Workers' Liberty

TGWU/Unite members in the homelessness charity Shelter have voted by an overwhelming 87% to reject a raft of proposed cuts to pay and conditions, in favour of a strike ballot.

As Metronet goes into administration, the abject failure of PPP is laid bare. There's only one solution - re-integrate the Tube under public ownership! Don't let Gordon Brown and Ken Livingstone cook up a deal to re-privatise the infrastructure.

By a tube worker

As we go to press it appears that Metronet, the London Underground “Infraco” is going into administration. The Public Private Partnership Arbiter has indicated that he will not agree to the company’s demand that London Underground pay for its incompetence, and LUL will “only” have to pay Metronet an additional £121 million rather than the £551 million it had asked for. That’s not a one-off, that’s the four-weekly Infrastructure Service Charge.

Hackney Council is carrying out an appraisal for estate cleaning and ground maintenance services, and are considering three options:

1. Full outsourcing of contractors for both services across Hackney Homes.
   
   

By Ben Terrall - HaitiAnalysis.com

New legislation in Washington D.C., under the acronym H.O.P.E. – short for “ the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act,” has the goal of promoting the garment industry in Haiti. But the legislation falls noticeably short in protecting labor rights or promoting long-term sustainable economic development that will benefit the poor as well as the rich.

Bryan Sketchley
A consortium of investors (APA) wanted 100% Qantas so they could take it private. If they manage to acquire 90% of shares, they can compulsorily acquire the rest of the shares. If the buy out is successful then the assets directly secure the lenders money and they can do their asset stripping away from public scrutiny.

I found reading the latest edition of Solidarity a bit confusing, like one of those Dot to Dot puzzles, where the picture only emerges if you connect the dots in the right order.

On Page 2 there is an article about the strike at NHS, Logistics, on Page 3/4 a lengthy article on “Can the Labour Party be Reclaimed?”, on Page 5 an article on the Left at Labour’s Conference, and another on Unions (and actually CLP’s) voting down Blair at Conference, on Page 8 an article attacking Brown’s hypocrisy, on Page 12 an article on the Cuban Revolution, on Page 14 a strange article entitled “Democracy and the Workers Movement”, on Page 18 an article attacking Socialist Action for their failure to attack Livingstone’s privatisation proposals, and finally on the back page a call for support for John McDonnell. All of these constituted the dots, but instead of looking at them and seeing a clear picture what came across to me was confusion and in some cases contradiction.

By AWL health workers

In a magnificent show of defiance over the last two weeks, hundreds of NHS workers in the supply service NHS Logistics have taken the first national strike action in the NHS for 18 years. The one-day strikes mark an end to the “phony war” between the unions and the Government over NHS privatisation, and could spark a national fightback against the selling off of the NHS.

Government ministers showed contempt for NHS Logistics workers this week by choosing to announce the signing of a deal to outsource or privatise the agency to the corporate giant DHL in the week that UNISON members within NHS Logistics are voting over strike action against the proposal.

The press release below contains good news indeed - a spoke firmly in the wheel of the government's ridiculous and dangerous plans to allow profiteering private companies to run GP surgeries.

I generally try not to be the annoying person who rains on every parade, but it would be irresponsible not to sound a note of caution about relying too much on the courts. This victory means that the Trust has to start the tendering process again - but I can think of no legal obstacle to it simply doing that, paying a bit more attention to doing it by the book, running a consultation but ignoring the responses and going ahead with the privatisation anyway.

Hilaire Prophete, Spokesman for Pa Ka Tann Operation (OPK), reiterates the demands for the reinstatement of former public administration employees, thousands of who were laid off for political reasons by the Interim government of Gerald Latortue (2004-2006).

For the latest on the crisis in Hackney's NHS and the fight for a well-funded, public health service, click here.

Dear friends from the European Network for Public Services,

This message is sent to all people registered on the list we made during the last saturday session.
The RAS (an activist Host ) is ready to contribute by hosting our collective tool . We propose to name our mailing list "athens-sp@ras.eu.org".

