What does a birdsong say? P.E.I. watershed group listens and learns


CBC
Sat, December 30, 2023

Members of the Stratford Area Watershed Improvement Group fix a song meter to a tree. (Submitted by Stratford Area Watershed Improvement Group - image credit)

An environmental group in Stratford, P.E.I., has been listening in on birds, recording their sounds and using that data to learn more about them.

Throughout the fall, the Stratford Area Watershed Improvement Group set up acoustic recording units, or song meters, in habitats including a forest and the shore of a stream.

Recordings lasted an hour or two. With the help of software, the group was then able to analyze the bird calls they captured and track which species were where.

It's a great way to study the birds' behaviour without disturbing them, said Rebecca King, the watershed group's co-ordinator.

"We're going to continue to deploy them in future years," she said.

They mostly found crows, blue jays, and a few chickadees, robins and kinglets — "the main species that don't migrate, per se."

Acoustic recording units like this were placed in different habitats, including a forest and near a stream.

Acoustic recording units like this were placed in different habitats, including a forest and near a stream. (Submitted by Stratford Area Watershed Improvement Group)

But one bird, recorded several times at Fullerton's Creek in Stratford, stood out. The eastern wood pewee is an at-risk species with a call that is reflected in its name, said King. "It sounds like they're saying, 'Pewee.'"

The group hopes to capture evidence of more diverse species during the breeding season in the summer and spring, she said.

After a few years, the goal is to have gathered enough data to make "long-term inferences" about the health of natural ecosystems, King said. "The abundance of different bird species in a specific area is a really great way of indicating how healthy the ecosystem is."

The group got funding for the project from the Wildlife Conservation Fund.

It's one of several projects SAWIG is working on, including amphibian monitoring and public education on pollinators.

Eavesdropping in the trees

Discreet and easily camouflaged, the song meters are fastened to trees and other stable objects, ideally in the early morning during the summer, said King.

"Around sunrise is often when breeding birds are at their most busy," she said.

Researchers can use Bluetooth technology to link the meters to their cell phones. Once the recordings are in, the team uses software to analyze them and sift through the various bird calls. They also use their personal bird knowledge on occasion, King said.

"If you study them for long enough, you can learn the difference between what each bird sounds like."

The group has also been sending the data to open-source websites for other people to use, she said, including the Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Centre, which is compiling a mass database.

"It's been a very user-friendly way to easily learn about the environment."

PEI

Almost half of Charlottetown's warmest months ever have come in the last 30 years

CBC
Sat, December 30, 2023 

Winter months have tended to see larger discrepancies from the average, leading to less winter ice in P.E.I. waters in recent decades. (Kevin Yarr/CBC - image credit)

An analysis of Charlottetown weather records going back to the 19th century shows that Prince Edward Islanders are twice as likely now to experience one of the province's warmest months ever than people were in previous decades.

Looking at records going back to 1872 in Charlottetown, CBC News charted the top five warmest of each of the 12 months of the year.

For example, the top five warmest Januaries in Charlottetown were, in order: 2023, 1956, 2006, 1958, 2021.

While this could be expected to provide 60 results, because of ties for the fifth-warmest months — three-way ties in three cases — we have 70.

Of those 70 months, 31 have occurred in the last 30 years. That's 44 per cent of cases in just 20 per cent of the years. Looked at another way, exceptionally warm months have been twice as frequent in the last three decades.

It's another indication that climate change has already come to P.E.I.

There was another relatively warm period in the middle part of the 20th century, but it falls short of what has happened recently in a number of ways.

The 30 years from 1929 to 1958 saw 19 of the warmest months, about two-thirds of the number of warmer months recorded in the last 30 years.

There is another clear signal shift in 1999. Before that year, there were a scattering of single months that made it into the top five, with three years where there were two such months.

In 1999, there were four months in the top five. That has happened again twice since, in 2010 and again this year, and there have also been three years where three months made the top five.

ONTARIO

Geese hatching eggs in winter? Experts concerned climate change is reshaping wildlife

CBC
Sat, December 30, 2023 

The sight of these two newborn goslings has raised concerns for environment experts. (Bird Friendly London Ontario/Facebook - image credit)

The sight of two fuzzy goslings waddling after their mother on a dreary Wednesday afternoon in late December put Londoners in awe, but it's also raising concerns among environment experts.

Brian Salt, director of Wildlife Rehabilitation at Salthaven in London, Ont., said he's been seeing a lot of strange wildlife behaviour in the last few months.

"Eastern gray squirrels in this area, at least in southwestern Ontario, have had not two litters as they normally do spring and fall, but this year they had three and I've never seen that before," said Salt.

