Monthly Archives: March 2006
One and a half million of the country’s most essential public sector workers will go on strike on 28 March to protest at unfair and unjust cuts to local government pensions, the Joint Union Strike Team (JUST) announced on Wednesday. UNISON said: ‘The strike is planned because the government refuses...
IT is Thursday afternoon in Paris and TENS of thousands of school and student youth have converged on the Place d’Italie. They are marching towards the centre of Paris, demanding either the government withdraws its CPE first job contract that gives employers the right to hire and fire youth without...
A DELEGATION of locked-out Gate Gourmet workers visited Hillingdon Direct Works Council Depot yesterday to publicise their march through Hounslow on the 25th of this month. Raksha, said: ‘We went to Uxbridge shopping centre today, where we mass leafleted shoppers and got support for our march. ‘We also went to Brunel...
THE Prime Minister was savaged at his monthly press conference yesterday after the emergence of the ‘donations for peerages’ scandal and the fact that Tory votes saw his Education and Inspections Bill get a successful second reading. Nick Robinson, BBC News asked: ‘Did you know that the men you...
ABOUT 1.5 million local council workers are to strike on March 28 to defend their local government pension scheme. It is being described as the biggest industrial action since the 1926 General Strike. Eight trade unions published the results of ballots for strike action yesterday. UNISON, the T&G and GMB...
A DELEGATION of locked-out Gate Gourmet workers leafletted at Ealing Hospital in west London yesterday and won more support for their demonstration through Hounslow on March 25. Posters were put up at the Sikh Temple at Park Avenue for the march and they also visited the PCS union branch for...
President Saddam Hussein called on Iraqis to ‘unite, rise up and resist the invaders’, at his show trial yesterday. This prompted chief judge Rauf Abdel Rahman to banish journalists from the courtroom. Just before the media was turned out of the gallery and the cameras switched off, Saddam told the judge he...
‘To whom it may concern,’ writes Michelle Harris, president of London Metropolitan University Students’ Union. ‘There is a serious issue occuring at London Met university and, as the president of the students’ union, I feel it should be brought to the attention of as many people as possible as it...
Polish workers, some of them members of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU), are being paid 5.20 euros an hour by a contractor on the 350 million euros refurbishment programme at the ESB power plant in Moneypoint, County Clare, says the Irish trade union. A TEEU statement said: ‘An...
GATE GOURMET locked-out workers are campaigning every day for their march through Hounslow on Saturday 25th March. Lakhinder Saran told News Line yesterday: ‘I went to see Graham Fowler, the deputy general secretary of the BALPA airline pilots union, this morning. He was very friendly and sympathetic. ‘He said he thought...
The Arab league yesterday condemned British and United States collusion with Israel, after Israel attacked a Jericho prison containing six Palestinian militants, 20 minutes after UK and US monitors left. Just 20 minutes after the British and US monitors withdrew, on the excuse of ‘deteriorating security’, Israeli forces launched an...
THOUSANDS of students took to the streets in major cities throughout France yesterday in the struggle against Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin’s First Employment Contract (CPE) measures. The Prime Minister made clear, in a special television broadcast on Sunday, that he will forge ahead with measures to make it easier...
Gate GOURMET locked out workers were yesterday campaigning for their march through Hounslow on Saturday 25th March. At Hounslow Civic Centre, where the rally is being held at the end of the march, Hounslow Council leader Colin Ellar, a GMB member, said: ‘I am happy to speak at the Gate...
THE Metropolitan Police chief Blair was yesterday forgiven by the Attorney General for secretly tapping at least one of their conversations ‘for future reference’. It has also emerged that Ian Blair taped a number of his conversations with officials of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, with whom he has been...
THE draft political programme of the Hamas-led national coalition government that was distributed to the representatives of the parliamentary blocs and forces during the recent dialogue sessions has just been published. It declares: ‘To remain loyal to the martyrs’ blood and our people’s sacrifices; to protect the inalienable basic...
