Solidarity - articles before 22 November 2002

Earth Summit

Business as usual By Hannah Wood and Matt Cooper Early September saw a disgusting spectacle. Sixty thousand delegates descended on the rich centre of Johannesburg. They said they had come to "save the earth". In fact government leaders and business leaders crammed the market restaurants. Only the marginalised NGOs had any kind of claim to represent us, the workers and poor of the world. This was the ruling classes of the world getting together to talk about its problems and demonstrating its inability to solve them The Johannesburg summit was the follow up to a 1992 conference held in Rio. And...

Health and safety campaign grows

From Solidarity 3/12, 12 September 2002 The statistics remain shocking: 250 deaths a year at work a year officially, but this does not include 1,000 work-related deaths on the road and perhaps 5,000 a year because of asbestos. Over 2 million people are injured every year at work and 27,000 leave the workforce permanently due to illness or ill health. In construction, there is the equivalent of a rail crash every week in terms of casualties, yet less than 20 prosecutions of business people have taken place in the past fifty years. Paul Hampton reports. Six hundred delegates from trade unions...

Argentinian tube workers keep up fight

Underground workers in Buenos Aires have campaigned to have their working conditions designated as 'unhealthy' or 'insanitary', which would imply better conditions, such as six hour shifts, and more workers employed. The privatised company said in the press that this was just a demand by Trotskyists (in fact it has broad support both within the union). They said that if the work is designated as 'insanitary', all the women will have to be sacked, as the law forbids women to work in dangerous or unsanitary occupations. The workers successfully persuaded the Buenos Aires city legislature to pass...

Aussie unions under attack

The most militant trade unions in Australia are under fierce attack from Australia's conservative government - and from the top trade union leaders, including supposedly left-wing ones. When elected in 1996, the Liberal/Conservative government was quite open about wanting to break the power of the unions. So far, on the whole, despite trying hard, it has failed. Its latest moves are a "Royal Commission" on the building industry - a device to get the construction, mining, and forestry union, CFMEU, de-registered (deprived of legal recognition) - and a drive against the militant Victorian branch...

The Coast of Utopia: More People's Friend than People's Will

by Oona Swann If there was a dramatic equivalent of Poet Laureate Tom Stoppard would be it. He can play wittily with complex intellectual ideas and serve up populist entertainment, like 'Shakespeare in Love', which is equally stuffed with knowing treats for the discerning. I like his stuff. I don't mind his (Thatcherite) politics because it's dressed up so appetisingly. So when I hear he's writeen three linked plays around the lives of 19th century Russian revolutionaries, I expect something a bit special. Not that I expect to agree with him, more that if anyone can wittily dramatise the...

A working class answer to US imperialism and Saddam Hussein

Solidarity 3/12, 12 September 2002 US strategists evidently believe that they are "on a roll", and should seize the chance to tidy up another problem. With enough "smart bombs", they can crush Saddam's regime quickly, set up an alternative, and then withdraw. Rhodri Evans surveys the background. The US administration wants to go to war against Iraq. Not only socialists and radicals in the USA and worldwide, but also large sections of the US ruling class and of the USA's usual bourgeois allies worldwide, think this is folly. At small cost the US strategists will have secured the end of the...

TUC: Harsh words for Blair

TUC: The unions' collective political agenda was here more in evidence than for decades... plus, in brief: Caparo pensions strike? rail pensions general militancy Free Our Unions Public Meeting Building on the rank and file revival conference The elections of new left-leaning General Secretaries over the past couple of years - in PCS, RMT, ASLEF, CWU, Amicus - are bearing fruit. More of the members' agenda is filtering through the bureaucratic structures. In the debate on public services there were strong speeches that showed a confidence in the public sector unions' anti-privatisation agenda...

Local government union ferment continues

Solidarity 3/12, 12 September 2002 Pay deal consultation continues London still weighting Westminster council action stalled Newcastle victory Keep up the pressure The GMB, TGWU and Unison have been consulting their members in local government on an ACAS-brokered two-year pay deal. Most branches have organised an "indicative" ballot of their members. The union leaderships are recommending acceptance. The consultation will end on 16 September. The proposed deal averages out at just over 3.5% a year for two years and a promise of a pay commission. Even the much hyped increases for the lower...

Solidarity with the Firefighters

The case for the firefighters By Mark Sandell After four years of training firefighters are paid £21,531 a year. After the 1977-78 firefighters national strike a pay formula was introduced to set firefighters' wages, but that formula has failed to keep wages in line with average earnings. At their national conference this year, the Fire Brigades Union voted unanimously to make the following claim: £30,000 a year for full time firefighters; and for retained firefighters (who are employed part-time in rural areas and are on call 24 hours a day) £7,000 a year (for being on call) plus £13 for each...

Union political funds: No pick-and-mix politics

by Gerry Bates Not the sort of TUC Congress we have become accustomed to in recent years! The outspoken challenges to New Labour at this year's TUC by Mark Serwotka, Bob Crow, Mick Rix, Derek Simpson and others of the "new generation" of union leaders put the question of union political funds into a new light. Do we want to hear the same sort of outspoken challenge from the unions at the Labour Party conference at the end of September? We do. We know that even the most outspoken challenge will not undo Blair's pro-capitalist transformation of Labour into "New Labour". The best outcome, from...

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