'It's not likely that they'll survive'

He's also never seen geese hatch eggs in December in the last 40 years that he's worked as a wildlife expert. But Salt is keeping an eye on the newborn London, Ont., goslings to help them survive the winter.

"Here we are in December and we've got goslings that are about a week old running around at University Hospital," said Salt. "It's not likely that they will survive."

Gordon McBean, professor emeritus in geography and environment at Western University, fears the two little goslings may be a sign of a bigger issue on the horizon.

"The temperature is changing at a rate much more rapidly than has historically been the case," said McBean. "[This] confuses the animals.... Their biology is such that they respond to certain temperature conditions, and they're thinking it's spring."

Gordon McBean is a professor emeritus in geography and environment at Western University

Gordon McBean is a professor emeritus in geography and environment at Western University (Submitted by Gordon McBean)

McBean, an outspoken advocate on climate change, believes Mother Nature's unusual behaviours will eventually become more and more common as the Earth continues to get hotter.

The mild December temperature is affecting how animals biologically respond to different weather conditions and, in turn, may disrupt ecosystems and wildlife altogether.

"There are all kinds of … multidimensional implications of climate change as it's happening," said McBean. "It's not just getting warmer, it's getting warmer in the sense of affecting ecosystems."

Flooding, wildfires and survival challenges

McBean said there may be more flooding, wildfires and survival challenges for animals born in mild weather to survive the colder months.

And it won't be long before human life may be impacted as well.

"[Climate change] also affects the occurrence of flooding events and that affects the wildlife, but there's also affects Canadians in their homes and properties," said McBean.

"Our farmers will be impacted in Ontario.… There is a possibility of growing crops that previously weren't there, which also means the ecosystem will grow and propagate in certain ways as they didn't in the past."

Unusual wildlife activity may be the new normal, Salt said.

"Young people today are growing up with [this] new reality and it seems normal," said Salt. "We're not headed in the right direction."

NDP's Jagmeet Singh rules out coalition government with Liberals after next election

The Canadian Press
Thu, December 28, 2023



OTTAWA — NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is ruling out the possibility of forming a coalition government with the Liberals if no party wins a clear majority after the next federal election.

"That's off the table," Singh said in a year-end interview with The Canadian Press, even though the two parties have been working closely together.

"That's not something that we're focused on. We're focused on getting enough done in this Parliament and then running to win."

The two parties signed a deal in March 2022 in which the NDP agreed to support the minority Liberals on key votes in Parliament in exchange for action on NDP policy priorities.

The collaboration has so far led to the introduction of a national dental-care program, one-time rental supplements for low-income tenants, a temporary doubling of the GST rebate, legislation banning replacement workers and investments toward a for-Indigenous-by-Indigenous housing strategy.

The parties agreed to keep their agreement in place until 2025, with a federal election slated to take place by October of that year.

Singh said the agreement gave him the chance to see the Liberals up close, and to see how much power the federal government has to make life better for Canadians.

"And I can say with a lot of clarity that they could be doing a lot more to help people," Singh said.

"I'm more motivated than ever before that I want to become the next prime minister. That's my goal."

Polls currently place the Opposition Conservatives within majority territory, and with a minority Parliament in place, the next election could theoretically happen any time.

However, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has indicated he sees no reason for that.

He told The Canadian Press earlier this month that the next campaign will follow the fixed-election date schedule and take place in the fall of 2025.

Trudeau said he hasn't spoken to the New Democrats about possibly forming a coalition government post-election, because they're focused on the now.

"What may be, might come into a calculation post-election, well listen, let's let Canadians decide what kind of Parliament they want to elect in two years and then we'll see," Trudeau said when asked about whether a bigger partnership is in the cards.

"We've demonstrated that we can get good things done and maintain a very fiscally responsible frame," he added.

He added that's something "people will take note of, I'm sure, for decades to come as being something that has been demonstrated to be very effective in Canadian politics."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 28, 2023.

Mickey Djuric, The Canadian Press

Quebec City looks to Finland's successful approach to ending homelessness

The Canadian Press
Sun, December 31, 2023 



QUEBEC — As Quebec faces a worsening homelessness crisis, some politicians, including Quebec City Mayor Bruno Marchand, have suggested the solution may be a Finnish model that aims to give everyone a home.

But while Finland has managed to massively reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness through its "housing first" approach, one Quebec expert said she's not sure it could be applied here, even if the provincial government was interested.

"It's the right way to fight the problem of homelessness," Helsinki Mayor Juhana Vartiainen said of his country's approach in a recent interview.

