Workers' Liberty

From Education Not for Sale.

On Monday 1 February the higher education funding body, the HEFCE have announced the details of how the budget cuts imposed by Peter Mandelson back in December 2009 will fall. The headline cuts is one in the universities' teaching budgets — £215m in the acedemic year 2010-11.

New legislation giving rights to Britain’s 1.8 million temporary workers should be in place by April this year, but will not be enforced until 2011.

Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) leader Mark Serwotka has promised a strike campaign in the run-up to the general election aimed at causing “the most disruption possible” to the government.

The snap election for General Secretary of Unison, called on 20 January, has caught many by surprise. Dave Prentis, the incumbent, got the National Executive to nod through his personal timetable for the ballot.

The three-way contest for Deputy General Secretary of the largest teachers union, the NUT, resulted in a major victory for the left. Kevin Courtney, the Camden NUT secretary and leading light in the Socialist Teachers’ Alliance (STA), was elected after an impressive campaign which maximised his support amongst activists and local branch officers of the union.

Members of the BASSA branch of the Unite union, which represents cabin crew working for British Airways, began re-balloting for strike action over pay freezes and job cuts on 25 January, with results due back on 22 February.

An audit demanded by Unite and GMB unions into the pay of workers building a new gas turbine power station at Staythorpe in Nottinghamshire has showed that a sub-contractor (Somi) is paying its Italian workers less than UK rates for the job —by an average of 1,300 euros a month.

Around a hundred trade union and community activists attended an anti-cuts meeting organised on Saturday 23 January by Glasgow City Unison branch. Trade unions and community organisations have come together into a single campaign against council cuts in jobs and services.

Juliette Chamberlain lives in Sheffield and works as a paramedic.

MASS DEMONSTRATION

1-2pm, Friday 12 February 2010
UBS, 100 Liverpool Street, London EC2M 2RH

Sponsoring organisations:

Workers and union officials in the engineering construction industry long suspected it, but now they have proof.

The new issue of Tubeworker celebrates a 'triple whammy', as Underground workers fight back on Alstom, Signals, and against the five pound minimum Oyster top-up.

The snap General Secretary election called last Wednesday has exposed the current weaknesses of the left in Unison.

The behaviour of Britain’s two biggest revolutionary socialist organisations where they have trade-union positions is coming to resemble more that of the old Communist Party than any of the best elements of the Trotskyist tradition both the SWP and SP claim affinity with.

“Work is, by its very nature, about violence — to the spirit as well as to the body... It is, above all (or beneath all), about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us.” Studs Terkel.

This year the two million trade unionists in Unite will get to elect a single general secretary who will replace Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley in 2011.

A decision by the PPP Arbiter in December may prove to be a fatal punch to private infrastructure company Tube Lines and the whole “Public-Private Partnership” set-up on London Underground.

Patrick Beckford lives in Nottingham and works as a driver for East Midlands Trains.