Restructuring, U.K., Israel

Energy unions are facing challenges on several fronts. Leading gas company Centrica has faced major criticism from unions - GMB, UNISON, Unite and Prospect - when it followed up an announcement of 5000 job cuts with a plan to sack and re-hire 20000 staff on worse terms and conditions. The GMB union has already had a consultative ballot which showed 95% support for strike action and so a formal ballot will be undertaken. Meanwhile the GMB members at Northern Gas Networks have voted 98% in favour of industrial action on pay while Unite members at the Drax energy company have been balloted over

Workers across the public and private sectors took four hours of strike action on 17 December to call for government action to resolve a crisis that could lead to 1750 job losses at the TEVA pharmaceuticals multinational in Israel, part of a plan to cut 14000 jobs worldwide. The action was called by the Histadrut confederation which says that the company had benefited from favourable tax arrangements and that the government should intervene to protect the workers whose jobs are under threat.

After the recent success of public service union UNISON in getting the courts to end the government's policy to charge workers for the right to take employment tribunal cases, UNISON and the PCS civil service union have celebrated two further court victories. UNISON's second success came in another landmark case that will effectively require employers to consult over workplace restructuring such as redundancies. The PCS victory was in a judicial review of government cuts to the civil service pension scheme which the government now has to withdraw.

(June 2017) Employees of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) have been taking strike action as part of a rolling campaign that has covered offices in Glasgow, Cardiff and, in the latest stage, Manchester. The strikes are in protest at budget and job cuts in the organisation as well as staff dismissals. The main union involved, PCS, has said that it is astonishing that the EHRC hasn't even carried out an equality impact assessment of the job cuts. Film director Ken Loach has sent his solidarity greetings to the strikers.