The Finnish model is simple, he said: give people quality, permanent housing before attempting to address other issues — such as alcohol and drug use, or mental health problems — or helping people find jobs

"That's really the fundamental idea of our policy, if we give people a home, there will be very positive side-effects," Vartiainen said.

Giving people an apartment leads to improved health, less drug and alcohol use, he said, and increases the chance that people will find jobs. Once someone is given a home, he said, there are teams that ensure they receive the care and support required.

There were 18,000 people experiencing homelessness in Finland when the country first launched its effort to tackle the issue back in 1987. At the end of 2022, the figure had dropped to 3,686 in the country of 5.5 million, though only 492 spent the night outside.

In Quebec, 10,000 people were experiencing visible homelessness in October 2022 — the last time the provincial government counted — an increase of 44 per cent since 2018.

Annie Fontaine, a Université Laval professor who specializes in social work, said Quebec could learn lessons from the Finnish model but described it as a "relatively unrealistic ideal in the context we're experiencing right now."

"There are a lot of structural, cultural and organizational aspects that are part of this program which make it difficult to imagine a simple, straightforward application in our political and socio-economic context here," she said in an interview.

Fontaine warns against idealizing the Finnish model, noting it's wrong to assume that placing someone in a home will automatically allow everything else to fall in place.

Everyone's experience of homelessness is different, she said, and some paths out of it may be less linear. Some people who have been experiencing homelessness aren't ready to live alone in an apartment, finding it isolating.

"Some sleep on the floor because they're not able to live in the space," she said.

Fontaine said she thinks the best approach is to provide multiple options, with different pathways and forms of aid.

The housing first model is a partnership between the Finnish state, its municipalities, and a dedicated organization known as the Y Foundation, or Y-Säätiö in Finnish.

As of June 2023, the non-profit supplied 18,688 low-cost housing units to 26,500 people, most of whom would otherwise be experiencing homelessness.

"When people have a roof over their heads, they can overcome the challenges they have in their lives and not have to worry about where they will sleep that night or will they will live next month," Juha Kahila, the director of international affairs at the Y Foundation, said in an interview.

The organization's buildings are located in normal residential neighbourhoods, which has caused resistance from people living nearby.

"Certainly, there were concerns," Kahila said. "But people quickly realized it was a good idea and a good use of taxpayer money when they saw the drop in crime rates."

In addition to individual apartments, the foundation has larger spaces that include small personal apartments and communal areas. Those spaces are typically intended for seniors or those who need support with addictions.

While the model comes with upfront costs, the foundation has estimated the program saves Finland up to 9,600 euros, or about $14,000, per person each year.

Kahila said he thinks the zero-homelessness model can be put in place elsewhere with the launch of a dedicated foundation like his.

"I don't see why that wouldn't work in Canada or in Quebec City," he said. "It's not necessary to copy the model exactly, but the idea behind the Y Foundation is totally possible to duplicate."

Marchand — who pledged to eliminate homelessness in Quebec City by 2025 during a 2021 election campaign — said in early December that the promise may have been a bit "utopian."

There's also no sign the Finnish approach is on the province's radar.

Lionel Carmant, the minister responsible for social services, said last autumn that Quebec has to slow the increase in homelessness before trying to do more.

"If we want to take steps that are too big, it won't work," Carmant said at the time

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 31, 2023.

Patrice Bergeron, The Canadian Press

RIP

Last Canadian missing after Hamas attack, Judih Weinstein Haggai, declared dead

The Canadian Press
Thu, December 28, 2023 



OTTAWA — The family of the only Canadian citizen who was still missing after Hamas militants conducted a brutal assault on Israel has confirmed her death.

A relative says Judih Weinstein Haggai, 70, died on Oct. 7, the day of the attacks, which saw an estimated 1,200 people killed and about 240 more taken hostage.

Her body is being held in the Gaza Strip, the family says.

Weinstein Haggai was born in New York state but arrived in Toronto at the age of three, and moved to Israel 20 years later to live with her husband. She held Canadian, Israeli and American citizenships.

She lived in the Nir Oz kibbutz, which sits less than three kilometres from the Gaza Strip.

The Nir Oz kibbutz wrote in a statement Thursday that Weinstein Haggai was a mother of four, a grandmother to seven and that she "pursued many initiatives to advance peace in the region."

Weinstein Haggai was a volunteer who helped both Palestinians and Israelis. She made puppets to help teach students English, and often posted haikus and meditations on YouTube.

The kibbutz said she also taught mindfulness to children and teenagers who suffer anxiety related to rocket fire from Gaza.

