Solidarity 084, 17 November 2005

Taming Tesco

Tesco is not a popular company. Not popular with its rivals, who envy its dominance of the grocery trade and are leading a campaign to slow down its expansion and stop its below-cost pricing of certain goods. Not popular with small farmers, who feel ripped off by the company. Not popular with people who have lost Post Offices and other small shops as Tesco’s supermarket building programme transforms Britain’s high streets. It is sometimes not even popular with its customers, when they find the promise of cheap food does not hold good beyond a small number of items. Above all, Tesco is not...

Forced into sexual slavery

During the first few days of last month, reports about the police raids of Birmingham massage parlour flooded newspapers all over the world. Police were lauded for “smashing” a trafficking ring and freeing 19 women from forced prostitution. What happened next is indicative of the British justice system’s confused policy on immigration and trafficking. Sofie Buckland reports. Six of the women taken into custody after the Birmingham raids are now being held in Yarls Wood detention centre awaiting deportation as illegal immigrants. Their status as trafficked women has been completey denied by...

Torture and chemical warfare: the reality of occupation in Iraq

The 16 November edition of the Guardian carried two stories sharply exposing the brutal character of the US occupation in Iraq. On the same day that the Iraqi government began an investigation into the 173 starved, beaten and apparently tortured prisoners locked in a government bunker beneath Baghdad, the US army admitted that, despite previous denials, it had used the chemical weapon white phosphorus in its attack on Falluja last year. The Baghdad prisoners were discovered by US troops during the search for a missing teenage boy. Even an Iraqi interior minister described their condition as...

Jaafari, Sadr, and the workers

By Colin Foster There are some signs of the hard-pressed labour movement in Iraq reviving, especially a strike by textile workers in Baghdad. For the 15 December elections, though, things look bad. The Communist Party (the leading force in the Iraqi Workers’ Federation) has joined a coalition behind Iyad Allawi, former Ba’thist, former CIA favourite, and prime minister in the 2004-5 Interim Government. The Worker-communist Party of Iraq and its Iraq Freedom Congress refuse to contest the election because “ethnic and sectarian militias are taking control of the cities”. Incongruously, the WPI/...

Australia: half a million against anti-union laws

AUSTRALIA’S unions estimate that over half a million people joined rallies across the country on 15 November to protest at the Howard government’s anti-union laws. There were 210,000 in Melbourne, 45,000 people in Sydney, and 25,000 in Brisbane. Right from the start, however, the leaders of the Australian Council of Trade Unions have signalled that they do not think it possible to stop the legislation, only to build up popular dislike for it. From the Perth demonstration, Kat Pinder reports: “The march was lively and had a good impact. But before that we had the same old union bureaucrat...

Election will not end Bolivian struggle

By Dan Katz IN June 2005 the latest round of street fighting in Bolivia ended, having forced the resignation of the president, Carlos Mesa. Mesa had been in power since October 2003 when similar protests had forced his predecessor, Sanchez de Lozada, out of office. Over the past five years Bolivia has been rocked by waves of protest movements that have demanded nationalisation of Bolivia’s natural resources and rights for indigenous people. Bolivia has a population of nine million; 60% live on less than 50 pence a day. After 1985 and the closure of Bolivia’s once vast state-owned tin mining...

Venezuela’s co-management in practice

The UNT demands the nationalisation of bankrupt factories and cogestion, translated as co-management or worker participation. Chávez has said he wants all basic industry under state control. The government has assessed 700 closed enterprises, evaluating their suitability for expropriation, to preserve 20,000 jobs. Last month he said, “we are not just recovering these factories, we are recovering our true sovereignty.” Chavez also said that people had to be patient. He said, “We cannot speed up. We cannot drive ourselves crazy. We must be conscious that this is a process with a far-off deadline...

No alternative for Latin America

By alan porter Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has claimed victory in his encounter with George Bush at November’s Summit of the Americas. Bush had been using the summit as a vehicle to implement a neoliberal economic zone across the continent, the Free Trade Area of the Americas. In reaction to Bush, Chávez staged a rally at a football stadium close to the summit, with tens of thousands of activists, attacking neoliberalism and the USA’s influence in South America. The crowds were addressed not only by Hugo Chávez, but Bolivian reformist Evo Morales and, perhaps more strangely, Argentinian...

A new socialist party

The most promising political development in Venezuela this year was the formation of the Party of Revolution and Socialism (PRS). Four hundred people met in Caracas to found the party in July. The new party consists of existing left organisations, such as Morenoist Opción de Izquierda Revolucionaria (OIR, Revolutionary Left Option), the Opción Clasista de Trabajadores (which groups together workers from the oil industry) and the student collective Activate from the Central University of Venezuela. The party includes several well-known UNT leaders, including Orlando Chirino and Stalin Perez...

Venezuela’s new union movement

Much of the discussion about Venezuela has focused on the role and policies of the Hugo Chávez government. But the emergence of the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (National Workers’ Union, UNT) may in the long-run be more important for the workers of Venezuela. Paul Hampton reports. Since its first congress in August 2003 the UNT has grown fast, helped by support from the Chávez government. It organised a half a million strong May Day demonstration this year and claims over a million workers in affiliated unions. According to the Ministry of Labor, more than three quarters (77%) of collective...

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