this month and we hope to reinstate the overtime floor. For clarity: anything we negotiate on behalf of our junior grade members will not be to the detriment of the wider membership. By signing this petition, you are supporting BECTU by demonstrating to PACT that this is a widely felt issue. Please sign and share with your colleagues of all departments and grades For more information on the issue read the news story https://www.bectu.org.uk/news/2875 For the full Major Motion Picture Agreement visit https://www.bectu.org.uk/advice-resources/agreements/pact-major-motion-picture

Every worker should have the right to a contract that guarantees the hours they work and the conditions they need for a decent working life. Too often zero-hours contracts are being used to exploit workers. Hours are never guaranteed, making financial planning impossible and anxiety inevitable. Workers' on zero-hours contracts are denied sick and holiday pay. If something goes wrong, there is no safety net. And there needs to be action to reduce other forms of insecure work that makes workers' lives a misery. And zero-hours contracts are only one part of the problem of insecure work in the UK. From bogus self-employment to underpaying agency workers, TUC research shows that 1 in 9 workers – at least 3.8 million – are now trapped in some form of insecure work. If ministers are serious about building a country that works for everyone, they must act now to ensure every worker gets fair pay, decent rights and a voice at work.