By Maria Exall, CWU Executive

AT this year's Communication Workers’ Union conference (Bournemouth, from 21 May), there is an issue that will not go away - the proposed privatisation of Royal Mail in the form of share options for staff.

Trust the BBC to come up with a particularly absurd example of the privatisation craze

Last month New Labour’s latest privatisation, Qinetiq, was floated on the Stock Exchange. Qinetiq consists of most of the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Research Agency, all except the most “sensitive” areas — these were split off in 2001 to prepare for privatisation.

By a postal worker

The Communication Workers’ Union held a national meeting on 27 October in Leeds to discuss its campaign against the threat of Post Office privatisation.

RECORD FINE FOR PFI FIRM

Earlier this month PFI engineering firm Balfour Beatty and Network Rail, the successor company to Railtrack, were fined £10 million and £3.5million, respectively, for their part in the Hatfield rail disaster. The judge described the crash as “one of the worst examples of sustained industial negligence”.

The Communication Workers’ Union is holding a national mass meeting against privatisation, in the face of postal regulator Postcomm’s decision to open up all parts of the service to competition in January 2006,

By Gerry Bates

Roman tourists who went to Greece 1900 years ago would watch as the brutal glories of the ancient Greek city state of Sparta were evoked for them by courtesy of local showmen, by flogging a slave to death.

Possible privatisation of Royal Mail, and the union’s link to the Labour Party, were the big issues at the General Conference of the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) in Blackpool from Sunday 12 June.

By Amina Saddiq

For three weeks in May and June Pakistan saw an upsurge in class struggle, with the military regime forced to seize physical control of the country’s state-owned telecom corporation and arrest over a thousand telecom workers in order to force through its privatisation plans. The Employees’ Union has now signed a deal with the government allowing privatisation to go ahead, but a rank and file organisation of telecom workers is still opposing the privatiation.

By Rhodri Evans

One hundred and fifty trade Iraqi trade union activists — members of the General Union of Oil Employees, other trade unionists from the southern cities of Nasiriyah and Amara and Basra, and representatives of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions — came to a conference in Basra on 25-26 May to start organising a campaign against US-imposed plans to privatise the Iraqi economy.

By Maria Exall, CWU Executive (pers cap)

The intertwined issues of pensions and retirement age will be on the agenda at this year’s Communication Workers’ Union conference. The Post Office schemes are not in the frame for the attacks curremtly happening in the rest of the public sector, but the threat is still there. There will be a call for ballots for strike action if any attempt is made to reduce benefits or increase the age that members are entitled to claim their pension.

Royal Mail boss Alan Leighton has been mooting privatisation of the Post Office. Postal worker Pete Keenlyside reviews a recent report by the telecom and postal workers’ union CWU, which analyses the state of the service and the threats it faces.

Support oil union's campaign

By Colin Foster

Three and a half months after the 30 January elections, Iraq now has an elected government, a coalition of the Shia and Kurdish alliances, with some seats set aside for Sunni Arab politicians. The Sunni-Islamist “resistance” has marked the occasion with a new surge of bombings.

Local RMT members and supporters joined a lively demonstration through London on Saturday 30 April, demanding that rail privatisation be reversed.

Marching from Whitehall Place to King’s Cross, demonstrators took their message to thousands of shoppers and tourists. For the previous two weeks, a group of 25 union members had marched through cities from Glasgow to London on a mobile demonstration.

By a CWU member

Hardly had the last election result been counted, and the Chair of Royal Mail, Allan Leighton, began to call for a share issue and employee buyout for the ailing firm. He says he wants to pump £2 billion extra investment into the postal industry. His proposals, as far as they have been made clear, assume a part-privatisation of Royal Mail. The CWU has written to all MPs saying it opposes such proposals.

Industrial action ballot papers have just been sent out to BBC workers.

The ballot, being run in protest at plans for thousands of job cuts and further privatisation of the BBC, covers members of BECTU, NUJ, and Amicus.

By Martin Thomas

After the uproar created by Jamie Oliver's television series "School Dinners", the Government promised an extra £280 million to improve school meals in England.