Unite

BAE job cuts: workers need their own plan

Arms industry behemoth British Aerospace Engineering (BAE) has announced plans to axe 7.5% of its UK workforce with 3,000 job losses slated, mainly from sites in the north of England. The BAE factory at Brough, near Hull, will lose 900 workers from a workforce of just 1,300. Responses from politicians and union officials alike have been mainly characterised by sympathetic but insubstantial grumbling and calls to “mitigate the impact” of cuts. Labour’s Shadow defence minister Jim Murphy MP has described the cuts as a “body blow”. His comment comes soon after a speech at Labour Party conference...

Organise for 30 November

The declaration by the Trades Union Congress that Wednesday 30 November will be the next “day of action” in the campaign against government pension cuts is enormously positive and must now be a key focus for organising. Like the June 30 strike, action in November will demonstrate to a generation of working-class people unused to seeing their class move as a visible social force that workers have real power to act in our own interests. It is also positive and important that senior union officials are talking up the need for sustained action. On 20 July, Unite regional organiser Ian Woodland...

Southampton strikes back on

Social care workers at Southampton council voted on Wednesday 14 September to take further strike action on Thursday 6 October as workers’ war against the Tory council’s pay cuts approaches its fifth month. Other groups of workers will meet to discuss joining October’s strike. Since June, workers across council departments have been involved in a bitter conflict with the city’s council as it seeks to impose across-the-board pay cuts of between two and 5.5%. The workers’ unions, Unite and Unison, have run a creative and ambitious dispute, employing strategic tactics designed to maximise impact...

Pace quickens in construction fight

Five of the eight construction contractors threatening to withdraw from the union-negotiated agreement governing workers’ pay and conditions have issued the Unite union with legal notice of their intention to introduce new contracts from 7 December. The move by the contractors, who include industry giant Balfour Beatty, represents a significant raising of the stakes in what could become a labour war in the construction industry. Previously, the contractors had intimated that they would wait until March 2012 before withdrawing from collective agreements. Workers have upped the pace of their...

Set up strike committees for 30 November

Unions have set 30 November as the date for another one-day strike against pension cuts. The teaching unions NUT, ATL, and UCU, and the civil service union PCS, have still-valid mandates for action from ballots earlier this year. Unions such as Unison, GMB, the Fire Brigades Union, and teachers’ union NASUWT are now balloting. It is important that the ballots be for discontinuous action (rather than for a single day’s strike); and activists should demand that unions name a date for a further strike now rather than waiting until after the November action. Workers must also start putting in...

Southampton battle not over

Refuse workers have begun a new round of industrial action in the long-running Southampton council dispute, commencing a work-to-rule as part of the fight against the Tory council’s cuts. Despite claiming a recruitment freeze is in place and threatening existing employees with redundancy, the council has now begun advertising for 16 jobs in the refuse collection sector. Unite regional organiser Ian Woodland said: “We would expect that these posts are filled internally first, because there are people who still face losing their jobs. I think there will be questions asked about recruiting when...

Labour and McCluskey's promise

A year ago, union members’ votes installed Ed Miliband as Labour leader, against the wishes of the Shadow Cabinet and the majority of Labour MPs. He told Labour Party conference that he would move on from “New Labour”, and that the invasion of Iraq had been wrong. The conference promised a thorough review of Labour’s undemocratic structures. All good. According to latest figures, 70,000 new members have now joined Labour since May 2010. It’s a small figure by historical standards, but big compared to the shrivelled membership roll (below 140,000) before May 2010. The big unions had shown...

Unite cheap membership offer

According to Labour Research magazine (September edition), the general union Unite has announced the launch of a community membership scheme. On offer is cut-price membership of 50p a week for students, the unemployed and single parents in a drive to organise in local communities as well as workplaces. This is a small, but very significant development. It will enable the unwaged to become active within the Unite union and the wider movement including trades union councils.

A sophisticated apology for Castro

Pablo Velasco reviews Workers in Cuba: Unions and labour relations. A 2011 update. (Institute of Employment Rights) Whether it is resolutions at union conferences, House of Commons receptions or summer garden parties, the uncritical lauding of the Cuban government in the British labour movement stretches from Brendan Barber to Bob Crow. Workers in Cuba is a sophisticated piece of orthodox apologetics. It consists of a previously published essay by Debra Evenson, a foreword by Unite general secretary Len McCluskey and an introduction and annex by academic Steve Ludlam. The pamphlet will be...

Strike round-up: Oxfordshire council, First TransPennine Express, Northern Ireland health, Bombardier Canada, Verizon USA

Oxfordshire youth workers Youth workers in Oxfordshire struck on Tuesday 23 August against council plans to slash its youth services and threatens up to 80 jobs. The county council plans to reduce funding from £3.7 million to £1.4 million. It is already one of the country's lowest contributors to youth services. The council plans to keep half of its 26 youth centres open as “early intervention centres”, and a further 9 may win a reprieve through “Big Society” funds. Mike Beal, chair of the Unite branch which organises the youth workers, said that workers who take jobs in the new “early...

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