Solidarity 166, 4 February 2010

The Tory led Local Government Association (LGA) has said there will be no increase in pay in 2010-2011. They say there is not enough money available to fund an increase and this is the only way they have to protect jobs and services in the economic crisis. The Labour minority group on the LGA have suggested a 1% increase for the lowest paid — a small crumb of comfort. This is Tories practising for national power and adopting a hard line stance on pay. It is only a prelude for what a Cameron government will attempt. Alongside the pay freeze there is also an attempt to renegotiate the terms of...

The snap election for General Secretary of Unison, called on 20 January, has caught many by surprise. Dave Prentis, the incumbent, got the National Executive to nod through his personal timetable for the ballot. Normally there would be months of notice before nominations are opened but his schedule starts the nominating period on 4 February. Prentis has already put out publicity to branches and set up a website appealing for nominations and donations. Prentis has been General Secretary since 2001. “Control” rather than “leadership” has characterised his term of office. On paper Unison has...

The three-way contest for Deputy General Secretary of the largest teachers union, the NUT, resulted in a major victory for the left. Kevin Courtney, the Camden NUT secretary and leading light in the Socialist Teachers’ Alliance (STA), was elected after an impressive campaign which maximised his support amongst activists and local branch officers of the union. In the final round of votes Courtney defeated the “Broadly Speaking” candidate Martin Reed by 20,848 votes to 18,236. The third candidate, Hazel Danson of the Campaign for a Democratic and Fighting Union (CDFU), won 8,064 first preference...

Members of the BASSA branch of the Unite union, which represents cabin crew working for British Airways, began re-balloting for strike action over pay freezes and job cuts on 25 January, with results due back on 22 February. The re-ballot follows the decision of a High Court judge to rule illegal a previous strike ballot in which over 90% of workers, on an 80% turnout, voted to strike. Despite renewed press hysteria around the “selfishness” of the workers’ campaign and tabloid speculation that they would try and “target” the Easter holidays in the same way that they had “targeted” Christmas...

An audit demanded by Unite and GMB unions into the pay of workers building a new gas turbine power station at Staythorpe in Nottinghamshire has showed that a sub-contractor (Somi) is paying its Italian workers less than UK rates for the job —by an average of 1,300 euros a month. These workers are “posted workers” — sent by their employer to work in a different country on a temporary basis. Unions believe these workers are being used to undercut wages and conditions in the industry. Staythorpe’s UK workers have been at the forefront of wild cat strike action in the last year, and were on strike...

A long-awaited report from the Government inquiry into Wirral Council's plans to close 11 libraries was finally made public just before Christmas. The report was due to be published in September but Wirral chose to sit on it while they announced their decision to keep all the 11 libraries open. We now know why they did not publish. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport inquiry found that the council were in breach of their statutory duties, had failed to assess the needs of local people and displayed a lack of logic when making their plans. The report's author Sue Charteris states, “the...

Barnet Tory council’s decision to axe its sheltered housing wardens and replace them with a roving support service with far fewer staff was ruled illegal by the High Court in December 2009. The court ruled that in its consultation Barnet had not met its duties under disability discrimination legislation. Now the council has put off for this year any new moves to cut the service. But it is likely that, once the elections are out of the way, they will try again, this time making sure they comply with legislation. Ninety per cent of people responding to the first consultation opposed the cuts...

Around a hundred trade union and community activists attended an anti-cuts meeting organised on Saturday 23 January by Glasgow City Unison branch. Trade unions and community organisations have come together into a single campaign against council cuts in jobs and services. Glasgow City Council is making major cuts in jobs and services over the next three years, involving not just the council but also its “Arms Length Organisations” — supposedly set up to safeguard jobs and services! The proposed cuts include: • 600 immediate job losses with more to come; • 12 community centres, a library and a...

Want to know the reasons for the 2003 invasion of Iraq? Better read the testimony by Paul Wolfowitz — US deputy Defense Secretary at the time of the invasion — to a US Congress committee on 25 February 1998 than Tony Blair’s words to the UK Iraq Inquiry on 29 January 2010. Blair gave, as the Financial Times reported, a “typically smooth” and “lawyerly” story. Wolfowitz was arguing a case, not trying to gloss things over after the event. Wolfowitz’s argument was mostly about the Gulf region, not just Iraq. After the US war against Saddam in 1991, he said: “We are in a position, essentially, of...

“We are not getting excited about the election.” (Duncan Hallas, a central leader of the Socialist Workers Party, in Socialist Worker , on the eve of the 1979 general election which gave power to Thatcher’s Tories.) One of two things. Either the outcome — the new government — of a May 2010 general election, is a matter of little or no consequence to the working class and to the labour movement and therefore a matter of indifference to socialists. Or it is of consequence, perhaps of great consequence, to the working class and therefore of great importance to socialists. We think it is important...