Tag Archives: gmb

Danny Alexander addresses the GMB – emerging liberal and successful

By Mark Pack | Wed 13th June 2012 - 3:58 pm

Yesterday Danny Alexander headed off to the annual conference of my old union, the GMB, to give a tricky speech. The GMB isn’t just a consistent critic of the government, it has also criticised Labour for not being different enough from the government in its eyes. Throw in contentious issues such as the pension reforms and merely avoiding uproar would have been a success. In fact, the Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary to the Treasury did far better than that:

Posted in News | Also tagged Danny Alexander and trade unions | 2 Comments

Opinion: Cable’s GMB speech encapsulated coalition tensions

By Dominic Mantle | Sun 19th June 2011 - 7:56 pm

The Business Secretary Vince Cable’s speech to the GMB annual conference last Monday received significant attention. Some media coverage would have us believe that the senior Lib Dem had brazenly threatened trades unions with serious curbs on their strike powers. In fact, Cable had qualified his brief hint of this possibility with the admission that present circumstances merited no government action.

Within the context of unions’ criticism of government cuts to jobs and services, Cable’s introduction to the table of the possibility of changes to strike law may have been a strategic manoeuvre intended to dissuade industrial action planned …