Solidarity 3/69, 17 March 2005

By Patrick Murphy, Leeds NUT

This year’s NUT Conference meets in Gateshead from Friday 25 March to Tuesday 29 March. The dominant issue is likely to be the campaign to defend pension rights, with a ballot for one-day strike action due to open the day before the conference starts. The NUT ballot will close on 11 April and the target date for strike action is 26 April. This date will be confirmed after discussions with other unions, particularly NATFHE, NASUWT, Unison and ATL, to encourage their involvement in action on the same day.

Four hundred hospital workers employed by private contractor Serco are to strike following a ballot last week. Their demand for pay and conditions equal to that of staff directly employed by the NHS follows a similar deal in Birmingham last year at a hospital where non-medical services were managed by a different private contractor. Serco employs 400 staff at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, and is refusing to implement Agenda for Change pay rates (which would see basic pay rise from £4.85 an hour to £5.69, and holiday and sick pay entitlements nearly double) until it is re-imbursed by the NHS. But since Serco made a £57 million profit last year, the workers’ union Unison says it can afford to pay a living wage to their staff now.

By Mike Rowley

The tragicomic saga of the Terror Bill has come to an end at last, after a marathon 31-hour session of the House of Commons. The Bill was passed in amended form, Labour MPs complaining, in a display of grotesque school-boy irony, of being held under “house arrest” in order to ensure the government’s majority.

Five members of the Political Association of Iranian Refugees, who are marching from Birmingham to London to protest against the possibility of US intervention in Iran, spoke at a meeting of Oxford Labour Party on 15 March. Sara Frouzyar translated.