Solidarity 606, 15 September 2021

Morrisons cuts sick pay

Morrisons, the UK’s fourth largest supermarket, with over 120,000 workers, is cutting sick pay for those who need to self-isolate if they have not been vaccinated. Despite Morrisons saying they will make exceptions, the announcement has sparked outrage — particularly because the chain’s chief executive has been open about their cost-cutting motivation. Justifying the cut, chief executive David Potts cited the “biblical costs of managing Covid” and other increased costs facing the company. Morrisons’ profits have fallen, but they were still £105 million in the six months to 1 August. It is due...

Facebook victimises workers' rep

Workers cleaning Facebook’s London offices for Churchill Cleaning will protest again on 17 September as part of their fight against workload increases, harassment of workers and victimisation of their union rep. The company has doubled the workload of cleaners at Facebook’s office on Brock Street (in Camden, north west London) and is now trying to implement similar changes at its London HQ down the road in Rathbone Square. It has removed Cleaners and Allied Independent Workers Union (CAIWU) rep Guillermo Camacho, and engaged in severe bullying of another worker, Monica Arribasplata. CAIWU...

The Palestinians in the world today

The global Palestinian population is estimated at around thirteen million. There are big Palestinian communities in some countries of the Americas – half a million in Chile, over 250,000 in the United States, 250,000 in Honduras, and 200,000 in Guatamala – but most Palestinians live in countries in the Middle East.

DSA tries to adjust to the Biden era

The 2021 Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Convention was held online from 30 July to 8 August. With 94,000 members — it has grown fast since 2015 — the DSA is the largest socialist organisation in the USA since the Socialist Party led by Eugene Debs at the beginning of the 20th century. We covered the 2019 Convention at bit.ly/dsa-2019 . Since the organisation was effectively refounded in 2016, DSA members are now typically in their twenties or thirties rather than fifties and sixties. Around 10,000 DSA members belong to a union, with a concentration in education and public sector unions...

A balance sheet of "Corbynism"

Just over a year after Jeremy Corbyn was elected, in September 2016, the new Labour Leader addressed the Burston Strike Rally in Norfolk.

Workers' Liberty conference moved to April 2022

We have decided to put our Workers’ Liberty conference planned for 27-28 November back to April 2022. We had our last conference, on 24-25 April , online. We managed well, considering, but decided to schedule a next conference in-person sooner than we otherwise would, in November 2021. The success of the vaccine drive made that seem workable. The Delta variant has upset our calculations. It can spread even with high vaccination, though that vaccination keeps death tolls much lower than before. The two weeks since schools restarted have seen, contrary to predictions, a slight fall in cases...

The Covid winter and the Tories' bias

So far the USA has donated 77 million vaccines doses to Covax , the WHO-backed Covid-jabs scheme for poorer countries. Britain has donated five million, France four million, other countries few. China has donated over 20 million jabs, mostly direct country-to-country as part of gaining influence. The figures look large. They are tokens on the scale of the six billion jabs given so far, the 30 million being given each day, and the billions needed in the next few months to stem the deaths (nearly 10,000 counted each day, officially 4.5 million counted so far, probably in fact 15 million). The...

TUC Congress ambles along

TUC Congress (online, 12-14 September) did not advocate anything like clear policies to address the multiple emergencies the working class faces — let alone struggles to win them. The Congress is typically uninspiring and light on engaged, democratic debate. Having it online, for the second year in a row, made things worse. When even the Labour Party is having a real-world conference this month, the TUC decision to stay online was notable. At the same time, despite the whole thing being watchable and documents etc accessible online, there seemed to be little political effort to interest even...

NHS pay: debate the options!

As I write on 14 September, neither Unison or the RCN has issued the results of their NHS pay consultations, which closed on 10 and 13 September respectively. The other unions are still in process. The votes are likely to indicate rejection. Very few workers give positive endorsement to the award, although there is a lack of confidence that anything can be done. There are rumours of relatively low turnouts, unsurprising given generally poor workplace organisation and limited campaigning by the unions nationally. Even if this is the case, participation will vary between workplaces and sectors...

Diary of an engineer: Incinerator bottom ash

To comply with our permit, the plant must burn waste hot enough and long enough to ensure that everything is reduced to ashes. Once the burn has finished, the smouldering ash is quenched in waste water then sent by conveyor belt into the ash bay. A magnetic belt removes ferrous metals from the ash and piles them separately. The black-grey gravel-like substance that remains is known as IBA — incinerator bottom ash. I’ve almost finished my apprenticeship, but in the meantime I’ve become a Compliance Technician. My job is to ensure that the plant complies with the permit issued by the Environment...

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