Workers' Liberty

Around 300 trade unionists and environmental activists attended the Campaign against Climate Change (CCC) trade union conference on 9 February.

Last week a group of cleaners at Stansted airport were told not to come to work the next day as they were no longer required. Most are from Eastern Europe and Africa. All are agency workers.

Temporary and agency workers are in a particularly precarious position. They can be hired and fired almost at will. They have no guaranteed hours or permanent contract of employment. They often work for lower wages and receive less favourable sick pay and other ‘perks’ than the directly-employed colleagues they work alongside. Added to this, scams and abuse such as categorising these workers as “self-employed” contractors in order to avoid holiday pay and other rights, are widespread.

On Thursday the 21st of February, we will find out if some 450 members of the TGWU/Unite have voted in favour of national strike action, an event which would be a first in Shelter's 41-year history.

In response to the impact of August 2007’s 12-hour strike, Justice Secretary Jack Straw announced plans for a strike-ban for prison officers on January 8. Tabled as an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, the measure will be discussed in Parliament as Solidarity goes to press.

Remploy workers have vowed to fight the government’s plan to close 28 out of 83 factories in the publicly-subsidised network employing disabled workers. A few weeks ago government minister Peter Hain was promising sincerely to look seriously at the trade unions’ plan to improve the running of the factories in order to stay within their £111 million subsidy.

On Monday November 5, the Writers’ Guild of America went on strike for the first time in nearly twenty years. Last minute negotiations with the employers’ organisation, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) failed to reach a deal. The WGA (which for perverse historical reasons is actually two unions, the WGA west and the WGA east) “downed pencils”.

The strike to get sacked UNISON steward Karen Reissmann reinstated is continuing. Karen was sacked for speaking out against cuts.

On Monday 5 November psychiatric nurse and chair of the Manchester Community and Mental Health branch of UNISON, Karen Reissmann, was sacked by the local mental health trust. Karen’s crime was to have spoken out publicly as a trade unionist against a reorganisation of mental health services that would have led to cuts.

It is estimated that the potential cost of equal pay claims in the public sector is in the billions. This is money that the Government insists must be found from existing NHS, Local Authorities and other public sector bodies’ budgets. The Unions involved have asked the Government for funding directly to sort out the inequality.

GREG Charles is branch secretary of South West London Postal Communication Workers’ Union.

Metronet

By an RMT member

For Tom Unterrainer, click here
For Martin Thomas, click here
For Sheila Cohen, click here
For Martin Thomas 2, click here
For Colin Waugh, click here

Central trains

Guards on Central Trains are due to strike on Saturday 24 February in their continuing campaign against the imposition of a computerised rostering system called Crewplan. The next stage of the campaign was supposed to have been a ban on collecting revenue. However management threatened a 50% reduction in wages for anybody not collecting fares. They declared that there would be no rest day working or overtime for guards. This forced the guards to re-think their strategy.

By Mike Fenwick, UNISON

Trade union leaders in the TUC have welcomed the Government’s White Paper on pensions, published on 25 May.

Only the week before, the TUC had set out its “bottom-line” five tests for the White Paper. Even on a generous reading, the White Paper passed only one of the five tests.