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By Pat Yarker
A sixteen-year old schoolboy pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey this month to raping his teacher in her classroom at a south London school. He was 15 years old at the time of the assault in September 2004.
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By Colin Foster
Three and a half months after the 30 January elections, Iraq now has an elected government, a coalition of the Shia and Kurdish alliances, with some seats set aside for Sunni Arab politicians. The Sunni-Islamist “resistance” has marked the occasion with a new surge of bombings.
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Local RMT members and supporters joined a lively demonstration through London on Saturday 30 April, demanding that rail privatisation be reversed.
Marching from Whitehall Place to King’s Cross, demonstrators took their message to thousands of shoppers and tourists. For the previous two weeks, a group of 25 union members had marched through cities from Glasgow to London on a mobile demonstration.
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By Vicki Morris
Mayday in Europe, in addition to the traditional marches, witnessed a number of “Euromayday” events. The organisers are more or less anarchistic activists involved in struggles of the unemployed and insecurely employed and are generally scornful of the “organised” labour movement.
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Twelve “sans papiers”, migrants with no legal status, who had been on hunger strike for 50 days in France, have learned that they will get full rights.
They had moved to a trade union centre in Paris after they were turfed out of the offices of Unicef.
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The European Parliament has voted to scrap an opt-out from the rules limiting the working week in the EU to an average of 48 hours, but the ruling won’t come into force for another three years and it could still be blocked if the UK Government wins support in the Council of Ministers.
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By a health worker
UNISON members employed by private contractor Serco at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital have decided to take their claim for NHS pay and conditions to arbitration with ACAS.
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By a London Underground worker
A shorter working week deal on London Underground which gave workers a 35 hour week is about to blow apart.
Management have used the deal as cover to viciously attack staffing levels, to push through cuts that they have wanted for a long time. Double-cover supervisors, platform turns, Ticket Office opening hours, gateline coverage — are all in the firing line.
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By a CWU member
Hardly had the last election result been counted, and the Chair of Royal Mail, Allan Leighton, began to call for a share issue and employee buyout for the ailing firm. He says he wants to pump £2 billion extra investment into the postal industry. His proposals, as far as they have been made clear, assume a part-privatisation of Royal Mail. The CWU has written to all MPs saying it opposes such proposals.
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Truck drivers from across Europe have agreed to work towards more European-wide trade union co-operation to tackle problems on social dumping, security and health as well as organising in pan-European companies. At a conference attended by over eighty delegates from nine EU conference at the T&G Centre in Eastbourne, delegates highlighted action on these points as well as individual country concerns.