In an interview earlier this month, Weinstein Haggai's relatives said she and her husband Gadi Haggai, 73, were out on an early-morning walk when Hamas started its Oct. 7 attack.

She told members of her community that a militant on a motorcycle had shot her husband, and that she was less severely wounded.

Her kibbutz, the term for a collective farming community, tried to dispatch an ambulance, but couldn't do so before Hamas militants arrived.

Israeli officials later told family members that Weinstein Haggai's cellphone signal was detected within Gaza, her family said.

Last week, officials confirmed the family's suspicions that Gadi Haggai had died on Oct. 7, though relatives still held onto hope that Weinstein Haggai would be released.

Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly learned of her death "with heavy heart," she said Thursday on social media.

"I have met with her family and they have described her as loving, kind and compassionate. Canada mourns her loss with her family and loved ones," Joly said.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said Jews across Canada are heartbroken, after praying that Weinstein Haggai would still be alive.

"Judih and her husband Gadi are among the 129 Israeli souls still being held by Hamas," wrote the head of the Canadian group, Shimon Koffler Fogel.

"Whether they are alive or not, they all must be immediately and unconditionally returned to their homes and their families in Israel."

Ali Weinstein, Judih's niece who lives in Toronto, said in a Dec. 4 interview that the family was on an emotional roller-coaster, feeling grief, joy for the hostages who had been released during a pause in fighting and dread each time her aunt wasn't among those released.

The family initially kept quiet because they feared raising Weinstein Haggai's profile with her presumed captors.

They said they were also unsure whether to voice their dismay at how Israel has responded to the attacks, with constant airstrikes and a siege on Gaza that the United Nations says violates international humanitarian law.

The war has already killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, according to local authorities, and driven about 85 per cent of the Gaza Strip's population of 2.3 million people from their homes.

Weinstein Haggai's family also said early this month that they were distressed by the rise in hateful speech toward both Jews and Muslims in Canada.

"We're inspired by my sister, who believed in peace and believed in harmony," said Larry Weinstein, Judih's brother, on Dec. 4.

"There can't be any kind of resolution when people are at each other's throats."

Global Affairs Canada previously confirmed the deaths of eight Canadians, including one in Lebanon, along with another person they said had close ties to Canada.

Vivian Silver, 74, died at the Be'eri kibbutz where she lived, which also sits near the border with Gaza. For weeks, officials believed the Winnipeg-born woman had been taken into Gaza, but her body was identified in mid-November.

Others were found dead immediately after the attack, including two men killed at a music festival that was raided by Hamas militants: Ben Mizrachi, 22, of Vancouver and Alexandre Look, 33, of Montreal.

Hamas also killed dual Israeli-Canadian nationals Netta Epstein, 21; Shir Georgy, 22; and Adi Vital-Kaploun, 33. Tiferet Lapidot, 22, an Israeli whose family was from Canada, was also at the music festival and found dead days later.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 28, 2023.

— With files from The Associated Press.

Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press

U$ 

Tax Cuts Don’t Pay For Themselves. A New Paper Says Medicaid Might.

A nonpartisan study says helping kids stay healthy has long-term fiscal benefits.

By Jonathan Nicholson

HUFFPOST
Dec 31, 2023,

Conservatives have long badgered Congress’ own numbers crunchers, with some success, to say tax cuts aren’t as expensive as they look.

But in a turnabout, liberals now have something to cheer for from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. In a paper published last month, the CBO said Medicaid and other programs that provide a long-term boost for the recipients’ economic prospects may be far cheaper than their initial price tags, once those long-term effects are included in the calculus.

The study argues that those higher lifetime earnings would in turn boost economic growth, which would then result in more money sent to federal coffers in taxes in the decades ahead.

Gideon Lukens, director of research and data analysis with the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told HuffPost the CBO paper was significant because it took something on which there is broad scholarly agreement — programs like Medicaid can have a beneficial effect for enrollees far into the future — and then showed the budget impact.

“I haven’t really seen where other studies have done that, so I think it’s a really useful contribution,” Lukens said.

“The CBO analysis is another important contribution to the research literature about the long-term benefits of Medicaid coverage during childhood and pregnancy,” wrote Edwin Park, research professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families, in a blog post.

Even Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the conservative American Action Forum and a former CBO director, said the idea in general was plausible as federal programs can affect conventional and human capital, making them more effective.

“The question is how big, how fast and how you finance it, what you have to offset. So I find this sort of enterprise entirely plausible,” he told HuffPost.

To get at those questions, the CBO looked at the impact of a policy called continuous eligibility, which allows children to remain in Medicaid for a year once they qualify, even if a change in family income would make them ineligible.

