SOLOMON HUGHES recommends Sunjeev Sahota’s recent novel set in a trade union election campaign for its fresh approach to what unites and divides workers, but wishes the union backdrop was truer to life
The recruitment of young people into trade unions must be a priority for the labour movement
A real youth education and organising strategy is needed to build unions for the future and to lift young workers out of poverty and precarity, argues GEORGINA ANDREWS
RIGHT IDEA: Kids take part in an NEU rally last year
Morning Star international editor ROGER McKENZIE says Trump’s ceaseless belligerence is a desperate effort to prevent the emergence of a multilateral world
Don’t dismiss Lebanon as a side theatre of this war, warns SEVIM DAGDELEN — there are signs Israel has expansion in mind, and it has demonstrated its willingness to expel and kill whole populations
The media present Starmer as staying out of Trump’s war — but we’re already deeply involved in a conflict that sees the US and Israel kill civilians on a huge scale, argues IAN SINCLAIR
LINDA PENTZ GUNTER reports on this week’s conference unveiling the findings of the Gaza Tribunal established by Jeremy Corbyn
CHRISTOPHE IMMER of the Morning Star’s German sister paper Junge Welt reports on a Berlin conference on the politics of art and the legacy of Marxist critic Hans Hess
TRADE unions have a significant part to play in protecting workers’ rights and ensuring fair treatment in the workplace because, not only they are a vehicle for uniting the working class in the fight for better pay and terms and conditions, but more importantly, they are essential not only for improving our working conditions but to fundamentally change the wider society that we live in and challenge the exploitative and unjust system that is capitalism.
This is especially important for young workers, who face a variety of unique challenges today. These include precarious work, stagnant wages, and little opportunity to progress at work. Furthermore, few young workers are in a trade union, with only one in 20 trade union members being aged 16-24.
Young workers bear the worst consequences of the cost-of-living crisis and the worsening job market which offers increasingly worse material conditions. The ruling class take advantage of the youth in the fact that they are not organised enough to fight against their own exploitation.
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Young Communist League general secretary GEORGINA ANDREWS says the far right are filling a vacuum created by Labour’s abandonment of working-class interests — we have to give our class a better offer
PHILIP ENGLISH says military spending will not create the jobs young people need — instead, build an economy based around needs, not profit
Our charter’s demands for fair pay, affordable housing and environmental security will recruit working-class youth into the political struggle for socialism, emulating the success of the Women’s Charter, writes YCL general secretary GEORGINA ANDREWS
In part one of a two-part feature, CONOR BOLLINS asks whether we should be concerned about the Prime Minister’s military recruitment plans