Solidarity 558, 5 August 2020

Syria: Assad, Iran, Russia, no democracy

Elections were held on 19 July in regime-controlled areas of Syria, now over 70% of the country. Assad has been in power for over 20 years. This, the third election since the start of the protests in 2011, was postponed because of Covid-19. As in all the others, there was no real opposition to Assad’s Ba’ath party. Even the opposition that is tolerated by Assad boycotts the elections. Karam Shaar, an expert on Syria at the Middle East Institute, was quoted by Al-Jazeera just before the election results. “The al-Assad regime uses parliamentary elections to reward loyalty. This time around...

Unionising black workers in the USA

African Americans who maintained train engines had to sue the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen to gain admission to the union in 1944. Outside the court. The Memphis, Tennessee, bin workers’ strike of 1968 is now mainly remembered as an event that provided the backdrop for the assassination of Martin Luther King. King had made a turn, with his Poor People’s Campaign, towards fighting against poverty. 1300 black workers in Memphis struck against poverty pay rates that were so low many of the men wore dirty old clothes and needed social security payments to feed their children...

School history and Black Lives Matter

A good historian and history teacher is a blend of detective, lawyer, and story-teller. At its simplest history is story-telling with evidence, though for many years history in schools was simply the story of rulers, of so-called great men. The stories of the little people, often far more interesting, were neglected. And the more oppressed the people, the more likely that their story remained untold in history books. Imagine for a minute you are a trans man or woman, or a black trans man or woman. You have all the experience of isolation in a cruel world full of prejudice and, to add salt to...

Hong Kong faces direct rule

On 2 August it was announced that after the term of the last LegCo councillors expires, the power to decide who will rule Hong Kong over the next year will be handed over to 5 to 7 members of the Chinese Communist Party’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee meeting in Beijing. Current LegCo members opposed to the National Security Law (NSL) will likely be removed. They had already been barred from standing again for LegCo. Hong Kong faces thinly-veiled direct rule from the CCP in Beijing. On Tuesday 28 July, Benny Tai, initiator of the 2014 Occupy movement, was fired from Hong Kong...

Organising home care workers

In April, deaths of those receiving domiciliary care services were 2.7 times higher than the three-year average, an excess only slightly lower than in care homes. Yet there has been little focus on this sector during the pandemic. The infection control issues reported by workers, lack of PPE and inadequate sick pay, are common across social care. The neglect from government has been even starker for home care workers than for care homes. Over half of domiciliary care providers report having no allocation from the national infection control fund, which specified 75% of the money for care homes...

Social care: control, markets and public provision

Jamie Hale ( Solidarity 546) makes a number of points that strengthen the central argument in Solidarity 544 for public ownership of social care. A strengthening of workers’ rights for those in the sector, including higher pay, proper contracts, sick pay and holiday pay, would mean less rushed workers providing care and support for people without having to whizz round multiple people, with very differing needs, over a short space of time, and with minimal training. Jamie points to the importance of direct payments and the management of care institutions by those who live in them. A charter...

Unison: opening out the choice

The election for the general secretary position in public sector union Unison begins on 10 August. Branch nominations run from then until 25 September, and the vote from 28 October to 27 November, with results announced on 11 January 2021. Incumbent general secretary Dave Prentis, in office since 2001 and with a record of profound bureaucratic conservatism, will retire when his current term ends in December. Candidates require 25 branch nominations to make the ballot paper. So far, five candidates have formally declared their intention to stand, three of whom are currently unelected officials...

Diary of an engineer: Slightly triumphant after the break-in

During this year’s annual shutdown an unknown male worker managed to steal keys to the women’s toilet and shower cabin and lock us out. “Us” being me and the one other female worker out of the hundreds of contracted workers on site. The women’s is a small room with a separate, lockable, shower cubicle, and a toilet which is close to where we work and eat. Before any women have arrived on site, I notice scattered toilet roll, chemical residue in the sink and shit in the toilet basin. S, when she arrives, is an administrative worker in clean office clothes who approaches me to ask about shower...

Who does the cleaning?

As some sites return to work the kinds of jobs people are doing have shifted. Shops, bars, restaurants and attractions are now doing more regular and more thorough cleaning. Tesco has brought the cleaning in-house in its 1,920 Express and Metro smaller shops. The cleaning was previously done by an outsourced contractor. Tesco ended the contract rather than bring the workers in house, so cleaning will now be done by the same staff who manage the shop, stock the shelves, and serve on the till. Many workers are unhappy about being required now to undertake work that was not part of their original...

John Moloney's column: Outsourced cleaners strike

Outsourced cleaners in HMRC offices in Merseyside begin their next strike on Monday 3 August. They’ll strike until 28 August, demanding living wages and full occupational sick pay. This latter demand is clearly vital in terms of safety and infection control during the pandemic, and is the central demand of the Safe and Equal campaign in which Workers’ Liberty members have been central, so hopefully Safe and Equal can play a role in supporting the strike. For how you can support the strike, see justiceforhmrccleaners.wordpress.com The unions will be holding a consultative ballot of our members...

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