A new blog for Social Europe, drawing from a recent keynote. I argue that AI at work is not just about efficiency. It is about managerial power, workers’ voice, and democracy.
If democracy is eroded at work, it does not stay there. It reverberates into society www.socialeurope.eu/silicon-vall...
Important @ieruk.bsky.social briefing by Prof. Ruth Dukes and Prof. David Whyte setting out key recommendations on what is needed for the Fair Work Agency to ensure workers rights are protected in practice and not just on paper: www.ier.org.uk/publications...
Fair Work Agency’s priorities criticised days before its launch.
Cornerstone of the UK’s Employment Rights Act ‘in danger of becoming a dead duck’, says @unitetheunion.bsky.social General Secretary. Look out for our detailed Briefing on the FWA tomorrow. www.theguardian.com/business/202...
I’ve spent the last year investigating how the UK's broken employment tribunal system lets rogue bosses evade justice.
But this is the craziest case,by far. A restaurant chain that lost 21 tribunal claims over several years, yet never paid a single one🧵 www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026...
"this is a structural design that disproportionately harms Black women... Employers are using childcare as a weapon, they use visa dependence as a leverage, they are using the vulnerability of migrant Black women to extract labour”
📫 We have written to the Home Secretary to strongly oppose the UK Gov's earned settlement proposals and express concerns that they risk causing harm, undermining the rule of law, and raise serious questions about compliance with international rights obligations.
justfair.org.uk/moving-the-g...
⚠️New @ippr.org research: 300,000 children will be hit by the Govt’s earned settlement plans.
Retrospective changes will deepen child poverty, block access to higher education & trap families in years of uncertainty.
This is precarity by design.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
"Let them drink beer"
In Hungary, almost half a million older people receive pensions that leave them living below the poverty line.
In a new report, HRW shows how the Hungarian government is failing to ensure older people’s rights to social security and an adequate standard of living.
Read more: https://bit.ly/4jBH4VG
Just Fair's statement on the UK Government's proposed asylum 'reforms'
"This is a critical moment for the UK, a time for deep reflection on what kind of country we are, and what kind of country we want to be"
There is an alternative to advancing division and cruelty
In 2023 @tom-clark.bsky.social got me to write a chapter for his book on UK poverty about how immigration limbo, which Labour wants more of, makes people destitute. It was the most distressing piece I've ever worked on. We sent a copy to every MP. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/society/6081...
‘Government sources said rules that mean most asylum seekers are not allowed to have jobs will not change.’ It’s absurd that the govt chooses to continue with a rule that puts asylum seekers in a situation of dependency, then attacks then for needing ‘handouts’ www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
The response to Lam's comments should be a swift, decisive and clear rejection of them ..... this is not that
Great video from our friends @savechildrenuk.bsky.social
The government must scrap the two-child limit.
As the #UCBill (without PIP) returns to UK Parliament for its third (and final?) reading, my post for @hrw.org
www.hrw.org/news/2025/07...
The watered-down version of the Bill will still negatively affect many with disabilities and long term health conditions. The government should scrap it.
Pitting one group against another... in the spending cuts olympics.
Here the two-child limit. See also the ideas floated on cutting spending on education and health care plans for children with special educational needs.
Why can't politics be based on rights rather than a race to the bottom?
Version of the classic 1936 poster. "Aixafem el feixisme" (Let’s crush fascism) by Pere Català i Pic. This one also reads "No to fascism. Neither on the streets, nor in the town halls." From the 2023 Catalan municipal elections. Damn, this is an image for our times...
"cruelty charter" - excellent piece from @johnharris1969.bsky.social on the UK Government's social security proposals www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
💚
Never forget.
LA's domestic violence service providers talk to @juliannemcshane.bsky.social about ICE's chilling effect on their organizations and the undocumented survivors they serve.
“She literally had to choose: physical harm or potential [ICE] custody.”
MAJOR UPDATE
Thanks to a series of FOI requests, we've found that less than 4% of exploited migrant care workers found new work through a multi-million pound government scheme. (A thread🧵)
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
The Immigration White Paper is set on reducing net migration at all costs, including by blaming migrant workers for their own exploitation.
While we work on more in-depth analysis, here’s our initial response.
1/7: At today’s Spring Statement, the government announced yet more panicked cuts to vital support for disabled people.
The government also set out more detail about the impact that its huge cuts to support will have on disabled people 🧵
Today’s announcement of more cuts will only add to that hardship. By the UK Government’s own impact assessment more people, including children, will be pushed into poverty. This is a political choice which undermines the rights of people in the UK even further 6/7
The UN Committee also expressed concern that there has been resultant ‘severe economic hardship, increased reliance on food banks, homelessness, negative impacts on mental health and the stigmatisation of benefit claimants’ 5/7
The UN Committee noted that this had disproportionate effect on disabled people, low-income families and workers in precarious employment 4/7
Following last month’s examination of UK compliance with obligations to protect economic, social and cultural rights, and before today’s announced social security cuts, UN CESCR expressed concern that the rights to social security and to an adequate standard of living had eroded in the UK 3/7
Today the UK Government has done the opposite and made a political choice to make further cuts to social security which will push more people into poverty. Yet again, undermining the rights of people at the sharpest end of an already failing system 2/7
Just a few weeks ago the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recommended the UK ‘adopt a more efficient, progressive and socially just fiscal policy’ and increase the budget for social security (amongst other areas) to protect people’s rights 1/7
