Workers' Liberty

On 23 November the Leeds Streetscene workers voted to accept the council's latest offer and go back to work after 12 weeks.

Leeds refuse collection workers have voted to reject an offer by the council and continue their all-out strike, which started on 7 September.

GMB official Richard Ashcough spoke to Solidarity about the GMB’s amendment to the FBU motion, which aimed to target the focus of the boycott onto goods produced in the Occupied Territories.

Leeds City Council Street Scene workers have been on all-out indefinite strike since 7 September.

Engineering construction workers have voted to reject a new two-year pay-and-conditions deal despite a recommendation to accept both from union officials and from their national shop stewards' committee.

Leeds City Council Street Scene workers have been on all-out indefinite strike since 7 September. These workers include street cleaners, depot staff, and household refuse collectors, all of whom are facing wage cuts of up to £6000 a year.

The threat of strike action by engineering construction workers in GMB and Unite unions has won an improved offer on pay and conditions from employers.

The groups involved in the “No2EU” coalition for the Euro-election — the RMT union leadership group around Bob Crow, the Communist Party of Britain (Morning Star), the Socialist Party, and the Alliance for Green Socialism — are due to meet again before 28 June to discuss a “son of No2EU” project for the coming general election.

Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB general union, used his speech to the GMB congress in Blackpool (15 June) to call for the Labour Party to select “fresh working-class candidates that people can relate to”.

“Now is the time to select and elect 40 to 50 fresh real people, real trade unionists, people who actually know how much a pint of milk costs, and what it is like to get on a bus, MPs driven by commitment rather than being worried about being driven by a chauffeur”.

Solidarity strikes have spread across Britain to beat the union-busting attempted by oil multinational Total and its contractors on their construction site at the Lindsey Oil Refinery site in Lincolnshire.

Many thousands of workers have struck over a principle, though the immediate bread-and-butter issue concerns just 51 workers.

Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB general union, used his speech to the GMB congress in Blackpool (15 June) to call for the Labour Party to select "fresh working-class candidates that people can relate to".

There were some definite positives to the 16 May “March for Jobs” organised by Unite in central Birmingham.

The turnout — up to 8,000 people, mostly rank-and-file workers — was bigger than many marchers were expecting. Unite seeming to have done a decent job of mobilising in workplaces. There were contingents from the Longbridge plant in Birmingham, as well as from steelworkers in Teesside, Visteon workers and Latin American cleaners from London. Other unions, most notably Unison, were also visibly present.

St Paul's Way school; Chemilines; Tube cleaners; Amicus-Unite election.

Alan Fraser is a GMB union official involved in helping migrant workers organise. He spoke to Solidarity.

For unions to be slack about fighting for higher wages is one thing. For unions to campaign for lower wages is quite another. But that is the new proposal from GMB general secretary Paul Kenny, a supposed left-winger.

As we go to press (20 August 2008) a 24-hour strike action by local government workers, members of UNISON, UNITE, and the GMB is taking place.

Drivers who work on a contact for Shell Oil were offered a 14% pay increase over two years after four days of strike action. The increase may be worth 9% in the first year and 5% in the second, taking average annual earnings to £41,750 — it’s not clear because contracts are due to be renewed in a year.

According to the Daily Mail, “the GMB trade union has already taken the extraordinary step of discussing at its last executive council meeting whether its two representatives on Labour's ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) should be indemnified against financial loss in the event Labour goes bankrupt”.

A fortnight after the Grangemouth oil refinery was shut down by strike action, talks continue between refinery owners (INEOS) and UNITE.

The strike by the 1,200 union members was in defence of the refinery’s final salary pension scheme, inherited by INEOS from the refinery’s previous owners (BP).

A House of Lords Committee headed by former CBI president, Lord Vallance of Tummel, has attacked the government in a report "The Economic Impact of Migration".

Birmingham City Council workers will strike again on 23 and 24 April over the council’s plans to use “single status” negotiations to cut pay and jobs.

In a shocking example of its free-market savagery, the Government is closing 28 of the 83 Remploy factories, which employ disabled workers to make work-wear products in a unionised workplace with unio

The Remploy factories in Aintree and Birkenhead (CCU) are taking strike action on 6th and 7th February.

A public meeting on 10 December 2007 was part of the build-up to the No One is Illegal Trade Union conference against immigration controls.

Javez Lam from the GMB, who has supported Chinese families following the Morcambe Bay cockle pickers disaster, spoke about organising the Chinese workers in Soho.

Civil service workers in the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) will strike on 31 January over pay. They are likely to be joined by workers in HMRC (Revenue and Customs), striking over job losses, and workers in the Home Office (striking over pay).

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.

By Pat Murphy

All the main public-sector unions have now taken some sort of position in favour of united industrial action to force pay rises at least matching inflation and to break the two per cent limit decreed by Gordon Brown for both 2007-8 and 2008-9.

The question now is, who will take the initiative to turn this talk into action?

World Flowers imports cut flowers from around the world, Spain, Morocco, especially Kenya. The company has a annual turnover of over £100 million, delivering 1.5 billion flowers a year, trading with Tesco, Sainsbury and Waitrose. This fast-growing company recently switched to employing migrant workers. Is this — or rather paying minimum wages to workers vulnerable to exploitation — the secret of their success?