Workers' Liberty

Nothing will ever efface for me the memory of my first real strike — on the Salford docks — the first time I saw my class acting as a surging, uncontrolled force breaking the banks of routine capitalist industrial life and, for a while, pitting itself against those who control our lives.

Nothing will ever efface for me the memory of my first real strike - on the Salford docks - the first time I saw my class acting as a surging, uncontrolled force breaking the banks of routine capitali

According to the official history of MI5, Britain’s spy-hunters considered Jack Jones, the leader of the Transport and General Workers’ Union in the 1970s who died recently, to be a paid agent of the USSR.

“We done what we had to do, we have a message for big multinational corporations: you can’t get away with it no more. You should treat ordinary people with respect. And it’s not us that should be treated as criminals but people like Mandelson.”

Engineering construction: Workers demonstrated outside the Staythorpe power station construction site, in Nottinghamshire, again on Wednesday 11 March.

At a meeting in Birmingham on 21 February, the TGWU Broad Left and Amicus Unity Gazette merged into a left grouping for the Unite union into which TGWU and Amicus are merging.

Jerry Hicks is one of the three Amicus members — apart from the current General Secretary, Derek Simpson —seeking nominations to contest an election to be held next year for the post of General Secretary of the Amicus section of Unite. In the last issue of Solidarity we interviewed Hicks about his candidacy. We cover the other candidates, Kevin Coyne and Laurence Faircloth, in the next issue. Here Dale Street gives a critical response to Hicks’s platform.

The strikes set to shut down most London bus companies on 22 October were suspended following an injunction gained by TfL against the union.

Workers' Liberty bulletin for the London busworkers' strike, 10 October: download pdf (see "attachment" below)

2 years ago, Metroline drivers broke 7 years silence from the union and took strike action against the 2nd biggest transport transnational organization in the world.

According to reports from a delegate to the Executive of Unite (the union formed by merger of Amicus and TGWU), and other well-placed sources, the union's "joint general secretaries", Tony Woodley (TGWU) and Derek Simpson (Amicus) are presently engaged in "all out war".

UNISON: activists in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are angered by news from the national office on progress on pay negotiations.

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.

Dear Brother Woodley,

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).

Workers in the housing charity Shelter are on strike again on 24-25 April against enforced cuts in pay and conditions. Previous strikes on 5 and 10 March forced Shelter bosses, who at first insisted that they would never negotiate, to put the cuts on hold and talk at ACAS. But their ACAS offer was only a one-off “compensation” payment.

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.

A call for Shelter workers to vote on in the ballot on the Shelter bosses' offer of a (small) lump-sum payment in return for substantial cuts in pay and increases in hours.

TGWU-Unite reps in the housing organisation Shelter are recommending rejection in a ballot of workers, due to start on Wednesday 26 March, of the offer made in ACAS talks by Shelter bosses on a pay-and-hours dispute.

After two days of strike action, bosses at Shelter, an organisation providing services to the homeless, have agreed to put "on hold" their plans to cut workers' pay and conditions.

Download pdf

On Wednesday 5 March 450 members of Unite union who work at Shelter struck for the first time in the housing charity’s 41 year history. A Shelter worker explains the background.

In an effort unusual for British unions, the rail union RMT and the TGWU mobilised members on Thursday 6 March to leaflet at several rail stations in support of the jailed Iranian trade unionists Mansour Ossanloo and Mahmoud Salehi.

[Activists in the Amicus bit of Unite may wish to omit the reference to the TGWU Biennial Delegate Conference]

We note the statement from the General Executive Committee put to the Biennial Delegate Conference of the TGWU section of Unite in July 2007.

On Thursday 21 February, we will find out if some 450 members of the TGWU/Unite have voted in favour of national strike action, an event which would be a first in Shelter's 41-year history.

Hundreds of Rolls-Royce workers and their supporters marched through Liverpool on 8 February to protest against the company’s plans to close its plant in Bootle and transfer the work to the US, with

On Thursday the 21st of February, we will find out if some 450 members of the TGWU/Unite have voted in favour of national strike action, an event which would be a first in Shelter's 41-year history.