Solidarity 083, 03 November 2005

Fight privatisation of the post

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. So far 153 Labour MPs (and nine others) have signed Parliamentary Early Day Motion 548, calling for the Post Office to remain 100 percent in public ownership. The union needs a campaign of mass activity if they are to make a succes of it. This is particularly important since both Royal Mail chairman Allan Leighton and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Alan Johnson are proposing giving postal workers shares in the...

RMT calls conference on working-class representation

By Janine Booth, Finsbury Park RMT The RMT has finally set a date for the conference on working-class political representation agreed by its AGM both this year and last year. It will take place on Saturday 21 January, 2006 at Friends House in Euston, London. RMT HQ is very keen to stress that this is not a conference to set up a new party, but to discuss the crisis in working-class representation in more general terms. One of its major focuses will be the campaign for a bill to repeal the anti-trade union laws, the Trade Union Freedom Bill. There will be no resolutions, and only RMT branches...

Sefton council fight continues

Industrial action against Sefton Council, which is accusing six of its workers of intimidation after they attended a protest against theprivatisation of council housing is continuing. The unions accuse management of wanting to victimise Unison shop steward Nigel Flanagan. Workers from the council’s highways department have now joined the strike, bringing the total number of strikers to about 80. Other workers are due to come out if the victimisation issue is not resolved.

PCS DEFRA strike solid

By a PCS Socialist Caucus member There was solid support for the strike action of 21 October by members of the PCS (Public and Commercial Services trade union) employed by DEFRA (Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). The 24-hour strike was in support of a DEFRA-wide pay claim to end different rates of pay between DEFRA “core department” employees and employees in DEFRA agencies, such as the RPA (Rural Payments Agency) and the CEFAS (covering water and fisheries). In recent years substantial differences in pay-rates have built up between the DEFRA “core department” and the...

Gate Gourmet: still stalled

By Colin Foster British Airways finally signed a new catering contract with Gate Gourmet on 20 October, and over the days since then there has been some movement on the deal supposedly made by Gate Gourmet with the TGWU on 26 September to end the lock-out of GG workers at Heathrow. But no worker has yet been reinstated, and it is still not clear when, or whether, any workers will be reinstated. Gate Gourmet has now sent out letters to workers named for compulsory redundancy. These letters offer them a pay-off in return for signing away any rights to legal action against Gate Gourmet, not only...

Why SWPers voted for the sell-out

The two members of the SWP on the Executive of the civil service union PCS, Martin John and Sue Bond, voted to approve the Government-TUC pensions deal. Yet an article in Socialist Worker that same week, personally signed by SW editor Chris Bambery, and featured as the lead item on the SWP website, had already denounced the deal in the most strident terms as an “abject capitulation”. SWPers are saying that John and Bond just “made a mistake”. In fact they followed the SWP’s rule of the last few years — never to say or do anything, within their earshot, which might offend trade union leaders...

The unions sell out future workers

By Chris Hickey, PCS All the militant threats by public sector union leaders to launch the biggest single day’s strike action since the General Strike of 1926 have culminated in a “reserved rights” public sector pensions deal which fundamentally delivers the Blairite aim of a public sector retirement age of 65. On 18 October, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), the main civil service union and one led by supposed Marxists, “heralded [the] agreement…that secures the pensions of three million people working in the civil service, health and education as a significant achievement.” The...

British bosses bolster Saudi tyranny

Yahya al Alfaifi worked as a communication engineering technician (command post technician) at the British Aerospace plant at Dharan in Saudi Arabia for four years. He was sacked in 2002 for organising a meeting of BAe workers, considered a “a trade union action” in Saudi Arabia. Yahya will be speaking at the No Sweat conference in London on 26 November. He spoke to Cathy Nugent. BAe Systems does military aviation work for the Saudi Ministry of Defence. There are different gradations or demarcations among workers there. The British and American workers were considered “first class”. There were...

workers’ news Round-up

By Pablo Velasco china A former textile worker who posted online reports about a protest demonstrations by steel workers in Chongqing has disappeared and is believed to be in police custody. Shi Xiaoyu was taken away by police from his home in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, on 20 October, according to Chinese human rights groups. Police arrested him, confiscating his computer and other materials. Shi had been posting information about steel workers’ protests, which began in August this year. The workers were demanding that the company, which used to be one of China's top 500 industrial companies...

Will Sistani say “US out”?

By Rhodri Evans Sunni Arab groups, some of them on the fringes of the armed “resistance” gangs, will participate much more largely in the new elections in Iraq, on 15 December, than they did in the poll to elect the current Assembly, on 30 January. Then, the only Sunni-Islamist group participating was the Iraq Islamic Party (Iraqi offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood), and it was only half-participating. (It said it wanted to boycott the election, but had made the decision too late to remove its candidates from the voting papers). The greater participation is a hopeful sign for the stabilisation...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.