Monthly Archives: October 2011
THE Tory-led coalition is planning to reintroduce the Riot Act nearly 40 years after it was abolished in England and Wales. Under proposals set out by the Home Office in a ‘consultation document’ issued last Thursday, the police will be given far-reaching powers to declare public areas such as streets,...
'WE want a fair contract,’ shouted locked out Teamsters from New York as they and supporters picketed Sotheby’s in New Bond Street on Thursday evening. Jason Ide, Teamsters local 814 president, told News Line: ‘We were still bargaining with the company but on July 29 they locked our members out. ‘We’re...
THE Coalition government is busily building a paradise for the landlords, the latest Shelter Rent Report shows. In this paradise, private tenants, who can no longer afford private ownership mortgages, are being forced to pay over one third of their income, or more, for private rented accommodation. This is resulting...
‘THEY are tearing the heart out of the hospital,’ said Epsom and St Helier NHS Unison branch secretary Kevin O’Brien yesterday. He was responding to a management announcement that the Surrey hospital trust is facing a spending gap of £38m this year which is predicted to get worse. Hundreds of jobs...
ELECTRICIANS are stepping up their fight against the ‘cartel’ of seven major building contractors, which has declared it is tearing up the longstanding JIB (Joint Industry Board) agreement on 7th December and imposing a new union-busting, de-skilling, 35 per cent wage-cutting contract. The sparks are calling for a mass turn-out...
LEADERS of Indonesian FSP-KEP (SPSI), the trade union of Chemical, Energy, and Mine Workers (CEMWU), have officially extended a 30-day strike at the world’s largest gold and third largest copper mine for one more month – until November 15. Community leaders also formed a committee and visited different locations of...
UNEMPLOYMENT rose by 114,000 between June and August to 2.57 million, a 17-year high, according to official figures. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the unemployment rate also increased to 8.1%. The unemployment total for 16-24 year-olds hit a record high of 991,000 in the quarter, a jobless rate of...
HUNDREDS of angry electricians halted the traffic for 20 minutes outside St Paul’s Cathedral in central London yesterday morning, during their latest demonstration against the 35 per cent wage-cutting, union-busting onslaught by a ‘cartel’ of seven major contractors. They held a 6.30am rally at the Tate Modern, before marching across...
THE number of young people out of work has reached a record high of almost one million, according to the latest unemployment figures. The youth unemployment total, which includes people in full-time education who are available and looking for work, increased by 74,000 to 991,000 between June and...
UNISON, the UK’s largest public sector union, on Monday welcomed a report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) calling on the government to put a stop to public sector job cuts to boost economic growth. But the union said the job losses should not simply be put...
FALLING incomes will mean the biggest drop in living standards for middle-income families since the 1970s, when the Yom Kippur war resulted in the tripling of oil prices and a massive inflationary surge. For lower income, working class families and the poor facing the scrapping of benefits, the outlook...
WORKERS in Greece are building up a tremendous multi-form action front, with occupations of ministries and state buildings, strikes and demonstrations, against the barbaric government Bill of huge wage and pension cuts, tens of thousands of sackings and the destruction of national collective agreements. On Tuesday morning the Interior Ministry,...
UNISON has held a series of meetings across the North West in their campaign to defend NHS workers’ pensions. Thousands of NHS employees have attended the meetings and expressed their anger at ministers’ proposals, which mean they will be required to pay more, work longer and get less. Not only...
AT the weekend the new Labour shadow health secretary, Andrew Burnham, delivered a treacherous stab in the back to the NHS with the announcement that he and the Labour opposition were prepared to work ‘constructively’ with the Tory coalition in the privatisation of the health service. At the same time...
THE Tory-led coalition’s hated Health Bill to privatise the NHS is due to go to the House of Lords today, following a mass demonstration against it on Sunday which filled Westminster Bridge. Sunday’s action was the latest in a series of marches against the Bill, with health workers’ unions including...
UNISON yesterday called on peers to oppose the Health Bill today, during its second reading in the House of Lords today. The UK’s largest public sector union is urging them to ‘see through Health Minister Andrew Lansley’s lies’ over the fragmentation, instability and inequity of NHS services. Unison highlighted the many...
THE fact that 40 per cent of disabled children are living in poverty is ‘a scar on the conscience of Britain’, says Unite, the largest union in the country. Unite called on ministers to act ‘immediately and urgently’ on the Children’s Society findings in its report – ‘4 in every...
AN OPINION piece in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph pointed to yet further attacks on the trade unions’ rights to organise and represent their members. According to the paper it has only been ‘discovered’ in the last few months that elected local trade union representatives in the public sector are given paid...
LIBYAN government forces yesterday continued to heroically drive back the NATO- backed NTC counter-revolutionaries at Sirte, inflicting deadly blows on the mercenaries. Gadaffi loyalists have killed over a hundred and wounded several hundreds more NTC terrorists since Friday, despite a NATO sea blockade and air strikes. There was particularly fierce fighting...
THOUSANDS of young workers and students occupied Westminster Bridge yesterday, determined to defeat the Health and Social Care Bill (HSCB), due to be read in the House of Lords tomorrow. At Big Ben’s strike of noon, Westminster Bridge was strewn with hundreds of people, many wearing hospital theatre gear and...
A SUSTAINED campaign of industrial action by members of the University and College Union (UCU) in 67 of the UK’s best-known universities will start on Monday, the union announced yesterday. The action will commence with UCU members ‘working to contract’. This means they will simply work to the terms of their...
