Solidarity 054, 24 June 2004

Debate and discussion: Red and Yellow and Green and Blue

In the 19 June issue of Socialist Worker there is an article bemoaning the failure of the Green Party to agree an electoral alliance with Respect. This is used as an excuse for the failure of a great electoral breakthrough. But people who think the Greens are any kind of radical alternative to Labour and worthy partners in left electoral alliances should take note of what has happened in Leeds. In the local elections Labour lost control of the council for the first time since 1980 - though they are the biggest party with 40 seats. Now the Lib Dems (second biggest party), the Tories and the...

USDAW-Tesco sick pay deal

Giving away workers' rights By Mark Sandell The bosses have kicked off the holiday season with an offensive against sick workers. The bosses' union the CBI have released a report claiming that 15% of the sick days taken by workers are not authentic. The fact that the number of sick days hase been falling for five years and only rose this year was ignored. Also ignored was the shocking fact that British workers work the longest hours in western Europe. Basically the bosses want us all to drag ourselves into work when we are sick, infect everyone we work with and damage our health. What matter...

Ideas for Freedom 2004

A weekend of socialist debate, 3-4 July At Highgate Newtown Community Centre, 25 Bertram Street, London N19 (Archway or Tufnell Park tube) Discussions on Saturday 3 July Israel-Palestine: what chance for peace? Sean Matgamna (AWL) and an Israeli refusenik The revolutionary paper Cathy Nugent Working class political representation Alex Gordon (RMT), Billy Hayes (CWU) and Janine Booth (RMT) Socialists and the Muslim communities in Britain: a discussion Sacha Ismail (AWL) and a member of the Muslim group, Just Peace What will socialism be like? Jill Mountford Iraq: eyewitness in Falluja Jo...

GMB-Amicus merger?

We need unions that serve the members Sanjay Sirikanth, GMB member With the recent takeover of the print union GPMU and the forthcoming acquisition of banking union UNIFI, AMICUS is fast becoming the union of choice for trade union bureaucrats seeking to secure their pension funds by pushing merger through their union Executives. The TUC appears to be backing this AMICUS campaign and complaints from members in both GPMU and UNIFI point to large amounts of time and money being invested in getting the "right" result out of membership votes - that is, the one that suits the suits. The TUC has...

Post: how the SWP backs job cuts

By a postal worker In common with their latest "turn" in other unions, leading SWP officials of the Communication Workers Union have been at the vanguard of promoting job-cutting deals with management. It started with SWP Postal Executive member Jane Loftus supporting the "Major Change" agreement. She justified voting for the deal (which allows local managers to set targets for cutting jobs and increasing workload) as being "for the sake of unity" with the majority of the Exec. The coverage of the deal in Socialist Worker at the time appeared to be contradictory, with one of their rank and...

Firefighters vote to leave Labour

Anger at the Government's treatment of firefighters since the 2002 pay dispute came to a head on 17 June when the Fire Brigades Union conference voted overwhelmingly to disaffiliate from the Labour Party. Delegates backed disaffiliation by five to one on a show of hands, and by 35,105-to-14,611 on a card vote, rejecting a proposal from the FBU's Executive Council to reduce the union's affiliation fee from £30,000 to £20,000 as part of a political fight within the Labour Party. Those supporting the disaffiliation motion - submitted by the union's Northern Ireland, Strathclyde and Greater...

PCS: left must step up the fight

By a Civil Servant The Democracy slate (made up of Left Unity and the PCS Democrats) has won the National Executive Committee elections in the PCS for the second year running. In response to this victory the union's hard right-wing group, the Moderates, have split. One faction of the Moderates have joined up with right wingers in the Inland Revenue to form yet another grouping in the union! The strength of the slate should not be overestimated. All the Democracy slate of NEC candidates were nominated by at least 105 branches. The Moderates by just 10 branches. Yet the slate only won by a...

UNISON: leadership defeated on schools debate

By a delegate At UNISON's local government conference on 21 June delegates overturned last year's decision to take part in the 'remodelling agreement' for schools. Delegates spoke about how the government had not stumped up the funding necessary to make the agreement a success: this was teaching on the cheap. One resolution said that teaching assistants had been 'pushed and bullied' into taking whole classes - the job of a qualified teacher at a third of the wage. UNISON's involvement in remodelling is now to be renegotiated, drawing up national pay and grading structures for classroom...

CWU debates relationship to Labour

By a CWU member The conference of the postal and telecoms workers' union, the CWU, discussed the relationship of the union to the Labour Party in the context of the expulsion of the the RMT, and an expected disaffiliation of the FBU. There were several propositions calling for the union to take a more pro-active stance towards the Labour Party, including one calling for a review of the supported MPs and a calling to account of CWU delegates to Labour Party bodies, as well as support for the Labour Representation Committee. However at the last moment an Emergency proposition was taken that...

North East ambulance workers fight Agenda for Change

By an ambulance worker Ambulance workers in the North East have been taking industrial action since 17 June in response to changes in working practices involved in the regional implementation of Agenda for Change. The North East Ambulance Service is one of the 'early implementor sites' piloting A4C; the dispute therefore holds vital lessons for socialists in determining our attitude when Unison members are balloted on the agreement later this year. In order to meet A4C's requirement for reducing the working week to 37.5 hours, the Ambulance Service management wants to exclude meal breaks from...

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