Solidarity 169, 19 March 2010

Royal Mail: reject this shoddy deal!

After keeping the membership in the dark for months about negotiations with Royal Mail bosses, the CWU postal leadership has finally announced a deal with which is hopes to conclude the latest national dispute with management. On the CWU website the leadership trumpets the deal as “bringing pay and job security for postal workers”. But, as a London postal worker told Solidarity , the deal actually lays the framework for further lay-offs: “I had been told that it involved closure of 50% of mail centres, but no such figure is in there. The deal looks at the ways that such closures might be...

Scottish cuts campaign

Public sector union Unison has called a demonstration in Glasgow on 10 April against planned, and already implemented, local authority job losses and cuts in services throughout Scotland. 50% of respondents in a recent survey of Unison members in Scotland reported a freeze on filling vacancies in their workplace. And 20% of respondents reported a policy of no cover being provided for absent members of staff. Given that the survey covered the impact of cuts imposed over the last two years, it does not take much to work out what will be the impact of the far greater cuts in spending due to be...

PCS severance dispute: all out on Budget Day, the same deal for all!

On 8-9 March the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) took strike action on 8-9 March over the Government’s proposals to reduce redundancy and early retirement payouts civil servants (proposals which come into force on the 1 April). The national union reports well over 100,000 members took action on each day. As with all disputes, the numbers of members on strike varied greatly between union branches, with some reporting their best ever turnout, others a poor turnout. This variation in turn out has prompted the right wing in the PCS to ridicule the dispute; they openly question the union...

We can beat the Tories

Some opinion polls have the Tory lead as low as two percent. On balance the polls suggest Cameron will have a small, but workable majority. But the Tories have been pushed back, and clearly can be pushed back further. That is good. All the mainstream party leaders are committed to cuts, but it makes a big difference whether the party in power has a mandate for huge and rapid cuts — so big and so rapid that they might have to launch a new Thatcher-type attack on the unions to push through. While the unions have channels they could use to fight Labour — though at present they scarcely do — the...

The Lib Dems in power - the reality

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg claimed in his recent Spring Conference speech that voting for his party meant a guarantee of “fairness” and “change you can believe in”. The Lib Dems have traditionally been able to get away with the worst opportunism of the main parties on the basis that they are unlikely ever to get into power. They can say whatever they want, criticise the other parties, knowing they will never be held to account. The recent pledge of allegiance by ex- New Statesman editor John Kampfer suggests that this pitch is having some effect on elements of the soft left. But if you...

Debate: anti-semitism and the split in the Irish Workers' Group.

Contents "Secret Zionists"? How the IWG divided Marranos? Maria Duce Not just logic Aha! But now? Farrell and McCann McCann's politics Lysaght in the IWG Part two of a response to Rayner Lysaght on the history of revolutionary socialism in Ireland. It is a copy edited and expanded version of the text in Solidarity. It now includes relevant quotations from the record of the hearing of the Lawless Case by the European Court of Human Rights. Rayner Lysaght's response to the charge that an anti-semitic witch-hunt took place in the Irish Workers' Group in 1967-8 is typical, and typically modest. He...

Cleaners organising at UBS

Cleaners who work in the City of London offices of the giant international bank UBS [Union Banque Suisse] are finding their terms and conditions coming under attack as they are transferred from one cleaning contractor, Mitie to another, Lancaster. This is a fuller version of the interview than in the printed paper . This largely migrant workforce are organising to protect their rights. The employer has sacked one of the leading union activists among the cleaners, Alberto Durango. They are attempting to convince the remaining workers to accept the new contracts. But in addition to this, the...

A socialist how-to for the election

Take a busy street corner in a big city. A hundred adults pass by. Statistically, how do they relate to the general election? Forty of them won't vote. In fact, more like fifty or sixty. The 40% non-voting rate is among electors, and quite a few people in cities are not on the electoral register. Young people are more likely to be out on the streets than older people, but vote less. And the 45 or so who will vote? Extrapolating present polls, about 17 will vote Tory, about 14 Labour, about nine Lib Dem, and the remaining five a mix of UKIP, Greens, BNP, and nationalist (in Scotland and Wales)...

Evening Standard: back to the Victorian era

The Evening Standard 's 'campaign against poverty' is a campaign for a return to the Victoria era. In its series of articles under the heading 'The Dispossessed', the paper notes that 40 percent of London children live in poverty and 20 percent in "severe poverty", while inequality continues to widen. The conclusion it draws is that public services will never cope and that more private philanthropy is needed. Simon Jenkins: "But another answer lies in an unfashionable quarter, in reverting to the voluntary and charitable sector from which London's welfare state emerged. We thought we could do...

Three general strikes in Greece

Greece's trade unions have organised three general strikes in the last month against the drastic cuts programme developed by the PASOK (social-democratic) government to conciliate the international financiers: 24 February, 5 March, 11 March. Two union federations loosely linked to PASOK - ADEDY (public sector) and GSEE (private sector) - and the PAME union federation, led by the diehard-Stalinist Greek Communist Party, called the strikes. Further strikes are talked of. The financial crisis has eased slightly, with EU discussions about loans to help out the Greek government, but the cuts are...

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