FRENCH riot police stormed the Sorbonne in the early hours of last Saturday awakening memories of the revolutionary class battles of May June 1968. However, workers and students are pledging that they will answer the government’s legislation to turn youth into a slave labour force, sackable at a moment’s notice...
‘Speakers from around the world will join the May Day March for Workplace Justice,’ said the TUC yesterday. Top trade unionists from South Africa and Australia will join London Mayor Ken Livingstone and UK trade union leaders at the May Day March for Workplace Justice jointly organised by the...
THE death of Slobodan Milosevic in his cell at The Hague, four years into his trial by the imperialist powers for genocide, has left those who really fomented the break up of Yugoslavia and the Balkan wars in a rage, since their wish was to frame Milosevic for their...
THE Iraqi puppet authorities have hung 13 people accused of taking part in the insurgency, the first execution of militant nationalists since the US-led invasion. The 30,000 Iraqis being kept in prisons all over Iraq are now directly threatened with the same fate, beginning with President Saddam Hussein and...
GATE GOURMET locked-out workers won a victory yesterday, when they successfully carried out their picket at the Gate Gourmet plant front gate, despite a police threat made on Thursday to arrest them if they did. They erected their banner outside the gates of the airport catering factory, determined to maintain...
THERE will be ballots for industrial action at ASDA Wal-Mart, after talks with senior managers in the shops on Wednesday 8th, and depots on Thursday 9th, both failed to make progress on the items in dispute, the GMB trade union reported yesterday. On bonus’, ASDA Wal-Mart advised the GMB...
Six members of Lancaster University are to be granted a rehearing of their trespass conviction on the 13th March 2006. A Support the George Fox Six campaign statement said yesterday: ‘In a verdict last September which shocked Human Rights organisations and university staff, the six were found guilty of Aggravated...
THE new two-year business plan for British Airways was unveiled yesterday and includes provision for reducing costs by £450 million and restoring 10 per cent operating profits. The first plan announced since ex-Aer Lingus boss Willie Walsh became chief executive to prepare the move to Terminal 5 ‘could mean more...
GATE GOURMET locked-out workers were made to dismantle their picket tent and move from the Gate Gourmet factory gates by Heathrow Airport police yesterday. ‘I received an e-mail this morning saying any gathering outside the factory gate is a demonstration and as such contravenes the by-laws.’ Inspector Bogie told the picket:...
‘We will do everything we can to avoid redundancies’, said UNISON south west regional organiser Chris Dayus yesterday, after the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust announced plans to axe 300 jobs. The trust said some of these will come from compulsory redundancies, adding that it also plans to...
Gate Gourmet locked out workers picketed the Heathrow caterer’s factory gate yesterday. This was after Heathrow Airport police, accompanied by a British Airports Authority manager, on Tuesday had dismantled their picket tent and threatened to arrest them if they continued to demonstrate on the hill at the Beacon roundabout. ‘We are...
UNIVERSITY teachers yesterday launched an assessment boycott – after staging a national 24-hour strike against being ‘overworked, undervalued and underpaid’. Tuesday’s strike at 140 institutions across the UK was supported by the National Union of Students (NUS). Yesterday, lecturers, researchers and academic-related staff began their assessment boycott, which means they are...
THERE is no need to change the strategy police use to deal with suicide bombers – to put as many bullets into their brain as possible – despite the killing of an innocent man, Jean Charles de Menezes, on July 22, 2005 at Stockwell tube, the Association of Chief...
HEATHROW Airport police dismantled the Gate Gourmet locked-out workers’ picket tent on the hill at the Beacon Roundabout yesterday, threatening the workers’ TGWU Branch Secretary Jarnail Singh and the other pickets with arrest if they did not move. Duty Inspector Harrison told the workers, who have been picketing on the...
