Monthly Archives: June 2006
‘GMB members win the right to collective bargaining in the UK, Asda Wal-Mart distribution depots’, is what the GMB trade union optimistically labelled the decision by Wal-Mart yesterday, to stage a tactical retreat and reach an agreement to avoid a massive five day strike action that would have cost...
The GMB trade union yesterday confirmed it has accepted an agreement offered by Wal-Mart owned Asda supermarkets and called off a planned five-day national strike at Asda’s 20 distribution depots. This came after GMB Shop Stewards from the Asda distribution depots met in London to consider the outcome of the...
‘Student nurses are frustrated, angry and disillusioned because of the difficulties they face finding jobs as deficits bite,’ said UNISON, the UK’s largest health union, yesterday. Thousands of newly qualified nurses and other health professionals will be without jobs by the time they graduate this year, according to a survey...
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists and the Association for the Prevention of Torture have issued a joint statement calling on European states to ‘cease all involvement’ in US torture flights, known as renditions ‘or illegal detentions’. Titled ‘Twelve Steps to End Renditions and Secret Detentions...
A FIERY and chaotic debate took place at the BMA Annual Representative Meeting (ARM) on Labour’s health policy yesterday. At it the ARM representatives strongly reasserted their support for the pro-NHS, anti-privatisation resolutions that they passed on Monday. Consultant radiologist, Dr Ellie O’Sullivan moved that the preamble to the policy...
TUC General Council members gave a good welcome to lobbying locked out Gate Gourmet workers yesterday morning. A number promised to attend the anniversary march, rally and celebration of one year of struggle by the locked out workers, in Southall on August 20th. 800 workers were locked out and sacked...
Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) South Eastern Divisional Committee is calling on all CWU members to ‘Vote yes and vote for negotiation’ in the union’s forthcoming ballot for national industrial action. In a statement titled Royal Mail’s New Way Forward, the committee says: ‘In our view, Royal Mail’s recent actions towards...
TRADE union general secretaries and other delegates to the TUC General Council expressed support, and donated money to the Gate Gourmet locked-out workers who lobbied their meeting in central London yesterday. The TGWU members were locked out of their jobs at Heathrow Airport by the airline catering company on...
Teamsters’ leader James Hoffa junior tells 27th Teamsters Convention ‘Welcome to the 27th International Teamsters Convention. It is an honor to address you as your General President. Since we met here five years ago we’ve made history. We’ve changed our Union and we’ve changed the American Labor Movement. While others have...
TONY BLAIR may not be able to recover his authority and leadership after recent damaging events, former Blair Home Secretary, Clarke has said. Charles Clarke was Blair’s key minister, a Home Secretary willing to fight to give the police 90 days to interrogate a suspect without having to charge...
OPENING the ‘Public Services Not Private Profit’ rally yesterday, John McDonnell MP said: ‘Today is the largest and broadest lobby of parliament for decades. 16 unions campaigning together. He told the Westminster gathering: ‘What we need to do is come together and campaign. This New Labour government is laundering money...
Two British soldiers were killed in action in Afghanistan on Monday night, the Ministry of Defence confirmed yesterday. A third soldier is in a critical condition. An MoD spokesman said: ‘We can confirm that UK forces have been involved in an incident in the Sangin Valley, during which we regret to...
THE GMB trade union yesterday won its first victory in the battle over trade union rights at Asda, on the eve of a five-day strike due to begin this Friday. The union called off a ‘coach and horses’ protest outside a private employment agency in Dartford, Kent, after receiving assurances...
THE British Medical Association (BMA) Annual Representative Meeting in Belfast yesterday rejected selling-off the NHS to private corporations. It did this when it voted for a rider to Motion 19 from the South Western Regional Forum. The rider, from Enfield and Haringey Division, stated: ‘These fundamental values cannot be maintained if...
