Workers' Liberty

(Air: "Paddy's Lament")

There's a cuckoo** in our household
And he terrifies our young,
For the habits of the traitor
Have been often told and sung.
Though his feathers flutter softly,

Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT rail union, has said: "RMT welcomes today's [1 July] announcement by the Government on the renationalisation of the East Coast route but this shouldn't be a short term, crisis measure.

The Government has climbed down on Royal Mail privatisation, saying that the measure is "postponed".

Despite a lively campaign against the plans, Barnet’s Conservative Cabinet voted on 8 June to axe the borough’s sheltered housing wardens.

They will be replaced with ‘floating support’ — a much reduced number of wardens operating out of a handful of local ‘hubs’. In theory the floating supporters will also serve elderly residents not in sheltered housing schemes. Since the budget for all of this has been cut from £1.4 million to £950,000 it’s clear that services to elderly people in the borough have been reduced.

Two weeks after nine cleaners at SOAS were taken into detention, campaigners are calling for action for justice for the SOAS 9.

They are also appealing for solidarity with detainees in Yarl’s Wood detention centre who are on hunger strike for demand including freeing children who are detained, adequate access to health care, quality food and real privacy.

An activist from the CWU union spoke to Colin Foster about the issues in the post following the London and Edinburgh strikes over job cuts on 19 June

There’s no decision yet made about the next lot of action, but there will have to be further action, because Royal Mail have not moved.

Friday 12 June saw hundreds of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students, staff and supporters march in East London in protest at major cuts to ESOL announced at Tower Hamlets College.

The (overwhelmingly female) student protesters led chants on megaphones, carried placards with their own powerful slogans, and spoke eloquently and emphatically to the national press about what ESOL means to them.

The two days of strike action on the London Underground over pay, job cuts and management bullying, 9-11 June, were a big success, with management unable to get services running until well into the morning, and then only token shuttles for PR reasons.

The admin offices of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London were occupied from Monday 15 to Wednesday 17 June, in response to an immigration raid on SOAS cleaners.

The raid was organised by ISS, the contractor for SOAS, and several cleaners were deported.

Whoever it was that said capitalism has reached the limits of ‘innovation’ should be asked to think again. We can be sure that in an effort to reduce the impact of the economic crisis on their own pockets, the capitalist classes and their teams of blue-sky thinkers will be cooking up ways to make workers pay for their excesses.

If proof be needed, just take a look at British Airways.

If the Government puts out £1100 billion in cash, credit, and guarantees to the banks, as it has done, then someone is going to foot the bill. On current plans, both Tory and New Labour, it is public services and public service workers.

The groups involved in the “No2EU” coalition for the Euro-election — the RMT union leadership group around Bob Crow, the Communist Party of Britain (Morning Star), the Socialist Party, and the Alliance for Green Socialism — are due to meet again before 28 June to discuss a “son of No2EU” project for the coming general election.

Industrial action over pay by the National Union of Teachers was one of the first casualties of the economic crisis.

Martin Donohue recommends The Troublemaker’s Handbook by Labor Notes

Founded in the USA in 1979, Labor Notes is rank and file union organising project and best known for its monthly newsletter. It also organises conferences attracting over 1000 rank and file union stewards, and published pamphlets and books.

On Wednesday 17 June, tube cleaners and supporters, including Feminist Fightback, Campaign Against Immigration Controls, and MPs John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn, demonstrated outside City Hall to demand that London Mayor Boris Johnson keep his promise of a living wage for all tube cleaners.

Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB general union, used his speech to the GMB congress in Blackpool (15 June) to call for the Labour Party to select “fresh working-class candidates that people can relate to”.

“Now is the time to select and elect 40 to 50 fresh real people, real trade unionists, people who actually know how much a pint of milk costs, and what it is like to get on a bus, MPs driven by commitment rather than being worried about being driven by a chauffeur”.

It is clear to all that the demands of the majority of Iranian society go far beyond economic demands. During the past few years, we have emphasized that so long as the principle of freedom of organisation and choice is not realized, any talk of social freedom and economic rights is more of a joke as opposed to reality.

In his speech to this year’s conference of the public services union Unison, in Brighton in mid-June, general secretary Dave Prentis called on the “Labour Link” section of the union to stop funding constituency development plans, and to work only with Labour MPs who abide by the union’s values and objectives.

Solidarity strikes have spread across Britain to beat the union-busting attempted by oil multinational Total and its contractors on their construction site at the Lindsey Oil Refinery site in Lincolnshire.

Many thousands of workers have struck over a principle, though the immediate bread-and-butter issue concerns just 51 workers.

Download pdf (see "attachment").

From the Justice for Iranian workers website, mobilising for the world day of solidarity with Iranian workers on June 26th (at http://www.justiceforiranianworkers.org/?p=758 ):

Total, the world’s sixth largest oil multinational sacked 600 workers at the Lindsey oil refinery last week.