A NEW points-based immigration system for workers who want to come to the UK from outside the EU was unveiled by Home Secretary Charles Clarke yesterday. The scheme is designed to allow the British bosses to poach highly skilled, younger workers from Africa and Asia, the kind of...
‘Nearly three years after United States (US) and allied forces invaded Iraq and toppled the government of Saddam Hussein, the human rights situation in the country remains dire’, says Amnesty International, introducing its latest report Beyond Abu Ghraib: detention and torture in Iraq. ‘I have lost a year and a...
LECTURERS at 140 universities and colleges of higher education across the UK took national strike action yesterday, vowing: ‘We will not back down on pay.’ The joint strike by the AUT and NATFHE teaching unions was supported by the National Union of Students and other trade unionists, who refused to...
ZAKARIYA al-Zubaydi, commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, said last Sunday, that ‘Israel’s escalation of the situation, assassinations and aggression against our people and the resistance factions reflect the official policy of the occupation government. ‘This exercises violence and sheds Palestinian blood as part of a political game and a...
‘We are expecting a good turnout on the picket lines at universities and colleges of higher education across the country today,’ lecturers’ union Natfhe told News Line on the eve of the joint AUT/Natfhe national pay strike. Thousands of lecturers and academic staff are striking in pursuit...
YESTERDAY Prime Minister Blair stepped in to try and save his Minister for Culture, Media and Sports, Tessa Jowell and also his government. So we now have a minister whose husband may well face trial in Italy over corruption charges, namely that he took a £350,000 bribe from the Italian...
HEATHROW Airport police tried to remove the Gate Gourmet picket from the Beacon Roundabout outside the airport yesterday. Three locked-out workers were picketing in their tent yesterday lunchtime when the police arrived. A PC told the pickets: ‘You are in breach of the airport by-laws’. When they told him that the picket...
‘We are moving nearer to Delphi motioning the bankruptcy court to pitch out our labor agreement,’ said ‘The Future of the Union’ rank and file movement in the UAW last Saturday. This will mean huge cuts in wages, healthcare and pensions for Delphi workers. In a call to arms, the movement...
PRIME Minister Blair on Saturday, at a Unions 21 conference, urged unions to modernise to ‘seize the opportunities of globalisation and the changing nature of work’. According to Blair, modernised unions accept globalisation, the ‘right’ of capital to seek out the cheapest supplies of labour power in any part...
WHILST maintaining their daily picket near Heathrow Airport Terminal 4, Gate Gourmet locked-out workers are campaigning for their march through Hounslow on Saturday March 25. TGWU member, Devinder Dahalivall said: ‘We have heard that the company wants 80 more people and is inviting workers that they have sacked for...
Universities and higher education colleges across the country will be brought to a halt tomorrow as a historic joint AUT/NATFHE pay strike hits home. Thousands of students are expected to join strikers on the picket lines outside most campus entrances and thousands of lectures will be cancelled as members of...
SIPTU, the Irish trade union, is to call general meetings of its members in Aer Lingus for next week following an emergency meeting of shop stewards on Thursday, to save Aer Lingus. These meetings will brief members on developments regarding government policy towards the national airline, including the meeting...
GATE Gourmet locked-out workers are calling on all trade unionists to join them on their march through Hounslow on Saturday the 25th of March. Speaking on the picket line near Heathrow Airport Terminal Four yesterday, Asha Varma told News Line: ‘Our march must be a big success. ‘We were unfairly dismissed...
Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) leaders have signed a pay for jobs and ‘efficiency’ deal with Royal Mail. They are attempting to sell it to members as being ‘set to increase basic pay’. Yesterday’s CWU press statement claimed: ‘An agreement between the Union and Royal Mail takes a very important step forward...
ISRAEL has greeted the exercise by the Palestinians of their democratic right to elect Hamas as their governing party, with the most concentrated attacks on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for years. The US administration has just collected back $50 million in ‘aid’ that it was determined should...