Solidarity 158, 10 September 2009

There is another dispute looming in engineering construction. A national ballot of workers on seven major sites, organised by both the GMB and Unite ran from 11 August to 1 September, taking up the employers’ refusal to make a pay offer or give any guarantees of employment security in the review of the NAECI agreement for 2010. The unions have not published the ballot result. They are putting new proposals from the employers to a national shop stewards’ meeting on 17 September. The two waves of wildcat strikes earlier this year showed that solidarity, all-out action and workplace democracy win...

A meeting on 7 September for public sector workers in Jersey to discuss the pay freeze announced by the Jersey Government drew 1,000 workers and has resulted in plans for strike action across the public sector in Jersey. The meeting was hosted by the public sector unions, mainly the teachers’ unions and Unite. 6,000 workers are affected by the freeze. The public sector on Jersey consists of manual workers, teachers, airport workers, transport workers and health workers. A strike by all these workers would shut down the island. The Government has refused to negotiate and even bypassed its own...

United Left, the new united “broad left” in Unite, held its hustings to decide who should be its candidate for the post of General Secretary in Manchester on 5 September. When TGWU and Amicus merged to form Unite, T&G general secretary Tony Woodley and Amicus general secretary Derek Simpson became “joint general secretaries”. The merger terms say that Simpson must retire on 23 December 2010 and Woodley before 23 December 2011. The first proper Unite general secretary is to be elected some time in 2010, and will take office when Woodley retires, on 24 December 2011 or earlier. Les Bayliss, an...

Pete Firmin, a London postal worker, spoke to Solidarity about the post and telecom union CWU's campaign against job cuts in Royal Mail As far as I can tell, the strikes across the country in recent weeks have been pretty solid. In London, they are certainly having an effect on the mail. Understandably, many workers are now impatient for the national ballot. The national ballot on action starts on 16 September. The union has put it back a week because, it says, some branch records were not sufficiently up to date to withstand legal challenge. That may be true, but surely the national union...

Unite members at Fujitsu Services are gearing up for a fight over jobs, pay and pensions. Fujitsu is a Japan-based multinational; its main UK subsidiary provides IT services to many government departments and large companies. It employs 12,000 workers at over a hundred locations across the UK. Last year Fujitsu Services' profits doubled to £177 million — 8,000 per worker! Two directors were recently paid £1.6 million to leave. The parent company paid out dividends of 24.46 billion yen, approximately £154 million. And yet deep cuts are being made. • The company says 6,000 workers are “at risk”...

In mid-July up to 20,000 people marched through Kilmarnock in opposition to Diageo’s plans to shut down its Johnnie Walker bottling plant in the town, at a cost of 700 jobs, and to shut down its Port Dundas grain distillery in Glasgow at the cost of another 200 jobs. From the platform at the closing rally great speeches were given by politicians from all the major parties pledging their support for the campaign to keep the bottling plant open. A government-led task force, involving elected representatives from across the political spectrum, trade union leaders, and civil servants from Scottish...

While the numbers of workers across the world thrown on the scrapheap of global capitalism’s current crisis continues to rise, and those responsible sing along with their house trained professional “canaries” about “green shoots” of recovery, spasms of defiance and resistance continue to be seen everywhere. The latest in Italy? Following a successful 14 month occupation and work-in by 240 workers in a machine-tool plant outside Milan against closure and removal of the machinery, teachers are occupying education offices in protest against cuts of 65,000 teaching, ancillary and admin jobs. The...

The BBC is preparing to invite British National Party leader Nick Griffin to appear on its Question Time programme. We should oppose Griffin speaking. In general, socialists are for the widest possible freedom of speech. More than any other social force, the working class needs democratic rights in order to organise itself and struggle effectively. We aim to disrupt and prevent BNP meetings, street activities etc. not because we against fascists having freedom of speech in the abstract, not simply because we loathe their ideas (though we do), but because we know fascist organisations exist to...

Management at Tower Hamlets College, in East London, have insisted that they must show a profit at all costs by the end of the financial year. So thirteen workers (equivalent to 6.75 full-time teaching posts) have been threatened with redundancy. These posts add up to a saving of just £300,000 for the college, which has £6,000,000 in reserves. Many staff have been pushed into taking voluntary redundancy — equivalent to 20 full-time teaching posts. The worst hit courses will be those most used by local people and school leavers: Hair and Beauty, IT, and most of all, ESOL (English for Speakers...

Fidel Castro: “Thus has been the story of mankind; to struggle to overcome the laws of nature; to struggle to dominate nature and have it serve mankind.” (1966) “Unless we conquer nature, nature will conquer us.” (1970) The AWL characterises Cuba as a Stalinist state, where workers do not hold power and cannot organise independently. Apologies for Castroism today — like this book — cite its environmental policies as proof it is historically progressive, even a model for climate activists. This is a mistake. The regime inherited a disastrous legacy from capitalism in 1959. But in Conquering...