Workers' Liberty

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

Solidarity’s approach to the recent construction strikes was very poor. While they were a national news issue and a major focus for everyone interested in how the British working class respond to the crisis, we wobbled and ended up downplaying the massive threat of nationalism to our class.

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.

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

Nominations have closed in the election for general secretary of Amicus/joint general secretary of Unite. The choices are not inspiring:

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.

Unite, formed by the merger of the unions Amicus and TGWU, has put the merger on hold and called an Amicus general secretary election rather than, as planned, having Derek Simpson go straight through to 2010 as Amicus general secretary and Joint General Secretary of Unite. Jerry Hicks, who is contesting the general secretary election, spoke to David Kirk from Solidarity. We invite readers to contribute to a discussion on the issues raised by Jerry.

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".

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.

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).

At the time of going to press, 1,200 members of Amicus/Unite employed at Grangemouth oil refinery are due to begin 48 hours of strike action at 6.00am on Sunday 27 April – the first strike in a British oil refinery since 1935.

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.

[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.

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

Following the massive Yes vote in their ballots, RMT and the two smaller unions TSSA and Unite have named strike dates on Metronet.

On 27 June refuse workers in Salford mounted a 24-hour strike action in protest at the council's exploitation of agency staff.

by Dale Street

STRIKERS at the Sunvic Controls factory in Uddingston near Glasgow, which manufactures controls for domestic and commercial central heating systems, returned to work last Monday (4 June) after ten weeks.

The question on Jim Denham’s voting paper, and on mine, in the recent TGWU-Amicus ballot, was “do you approve the Instrument of Amalgamation?”, not “are you, in general, in favour of a merger of TGWU and Amicus?”

To Tony Woodley, Joint General Secretary of TGWU-AMICUS

Dear Bro Woodley,

"Should [Labour] party policy be put into practice by [Labour] government, and if not, why not?", you asked in your article in the Guardian on 5 March.

By Chris Leary

WORKERS at the Burslem sorting office in Staffordshire are in the process of balloting for further strike action against the sacking of a long standing worker after a previous strike.

Shop steward and long-standing union activist Antony Czubkowski has been sacked by energy firm E.ON, in reaction to his complaint about being subjected to a verbal attack by his boss.

Antony has for the last 18 years been a leading Amicus activist, and in July 2006 convened a meeting for the five unions operating in E.ON. The manager, with a long record of anti-union and bullying behaviour, tried to sneak into the back of the meeting — Antony politely asked him to leave.

On the TGWU-Amicus merger, by Tom Rigby
Critical comments, by Martin Thomas

From Amicus:

Hundreds of UK trade unionists are to protest outside the Australian Embassy this week (Thursday 30th November) at anti-worker and anti-trade union labour laws introduced by the Australian government.

Pensions, Pay and Privatisation

Why healthworkers should reject the NHS Pension proposals

With accusations still flying around that it was overly generous pay deals that led to the current financial crisis in the NHS it might seem a little selfish for staff to be worrying about their pensions when the future of the NHS itself now seems to be at stake.

Crucial proposals affecting all NHS workers have once again appeared during the summer holidays, and once again the NHS unions have signed up to give away some of our rights, on proposals that are still only half-written.

Packed meeting in Hackney

The Hackney Empire’s Marie Lloyd room was packed to capacity on Wednesday 18 October with over 100 people turning up to hear John McDonnell make his case to be leader of the Labour party.

For the latest on the crisis in Hackney's NHS and the fight for a well-funded, public health service, click here.