Solidarity 170, 2 April 2010

British Airways workers can win

Stuart Jordan outlines the key issues in the British Airways cabin crew dispute. What’s the strike about? The crux of the dispute is the 1948 Redeployment Agreement, which says that wages and consequently pensions can never be cut. Back in October, in order to address the company’s £600 million losses this year and its £3.7 billion pension fund deficit, BA sought ways of ripping up the redeployment agreement. Their first strategy was to tell staff that a new deal on their terms and conditions was a fait accompli. In a letter, dated 27 October, from Unite national officer Steve Turner to BA...

Civil Service strike: full rights for all!

On Budget Day, 24 March, the civil service union PCS took a third day of strike action over detrimental changes to redundancy and early retirement rights. Overall this strike seems to have been more solidly supported than a two-day strike on the 8 and 9 May. Despite the Government’s call to the RMT and Unite unions that they must get around the negotiating table to solve their disputes (with Network Rail and British Airways) they are not following their own advice over our dispute, and have refused further talks. Therefore the PCS has no choice but to continue its campaign. Over the General...

NUT political fund: "vote to stop the BNP" is not enough

The left in the NUT almost universally celebrated the establishment of the political fund as a (limited) success. But the current fund actually hinders rank and file activists from promoting socialist politics — that is, the only politics working class militants should be interested in, the only politics which can secure the liberation of our class. Take the coming general election as an example. This will be the first chance to see the NUT political fund in action. The NUT slogan for the election is “Vote to stop the BNP” and posters, stickers and other materials bearing this message have...

National Union of Teachers: preparing for Tory cuts

The first major trade union conference in the pre-election period will be of the largest teachers’ organisation, the National Union of Teachers, meeting in Liverpool over the Easter weekend. Gordon Brown is set to announce the election on 6 April, the last day of the conference. But the education policies supported by NUT delegates will be a long way from those on offer from any of the major political parties. What are NUT polices? • Reduce class size dramatically with the aim that by 2020 no child is in a class of more than 20. • End SATs and league tables. • Stop the privatisation of schools...

Network Rail strike: "flexibility" will undermine safety

RMT members have voted to take various kinds of industrial action, including strikes, across the four days after Easter. As we go to press Network Rail bosses are due to make a High Court legal challenge to the strike. Solidarity spoke to a track maintenance worker and RMT member. The dispute involves signalling staff and engineering workers. Signallers are faced with longer hours and changes to rostering. The engineering dispute is about how we do our work in greatest safety and to best effect. Managers want to cut back the number of staff employed, impose changes on certain working-practices...

My life at work: "The days of the 11am finish are long gone"

Ken is a postman in East London. Tell us a little bit about the work you do. I’m a delivery postman. I get up very early and work a system called the “starburst” where I work in a team with four other postmen. We sort the mail together, load up a van and deliver five rounds. This system came in as part of the 2007 deal and we’re piloting it in our office. Do you think that you and your colleagues get the pay and conditions that you deserve? Probably not. People will always want more money and better conditions and understandably so, especially in the current economic climate. We have had a few...

The unions control Labour? If only that were true!

The Tories have used the BA dispute, and the membership of BA workers in the Unite union, to depict the Labour Party as a “prisoner” of the trade unions. Their campaign is being supported by right-wing papers like the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail, with the latter publishing an “expose” of a supposed Communist Party plot to take control of the Labour Party and the government. They say Unite is controlled by the Communist Party. The Lib Dems have also chimed in, with shadow chancellor Vince Cable using his 29 March TV debate with Alistair Darling and George Osborne to attack Labour for being...

Sheltered housing wardens: the elderly cannot afford these politicians

On Monday 22 March sheltered housing residents from around the country, many elderly and disabled, stood opposite Parliament to shout “Save our wardens!” They were protesting against the removal of residential wardens from sheltered housing schemes. Since the government removed the ring fence from the Supporting People budget, councils, mainly Tory and Lib Dem, have been raiding this pot to fund other services. A motorcade of chauffeur-driven cars bearing dignitaries in wigs, with their families, left the Palace of Westminster. We hadn’t a clue who they were, but perhaps we were able to make...

Catholic Church child abuse scandal: religion as a licence to prey

Ireland in the 20th Century: for countless small children, orphans alone in the world and children confined in special prisons for some petty crime against property or for bunking off school, life in institutions and schools run by Catholic priests and nuns was a childhood-long nightmare of violence at the hands of nuns, priests and Christian Brothers (a male, monklike, celibate, teaching order). There was no escape other than by way of the slow process of growing up in a priest and nun-made Hell, and then being released, often psychically maimed, into the adult world. In the nature of things...

The Budget: recycling old and useless remedies

In the 24 March budget Chancellor Alistair Darling announced the first tranches of cuts to the public sector. But he did this by saying he wanted to save hundreds of millions of pounds through “improving efficiency”. What does this mean? As with so many New Labour announcements, this efficiency drive recycled elements from previous initiatives. For example, in December 2009 the Government launched “First Line First”. This had the same recipe as the budget — improvements in procurement, reducing sick leave, moving civil servants out of London, cutting back on consultant spend etc. Before “First...

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