ISRAEL’S Prime Minister has promised prolonged and extensive military action to free an Israeli soldier missing and presumed held captive in southern Gaza. Mouthing the usual Israeli threats, Premier Olmert said ‘Let it be clear: We will reach everyone, no matter where.’ No Israeli soldiers have been seized by...
MORE than half a million civil servants are to be told that they will have to pay a lot more towards their pensions. This is the message that the trade union leaders are to be given next Tuesday when they meet with the Cabinet Office Minister, Hillary Armstrong. This new government...
By Anna Athow, Consultant Surgeon ‘WE HAVE reached crunch point, where the process of transition from one system to another is taking place.’ So said Prime Minister Tony Blair on April 18, 2006. He referred to the advent of ‘practice based commissioning’ (PBC), ‘payment by results’ (PBR), ‘patient choice’ and...
BECTU members outsourced to Capita are to strike because of the company’s refusal to allow them to continue working on the BBC contract. Members voted by a 73 per cent majority for strike action which will take place on Friday 30 June 2006. BECTU members from BBC Human Resources had...
Gate Gourmet locked out workers are calling on British Airways workers and all workers to join them on their anniversary march and rally in Southall on Sunday 20th August. Speaking at their weekly picket of the Transport and General Workers Union regional office in Hillingdon west London yesterday, Asha Varma...
THE Israeli armed forces, under orders from the Israeli government, are continuing to attack defenceless Palestinian women, children and men in the Gaza Strip, using bombs, shells and missiles delivered from the air. Fourteen Palestinian civilians, five of them children, have been killed in Israeli air strikes on the starving...
GMB shop stewards met in Manchester yesterday to plan strike action after members of the union at 20 Asda Wal-Mart distribution depots voted decisively by a majority of three to one to fight over their union rights, pay and working conditions. ‘GMB members in the 20 Asda Wal-Mart depots have...
Thousands of patients’ lives may be put at risk because a growing number of hospitals are sending medical notes abroad for typing, UNISON is insisting. The giant public sector union warns: ‘Private companies are aggressively targeting hospitals with financial deficits, promising huge cost savings, if they outsource their medical typing...
Gushing Gordon Brown began his speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet on Wednesday night, by exhibiting his fawning subservience to the audience of bankers. He said: ‘Let me start by saying what a privilege it is to address this famous and historic dinner, where business, bankers and ministers come...
UNISON leaders came under fire from angry delegates at the union’s National Delegate Conference yesterday, over their decision to call off the local government pensions strike after one day of action. Speaking in the pensions debate, John McLoughton, Tower Hamlets Local Government, slammed the union leadership. He said: ‘Why didn’t we...
LOUISIANA State Governor Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin have deployed 300 heavily-armed National Guard troops and 60 state police on the streets of New Orleans. This is in response to ‘lawlessness’ resulting from the social breakdown in the city, 10 months after Hurricane Katrina struck. There were hundreds of...
AN URGENT appeal to the world from occupied Iraq has been issued through the anti-war ‘Brussels Tribunal’. The special appeal – entitled ‘SOS Ramadi’ – says that ‘the first heavy attack on Ramadi’, by American forces and their puppets, was launched last Friday, June 9. Ramadi is the capital of...
THE UNISON National Delegate Conference voted unanimously yesterday to oppose cuts to the National Health Service and against privatisation by the Labour government. The main motion, Composite B: Public Services, said: ‘There has been a misguided efficiency drive and marketisation strategy that is leading to destabilisation, cuts and privatisation.’ The motion...
PRIME Minister Junichiro Koizumi announced yesterday the withdrawal of the 600 Japanese troops from Iraq by the end of next month. These ‘non combatant’ forces have been based at Samawa in Muthanna Province, southern Iraq, for nearly three years. This followed Monday’s report from the US quisling Iraqi government that...