The paper found the policy’s return on investment over 70 years could be as high as 197% (or bringing in to the government almost twice as much as first spent) to as low as -151% (or costing nearly one and half times more), depending on assumptions about whether it was deficit-financed and other factors.

While the paper is not an official statement of CBO policy and won’t change how proposals to boost or cut Medicaid eligibility will be scored, CBO Director Philip Swagel called it another example of how the agency is trying to improve its ability to forecast the impacts of bills beyond the usual 10 or 11-year score they get as lawmakers consider them.

“That capacity could be used to supplement the analysis in conventional cost estimates and provide additional information about effects that are more than 10 years in the future and that alter nominal [Gross Domestic Product],” he wrote in a post on the CBO’s blog.

While good news for Medicaid advocates, the paper has some caveats.

The wide range of estimates for how much money the government would recoup or lose reflects the importance of the assumptions used in the paper. One variable is whether the program expansion is paid for by redirecting other spending or by borrowing, and a second is how one assesses the value of money spent now versus in the future — the so-called discount factor.

Still, the paper gives ammo for liberals to demand at least some proposals be scored by the CBO on a “dynamic” basis. Led by former House Speaker Paul Ryan, Republicans have often wanted a similar feedback effect included in assessments of the upfront costs of tax cuts.

While CBO has said tax cuts, depending on how they are structured and paid for, can generate extra economic growth that trims the initial costs, they do not “pay for themselves,” as some conservatives and libertarians often argue.

Holtz-Eakin said the paper implicitly raises the question of how far CBO should go in taking a holistic approach to spending programs. Pentagon spending, for example, could look cheaper if the improved job skills and resulting higher wages of veterans were taken into account.

“Do we want to put the CBO in the position of finding the benefits as well as the costs of everything you debate?” he asked.

Lukens said he did not think dynamic scoring should be extended to social spending proposals, but the approach could be used so lawmakers have additional information about a spending proposal if they want it.

He said it also highlights the likely impact of states trimming Medicaid rolls now that early pandemic-era eligibility waivers have lapsed. Those cuts could save much less than estimated or even cost the government money over the long run if the paper is correct.

“Unfortunately, it is coming at a time when millions of children are losing Medicaid coverage, especially with many falling through the cracks for procedural reasons as opposed to being ineligible,” Lukens said.

Poll: Majority of Britons Say Brexit Has Completely Failed for UK


TEHRAN (FNA)- A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.

The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country, The Guardian reported.

Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.

Ominously for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.

The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.

The Vote Leave campaign led by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove had promised that Brexit would boost the economy and trade, as well as bring back £350m a week into the NHS and allow the government to take back control of the UK’s borders.

James Crouch, head of policy and public affairs at Opinium, said the perception of Brexit being handled badly and having had negative effects on various aspect of UK life appeared to be spreading.

“Public discontent at how Brexit has been handled by the government continues, with perceived failings even in areas previously seen as a potential benefit from leaving the EU," he said.

“More than half (53%) of leave voters now think that Brexit has been bad for the UK’s ability to control immigration, piling even more pressure on an issue the government is vulnerable on. Despite this, Brexit is likely to be a secondary issue at the next election compared to the state of the economy and the NHS, which are the clear priority for voters,” he added.

Robert Ford, professor of political science at Manchester University, stated that while there was now evidence that negative perceptions of Brexit, particularly on the economy, could have an effect on votes at a general election, Brexit was very unlikely to play such a direct role as it did at the last two general elections.

“Voters’ attention has shifted decisively elsewhere, with leave and remain voters alike focused on the domestic agenda of rising bills, struggling public services and weak economic growth," he continued, adding, “The appeal of ‘Get Brexit Done’ was not just about completing the long Brexit process but also about unblocking the political system and delivering on other long-neglected issues. Brexit got done, but this has not unblocked the political system, and troubles elsewhere have only deepened. Many of the voters who backed the Conservatives to deliver change now look convinced that achieving change requires ejecting the Conservatives.

“This shift in sentiment may be particularly stark among the ‘red wall’ voters who rallied most eagerly to Johnson’s banner four years ago, but have been most exposed to rising bills and collapsing public services since. The final act of Brexit may yet be the collapse of the Brexit electoral coalition,” he noted.

One of the key claims of the Brexiters was that leaving the EU’s single market and customs union would usher in a new era of global trade for the UK based on trade deals with other parts of the world. Many voters now seem to have concluded that Brexit has in fact been bad for trade. Some 49% think it has been bad for the ability of UK firms to import goods from outside the EU, while 15% think it has helped.

