Solidarity 594, 26 May 2021

Goodlord: 13 weeks on strike

Workers at Goodlord, a tech company providing tenant referencing services to letting agents, have been striking against attempts by their employer to impose worse contracts. Goodlord has now dismissed the workers who were continuing to resist the imposition of the contracts, using “fire and rehire” tactics. Their union, Unite, says the workers have effectively been sacked for going on strike, and that it will pursue legal action. Athena Parnell, a former Goodlord worker involved in the strikes, spoke to Solidarity about the dispute. The fight began at the end of October 2020 when our employer...

Where Labour made gains on 6 May

Robina Baine was the Labour candidate in the Southwick Green ward of Adur District Council, a seat in which Labour had not run a proper campaign for years, instead standing "paper candidates" and not canvassing. This time, an active campaign secured a remarkable 20%+ swing from the Tories to Labour, winning the seat for Labour for the first time in fifty years. Janine Booth asked Robina to explain what happened... Tell us a bit about yourself … I’m a very ordinary 61-year-old, mother of four and teacher for most of my life. When the children were young, I gave music lessons from home. Then I...

Students mobilise on Palestine

The student union at SOAS university in London joined the Palestinian call for a strike on 18 May, and finished the week with a campus vigil for lives lost to colonial violence. London students went on to join the internationalist bloc at the Palestine demo in London on Saturday, connecting struggles from Colombia, Ethiopia and Palestine as a common struggle against oppression and state violence. Apartheid off Campus, a student campaign group, has called a day of action for Friday 28 May: “a call for students to unite for BDS”. The student union at SOAS university in London voted to reaffirm...

Make solidarity without antisemitism

Many students at UK universities have rightly responded to the escalation of violence in Israel-Palestine by mobilising in support of the Palestinians. In some places there are campaigns to get universities to stop investing in companies that financially back Israeli military industries. We hope Palestinian solidarity campaigning continues beyond the ceasefire, and that university divestment campaigns succeed. At the same time we continue to criticise the blanket boycott policies which dominate on campuses (including academic boycotts), with their implicit backing for a “one state” outcome in...

Night Tube jobs robbery

London Underground has unilaterally incorporated Night Tube train operator duties into full-time train operators' rosters, consolidating the former TO23 (Night Tube) and TO21 (full-time) T/Op grades into a single grade.

This will mean fewer train operator jobs, increased night and weekend working...

PCS: we still need to transform the union

On a woefully low turnout of just 7.5% of members the ruling Left Unity (LU) group has secured a comprehensive victory in the elections for the National Executive (NEC) of the PCS civil service workers’ union (results announced 14 May). PCS will continue to be run by the same LU faction that has failed the membership for 18 years, but now minus the Socialist Party which was for most of those years central to that leadership and its failings. For many years the LU leadership has presided over defeat and retreat. It has lurched from inertia to belated, poorly prepared campaigns that treated the...

Diary of a Tube worker: These times are a bit awkward

I’ve come in off the front to have a break. D has just walked into the room from a meeting with a manager. “They have said they can just terminate our contract”. “Really?” F says, putting the duty book down and looking pained. “Yeah, it isn’t just you can’t be an instructor, if we continue to refuse we either go back to just being an operator or they sack us”. (Train operators who also work as instructors have been refusing some modes of work they consider covid-unsafe). “So what are you going to do?” “Well, I might take their option to stop for six months and go from there”. “Maybe if I was...

Kino Eye: A post-colonial film from Senegal

Ousmane Sembene of Senegal, a former French colony, was one of Africa’s pioneer filmmakers. His 1975 film Xala is set at the time of the colonial power’s withdrawal. The main character, businessman Aboucader Beye (known as “El Hadji”), becomes one of the new elite. He is utterly corrupt and accepts backhanders from French financiers. He already has two wives and marries a third, much younger than himself, a move which angers and upsets the older pair and Rama, his politically active daughter. She is opposed to the corruption of the new bourgeoisie which, of course, includes her father. She...

Resisting parks job cuts

Following a meeting with the United Voices of the World union (UVW), we’ll be issuing a letter to the outsourced contractor which employs cleaners in the Royal Parks. Currently workers are assigned to specific parks, but the contractor wants to move to a mobile workforce model. UVW estimates that this could lead to job cuts of up to 25%. In particular, all existing women workers can’t drive, so they’d be particularly at risk as workers would now be expected to drive between parks as part of the mobile workforce model. Our letter will make a series of demands. The key one is that they commit to...

Williams/Shapps Review: more of the same, and worse

Reading the Government’s Williams-Shapps Rail Review is like watching someone say they’re too hot in a jumper and deciding to put on an overcoat. The report slams the inefficient ways the rail industry is organised, especially the ridiculous “delay attribution” industry that results from the...

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