Egypt and Jordan on Sunday announced their rejection of the Israeli government’s unilateral plan to demarcate the borders of the Jewish state inside the Palestinian territories, which Tel Aviv occupied in 1967, as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged Arab states to block Israel’s plan. Arriving from Cairo, Abbas on Sunday...
THE government is set to turn the screws of further NHS privatisation on the NHS with its plans to invite private health insurance companies to run the Primary Care Trusts (PCTs). The PCTs hold 80 per cent of the NHS budget and are responsible for the purchasing of...
THE anger of the local community against the police raid in Forest Gate on June 2 burst onto the streets of Newham, east London, on Sunday. More than 4,000 people joined the ‘United Communities’ protest march. It was called by 18 organisations, including the Newham Muslim Alliance, representing the borough’s mosques,...
‘Long live the memory of the June 16 martyrs!’ declared the African National Congress last Friday as it marked the 30th Anniversary of the Soweto youth uprising. President Thabo Mbeki led a march along the route taken on 16 June 1976 by black school students fighting a policy forcing them...
THE ‘shoot to kill’ section of the Metropolitan Police force is proceeding full speed ahead, knowing that it has the complete support of the Prime Minister and the ruling class in Britain, as both seek to push bourgeois democracy into the background and elevate the armed bodies of men...
MORE than 4,000 people joined an angry demonstration through Newham yesterday against the huge police raid in Forest Gate on June 7. As they made their way from East Ham’s Plashet Park to Forest Gate Police Station they chanted: ‘Shame, Shame Ian Blair! Our community will not live in fear!’ They...
‘OUR anniversary march and rally in Southall on Sunday August 20 is very important. ‘We will show our unity and strength and we want everyone to come. It will be a big day on our road to victory.’ Gate Gourmet locked-out worker Parmjit Baines was speaking outside the Transport and General...
ON the eve of last Thursday’s student demonstrations, the Greek right-wing government withdrew plans to table in the Vouli (Greek parliament) the reactionary Education Bill and a revision of the Greek Constitution which would allow the privatisation of education. University and technical colleges students and lecturers claimed a great...
THE Greek right-wing government has been forced to withdraw its plans to push through the Greek parliament, an Education Bill, and a revision of the Greek Constitution to allow it to privatise the education system. University and technical colleges students and lecturers yesterday claimed a great victory, while the...
COMMENTS in Parliament by Labour minister Margaret Hodge and Labour MP Brian Donohoe, which were critical of the unions’ call for car buyers not to buy Peugeot-Citroën models, have redoubled the determination of Peugeot workers to move the campaign forward. A group from the threatened car plant at Ryton...
Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the British Medical Association’s GPs Committee yesterday warned Labour not to marginalise family doctors. He was referring to Practice Based Commissioning in his keynote address to the annual conference of Local Medical Committees, the GPs’ conference. Meldrum commented: ‘Deficits, a crude, inflexible system of Payment by...
IN the last two months the trade union movement and NHS professional organisations have been forced to take serious notice of the deepening crisis in the NHS. So far the NHS has been subjected to the government’s PFI plans under which business groups have made hundreds of...
President Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday condemned the ongoing Israeli air strikes in Palestinian civilian areas as ‘state terrorism’. The attacks claimed the lives of three children, three medical workers, three civilian bystanders and a leading anti-occupation activist among eleven Palestinians killed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in the Gaza...
Health service union UNISON yesterday condemned the suggestion by the acting NHS chief executive that whole district general hospitals will face closure. Warning of a shake-up of district general hospitals, Sir Ian Carruthers said in an interview yesterday that ‘the action that we need to take is challenging, probably...
THE Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King has forecast that there is a bumpy road ahead for both the national and the world economy. He pointed to the fact that inflation is rising on a world scale, including the Chinese economy from where huge volumes of cheap commodities...
THE two brothers arrested in the massive raid by about 300 police in Forest Gate have held a press conference in east London, after being released without charge. The press conference was told that, contrary to many false rumours that have been spread, the brothers have no criminal records. One...