Sinn Fein aims for government across Ireland in 2024


Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald (PA)

By Rebecca Black, PA

Today 

Sinn Fein president Mary-Lou McDonald said her party is aiming to be in government in Ireland, both north and south of the border, in 2024.

Irish voters are set to go to the polls in June for European and local government elections, but there is speculation the next Irish general election will be held towards the end of the year.

At the last general election in January 2020, Sinn Fein finished with 37 seats – but Fianna Fail (38 seats) and Fine Gael (35 seats) were able to combine with the Green Party to form a coalition to govern.


Tanaiste (PRES.)Micheal Martin, Taoiseach (PM) Leo Varadkar and Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications Eamon Ryan (Liam McBurney/PA)

In her new year’s message, Ms McDonald said her party will focus on electing enough Sinn Fein TDs to form a government without Fine Gael and Fianna Fail after the next general election to “deliver real change”.

“The election is fast approaching and if the people give us the opportunity to lead,” she said.

“Sinn Fein will make housing the number one priority of a new government – not only in words but in actions and in results. By reducing rents and delivering the largest social and affordable house building programme in the history of the state.

“That is the level of action needed to match the scale of the challenge people face.”

She also called for “step change in the north”, and urged the DUP to re-enter devolved government at Stormont.

Sinn Fein vice president Michelle O’Neill has been entitled, as the leader of the largest party at Stormont since the May 2022 Assembly election, to become the next first minister when the institutions are recalled.



Sinn Fein vice president Michelle O’Neill (PA)

“It’s decision time for the DUP. It’s time to move forward and form the Executive. It is time for positive leadership. It is time for delivery,” Ms McDonald said.

Ms McDonald said her party’s number one priority is housing, adding they want 2024 to be the year they “turn the tide on the housing crisis”, adding: “I believe that will only happen with Sinn Fein in government”.

“2024 needs to be the year when our young people have hope in the future – hope of an affordable home, hope of building a life in Ireland and hope of having a real opportunity to return home, if they want to do so.

“2024 needs to be the year when an Irish government begins to plan for Irish re-unification, beginning with the establishment of a Citizens Assembly so that the conversation can develop and preparations can begin.”

UK

Ten Times Workers Won in 2023

ByTaj Ali

TRIBUNE

31.12.2023

As 2023 draws to a close, Tribune looks back at ten landmark trade union victories — showing how organised workers are fighting back against greed and exploitation.

RMT UNION LEADER Mick Lynch joins the picket line outside Liverpool Lime Street station. 

(Photo by Peter Byrne / PA Images via Getty Images)


This time last year, Britain was in the midst of the largest wave of strikes in decades. Workers had experienced the longest period of wage stagnation since the Napoleonic wars, and with the cost of living crisis biting harder in the colder months, many were taking to the picket line for the first time. From railway workers to nurses, posties to paramedics, people in Britain were demanding their worth.

Many of those disputes were settled this year. Some breathed a sigh of relief; others were left bitterly disappointed. To paraphrase Marx, workers made history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing.

Other battles continue into the new year. Doctors and train drivers have called further action in their respective disputes. Nurses, teachers, and firefighters are calling on politicians of all stripes to address historic pay erosion and a lack of investment in public services. Some have indicated they could be prepared to take strike action in 2024 if these issues are not satisfactorily addressed.

CPI inflation stood at 3.9 percent in November. It’s a significant drop compared to 10.7 percent the year before, but that doesn’t mean the economic woes of large chunks of the country will simply disappear in the new year — and it does mean that workers are still becoming worse off. In the last two years, energy prices have shot up by 66 percent, while food prices have gone up by 27 percent. For many, the cumulative effect will be devastating, and Westminster is offering nothing but more of the same.

The message to carry into the new year is that workplace organising remains vital, even if the subject of strikes is shifting out of the news headlines. To encourage readers as we mark the passage of another twelve months, here are ten times workers won victories this year — for themselves, their colleagues and their loved ones, and their class.

1. Bus Workers Drive the Fight for Fair Pay

Bus workers across the country have won a number of double-digit pay rises this year through industrial action. At the start of 2023, 1,800 Abellio drivers in London, members of Unite the union, won an 18 percent pay rise following months of strike action. A few months later, more than 3,100 National Express West Midlands bus drivers won a 16.2 percent pay rise following all-out and indefinite strikes.

In Manchester, more than 1,000 Stagecoach drivers won a 16 percent pay rise following strike action, and in nearby Oldham, First Bus drivers won a pay deal worth 18 percent. Go North East drivers, engineers, and administrators won 11.2 percent while Arriva drivers and engineers in Newcastle and Northumberland won 12 percent.

