BEN CHACKO reports on fears at TUC Congress that the provisions in the legislation are liable to be watered down even further
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The shop floor stories British fiction ignores
Our homegrown literary scene seems stuck in a bit of a middle-class bubble with a key sector deeply unrepresented in the stories it tells: retail workers. Ireland and the US do much better, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
RETAIL TALES: Nearly a tenth of the British workers work in retail — but don’t star in our books and novels
CHRIS HOOFE calls for support for GMB’s Potters’ Pledge campaign, aimed at making sure the historic pottery industry based in Stoke-on-Trent is supported over cheap, low-quality imports and counterfeits
Investing the £75 billion slated for defence spending on a green new deal, healthcare and education would create jobs and help communities far more than weapons spending, argues UCU general secretary JO GRADY
Speaking to the Morning Star’s Ceren Sagir, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists LAURA DAVISON outlines the threats to journalism from Palestine to Britain, and the unique challenges confronting the industry through the rise of AI
We must organise broad-based counterprotests and celebratory local community events to rebuild class consciousness and challenge the far-right’s divisive lies, writes KEVIN COURTNEY, ahead of this Saturday’s big demo in London
Artists should not be consigned to a life of precarious working – they deserve dignity and proper workers’ rights, argues ZITA HOLBOURNE
THE British fiction scene just doesn’t support enough novels about working in shops. This thought popped into my head while reading two recent novels, which both build on retail experience.
Both are, rightly, I think, highly recommended. Neither are British. The absent shopworker is another sign of how the current British fiction scene doesn’t really reflect the Britain we live in. Some 2.7 million Brits — nearly a tenth of the workforce — work in retail. But like a lot of other working people, their lives are not well reflected in British novels.
The first book is Caroline O’Donoghue’s The Rachel Incident, which appeared in paperback this year. It’s a funny, bittersweet comedy about being a young adult, about those first steps when you make your best friends and worst choices.
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