BANK of England Governor Mervyn King has warned that the UK financial crisis is possibly the greatest ever crisis in the history of capitalism. He was speaking on Thursday evening in the wake of the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee’s decision to authorise the injection of a further £75bn into the...
THE governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, finally admitted publicly that British and world capitalism faced their ‘worst crisis ever’, a crisis that far outstrips the great depression of the 1930s in both its depth and its international character. King was speaking out on Thursday following the announcement...
‘PEOPLE need to realise what’s happening before it’s too late, we need a strike ballot now, straightaway!’ Bill Pulley, Unite member and professional electrician, was speaking with great seriousness to News Line at the latest Sparks rally in Oxford Street in London’s West End on Wednesday morning. The rally, from 6.30-8am,...
50,000 Greek civil servants and public sector workers on Wednesday staged a successful 24-hour national strike and a big march through Athens against the government’s barbaric plans to sack hundreds of thousands and cut wages and pensions by 20 per cent. Pensioners who participated in the march said that...
BRENDAN BARBER, general secretary of the TUC, who doubles as a director of the Bank of England, has been at it once again, doing what he does best: trying to sell out workers, as the sacked Gate Gourmet workers and the FBU firefighters, among others, can well testify to. The...
THE Communications Workers of America Executive Board has endorsed the youth-led Occupy Wall Street Movement. Occupy Wall Street youth campaigners have joined CWA members demonstrating for jobs at Verizon and Verizon Wireless, and CWA members are to join the demonstrations to focus public attention on the impact...
THE BMA warned yesterday that the Health and Social Care Bill will lead to more ‘conflicts of interest’, after it emerged yesterday that a GP practice has been caught out touting for business. The Haxby Practice in York, which serves 20,000 patients, has written to them stating that a range...
HUNDREDS of electricians blockaded Oxford Street in central London yesterday morning, against the major attack by a ‘cartel’ of contractors who have declared they intend to tear up the JIB (Joint Industry Board) national agreement from 7th December and slash pay by 35%. ‘Call a strike ballot now,’ angry sparks...
STRIKE action took place on Tuesday across the three campuses of Middlesex University with lecturers and staff picketing every entrance against the threat of 300 sackings. The joint UCU and Unison strike action was supported by the Middlesex University Students Union (MUSU) who brought students and their banner to the...
MONDAY saw the conclusion of one of the two legal processes challenging Basildon Council’s planned eviction of the Dale Farm community. ‘The case, which halted eviction at the eleventh hour on Monday 19th September, has resulted in a series of concessions from Basildon Council that a number of structures cannot...
AT THE Tory Party conference on Monday, Chancellor Osborne outlined the three mistakes made by government, the bosses and the bankers which he said led to the development of the current world wide economic catastrophe, that is still deepening and still bringing down the banks, and...
STRIKE action took place yesterday across the three campuses of Middlesex University with lecturers and staff picketing every entrance against the threat of 300 sackings. The joint UCU and Unison strike action was supported by the Middlesex University Students Union (MUSU) who brought students and their banner to the picket...
THE Tory-LibDem Health and Social Care Bill will cause ‘irreparable harm’ to the NHS, 400 leading doctors, consultants and public health experts have written, in a devastating open letter to members of the House of Lords. The letter states: ‘We write as public health doctors and specialists from within the...
TODAY'S joint strike by two unions at Middlesex University must be the start of action to defend jobs and the very existence of a state education in England. The unions, Unison and the UCU, represent both academic and support staff at the university who face a massive loss of 300...
EGYPT'S Public Transport Authority workers on Saturday announced the beginning of an open-ended sit-in outside cabinet headquarters on Cairo’s Qasr al-Ainy Street, following a ten-day strike. The workers demand higher salaries and improved service for citizens. The workers closed Qasr al-Ainy Street with barricades and prevented cars from passing. They formed three...
FIERCE fighting continued on the outskirts of Sirte yesterday, with Gadaffi loyalists dealing deadly blows against the counter-revolutionary ‘NTC’ mercenaries, while NATO warplanes pounded the city. The Red Cross and Red Crescent warned that treating the injured was ‘becoming impossible’ when their teams entered the city for a brief period...
A NORTH East London Council of Action conference of over 150 workers, pensioners and youth on Saturday voted unanimously for an occupation of Chase Farm Hospital, to stop the hospital from being closed. The resolution passed by the conference called for ‘a mass demonstration through Enfield on Saturday December...
ON Saturday, the Red Cross visited Sirte, which has been under intense bombardment and shelling from NATO planes and ships, and by NATO’s ground forces of the NTC for the last three weeks. NATO is now using the same illegal phosphorus bombs that Israel used in its recent...
MIDWIVES remain angry over the government’s attack on public sector pensions, warned the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) yesterday. Jon Skewes, director of employment relations at the RCM, said: ‘There is no doubt that our members across the UK are disenchanted and incensed by the attacks by the...
REPRIEVE has called on Lithuania to re-open its torture site inquiry after discovering another suspicious flight into Vilnius. Legal action charity Reprieve is demanding that Lithuanian authorities revive their failed inquiry into CIA ‘black sites’ after a Freedom of Information (FOI) request – made in conjunction with Access Info Europe...
ON Thursday, the German Parliament (Bundestag) voted by 523 to 85 to increase the funds available to the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) from 250 billion euros to 440 billion (£382 billion). This vote also pushed up the amount guaranteed by Germany from 123 to 211 billion euros. The EFSF is...
FORMAL backing for more than a quarter of a million civil and public servants to join a public sector-wide strike on November 30 puts the Public and Commercial Services union on a ‘war footing’. Meeting Thursday, the union’s national executive committee endorsed the date as the next national strike following...