Some struggles, including the one involving London’s lowest paid bus drivers at the Westbourne Park Garage, continue into the new year, with the workers involved drawing strength from the numerous successes of their colleagues.

2. Ticket Offices Are Saved

From the very start of their dispute, the RMT union warned that the pay offer for rail workers came with strings attached: accepting driver-only trains, redundancies, attacks on terms and conditions, and ticket office closures. In July, the government announced plans to make the last of these a reality, by closing 1000 offices.

The plans were met with vocal opposition from railway workers, passengers, and equalities campaigners alike, who warned that the proposals would make the railways less safe and less accessible. Their quickly-formed campaign attracted support from across the country and across the political spectrum. Over 750,000 people eventually responded to the government’s consultation on the closures: the biggest response to such a consultation in British history.

The scale of opposition defied the government’s expectations, forcing them into an embarrassing U-turn. The campaign was described by Mick Lynch as a ‘victory for passengers, community groups and rail workers alike.’

3. Healthcare Assistants Win Backpay And Re-banding

Tens of thousands of healthcare assistants across the UK are expected to take on clinical responsibilities above their pay band without getting paid for it. Workers classed as Band 2, for example, are required only to undertake personal care responsibilities — but a decade of understaffing means that many also take and monitor blood, carry out ECG tests, attend to complex dressings, record patient observations and more. NHS guidance states these staff should be on salary Band 3, a difference worth nearly £2,000 a year more.

In the face of this injustice, Unison has been campaigning not just for re-banding for future duties, but for healthcare assistants to be compensated for all the years they’ve undertaken these additional duties. In August this year, Unison members at hospitals in the Wirral became the first in the country to take strike action over the issue. 13 days into the strike, they won what seemed to be a breakthrough — but their trust continues to obscure who qualifies for five years of backpay, meaning an additional three weeks of action have taken place throughout December with further action scheduled in January.

Elsewhere, however, the full victory has been won. In September, over 300 staff at Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust voted for industrial action, and following nine days of strike action, the Trust was forced to meet workers’ demands with an offer of retrospective regrading and back-pay to April 2018. Eight other health trusts in the North West, including East Cheshire and Mid Cheshire Trusts, have also moved their staff up to salary band 3 and provided the same back pay.

4. Airport Staff Win Bumper Pay Awards

This June, on the heels of numerous waves of strike action, with eighteen days taken between Easter and summer, thousands of security officers at Heathrow airport and members of Unite won pay rises worth between 15.5-17.5 percent.

Similar events were in action at Gatwick the following month, where ground handling staff employed by Menzies and also members of Unite secured a 13 percent pay rise including 17 percent for the lowest paid staff, as well as enhancements to annual leave and sick pay. DHL workers at Gatwick, too, won a pay deal worth 15 percent.

The biggest victory, however, was won by Menzies staff at Luton airport all the way back in January, when Unite announced its members had won a pay rise worth an incredible 28 percent.

5. University Staff Win Back Their Pensions

In 2020, university employers undertook to spuriously degrade the value of university staff’s pensions, using a rigged assessment to impose a massive 35 percent cut to the guaranteed retirement income of average members in the USS pension scheme. In 2022, the UCU held a national aggregated strike ballot, which meant all 67 universities in the pension dispute could be hit with strike action at the same time.

The dispute over pensions for university workers went back further than 2020, too, ultimately lasting as long as five years and garnering a massive 69 days of strikes during that time. This year, UCU members voted by 99 percent to accept an offer which reversed the 35 percent cut, meaning an extra £16-£18 billion will now go to university staff in their retirement. Writing in Tribune, Jo Grady pointed out the importance of pension wins for workers everywhere: ‘Pensions aren’t a luxury. They aren’t a gift from the bosses. They are deferred wages. They belong to us.’

6. Outsourced Cleaners and Caterers Win Big

In July, cleaners and catering staff employed by outsourcing giant ISS at four South London hospitals announced they had won a massive 17 percent pay rise. The victory came after the workers had already taken thirteen days of strike action, and in the face of another eight more due to take place that week — another piece of proof that striking works.

The win was rightly hailed by the workers and their union, the GMB, as a major one for the staff who keep our hospitals running, and are too often sidelined. As their regional officer Helen O’Connor has argued in the pages of Tribune, however, the only real way to achieve justice for these workers going forward is to bring them in-house, along with all other outsourced workers, and take the profit motive out of our health service entirely.

7. Merseyside Fire Control Staff Strike for Justice

In August, control room workers and members of the Fire Brigades Union at Merseyside Fire Control voted in overwhelming numbers — 100 percent on a 92 percent turnout — for strike action over a plan to reduce night-time staffing numbers in fire control and other attacks on terms and conditions.

The workers called eight days of strike action this month, but the strike was called off at the very last minute following negotiations. On 22 December members announced they had won a deal that would improve their work-life balance alongside a new duty shift system with a pay uplift of £6880 per year.

General secretary Matt Wrack pointed out that the initial plans represented a threat to public safety, as do all degradations to fire and safety services. Smaller-scale victories in local fire services build hope that the devastating cuts the fire service has suffered under Tory austerity for the last thirteen years can eventually be reversed in full.

8. Kingsmill Bakers Win More Dough

After years of pitiful pay, Allied Bakeries workers in Bootle went on strike this year to demand their worth. The workers, members of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union (BFAWU), were classed as essential workers during the height of the pandemic. They had abandoned their strike during this time to assist with the national effort, donating over 25,000 packets of pancakes to food banks, hospitals, and nursing homes across the city. ‘We fed the nation, now we’re struggling to feed ourselves,’ said one worker.

A new report has found that nearly one in five workers in the industry are forced to rely on foodbanks – a ten percent increase in just three years. It is a damning indictment of the industry: workers increasingly unable to afford the food that they themselves produce.

The dispute with allied bakeries took place amid increased profits for the company. Allied Bakeries results for the first half of the financial year included a 17 percent increase in sales of its overall food business for the 24 weeks ended 4 March 2023, up to £5.3 billion.

After nearly 12 months of pay negotiations and little in the way of progress, workers felt they had no choice but to strike. Spirits were uplifted by solidarity on the picket line. Following strike action, workers in Bootle gained wage boosts of 8.7 percent this year, with an additional 8.6 per cent next year.

9. Outsourced Government Workers Win Back Cash

Following 34 days’ of strike action over the course of the year, cleaners, security guards, and support staff at three major government departments announced this month that they were calling off action after securing pay rises of up to 8 percent, which put them above the Real Living Wage.

The workers, members of the PCS union, are employed by outsourcing firm ISS at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the Department for Business and Trade, and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. The pay deal was accompanied by further gains on full pay sickness leave and other terms and conditions, closing the gap between them and directly employed civil servants.

Like the GMB, PCS’s outgoing general secretary Mark Serwotka noted this victory as one step towards ‘ending the scourge of outsourcing that has seen a race to the bottom to maximise profits at the expense of our hard-working members.’

10. Government Defeated At High Court

The strike wave that rocked Britain last year saw a sharp legislative response from the government, including not only the widely criticised Minimum Service Levels Bill, but also a plan to force agency staff to replace striking workers. This year, 11 trade unions, coordinated by the Trades Union Congress and represented by Thompsons Solicitors, brought legal proceedings to challenge the change and to protect the right to strike.

In July, the case went to the High Court, and the government suffered a major defeat as judges ruled the strikebreaking regulations unlawful. The court ruled that then-Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng failed to consult unions as required by the Employment Agencies Act 1973, quashing the 2022 changes and decreeing that employers can no longer use agency staff to fill in for striking workers during industrial action. According to the court, the government had acted unfairly, unlawfully, and irrationally.

But this is only a temporary win as the government is still determined to bring its union-busting laws into effect. The Minimum Service Levels Act threatens striking frontline workers with the sack and trade unions that fail to comply with being sued into bankruptcy.

The laws have faced a barrage of criticism from civil liberties organisations, NHS employers, race equality groups, employment lawyers and, of course, the trade union movement. Mass protests have been held, and legal action is on the cards. But unions like the RMT and FBU are pushing for the trade union movement to go further: a mass campaign of defiance to defeat anti-union laws.

This year, a motion put forward by the unions at Trade Union Congress was passed, committing the TUC to build mass opposition to the Minimum Service Levels Act, up to and including a strategy of non-compliance and non-cooperation to make the anti-strike laws unworkable, including industrial action.

While seeing a vicious anti-worker government defeated in the High Court is a source of joy, it’s clear that legal action is simply not enough. As Mick Lynch told Tribune earlier this year, ‘When you go to court, it doesn’t mean the law is withdrawn. It means that governments learn how to comply with the law. If this law makes it so that people can’t go on strike, this movement will die. We can’t start from the basis that we’re just going to accept it.’

Defeating the government’s latest anti-strike law will be a key battle in 2024 and it matters for the very future of the trade union movement.

About the Author
Taj Ali is the editor of Tribune.