Monthly Archives: July 2012
RELATIONS between the workers and trade unions of Swaziland and the rule of the feudal monarchy has almost reached the point of civil war in the capial Mbanane and in the rural areas. Operations at the Rocklands Mill were temporarily suspended last Wednesday after trade unions got ready to...
Yesterday’s announcement that the Tory-led coalition government’s much heralded investment in the railways is to be financed solely through fare increases is a catastrophe for passengers. The long promised electrification of the network, due to start in 2014, will cost at least £9.4 billion and it was admitted by the...
midwifery students on vintage bikes converged on College Green opposite Parliament yesterday afternoon, to highlight the Royal College of Midwives’ e-petition for 5,000 more Midwives. More than 25 first-year midwifery students, in historic uniforms and on vintage and tandem bikes, cycled a six-mile route through central London to promote the...
THOUSANDS of doctors and nurses face being sacked unless they agree to drastic changes to their pay and conditions as hospitals tackle an escalating funding crisis, a leaked document confirmed yesterday. The document from 19 NHS trust bosses obtained by the Sunday Times outlines measures to cut costs in...
UP to 100,000 workers and youth gathered at the 128th Durham Miners Gala on Saturday. Pride of place on the platform after the march through the city was taken by two representatives of the Spanish miners, whose colleagues and supporters were fired on with rubber bullets in Madrid last week,...
A REPORT leaked this weekend spells out exactly how the Tory-led coalition means to destroy completely the National Health Service and is preparing to take on the trade unions in order to drive through mass sackings and pay cuts for nurses and doctors. A document issued by 19 chief executives...
IN RESPONSE to mine owners Glencore and Xstrata’s arrogant refusal to meet with a delegation of IndustriALL global union affiliates to discuss labour issues in light of their intended merger, IndustriALL joined a delegation of activists in a demonstration at their headquarters in Zug, Switzerland. On 11 July, IndustriALL Global...
A SECRET Justice Bill could see people imprisoned without explanation, warned legal action charity Reprieve yesterday. Reprieve said: ‘The government this week confirmed that plans for secret courts would extend to challenges against detention without charge or trial – known as habeas corpus proceedings. ‘This development would see “Closed Material Procedures”...
REPRESENTATIVES of the tube union RMT on the London Transport pension fund have called for disinvestment from Semperian PPP after it emerged that one of their subcontractors on the Great Western Hospital PFI contract in Swindon, Carillion, has been involved in a long-running dispute with sister union GMB over...
SO FAR twelve global banks have been publicly linked to the Libor rate-rigging scandal, and face as much as $22 billion in combined regulatory penalties and damages to investors and counterparties, Morgan Stanley has estimated. The rate is the benchmark for $360tn in derivatives, loans and mortgages, and current calculations...
ON Thursday July 12, the Camden Unison Children, Schools and Families shop stewards committee passed the following motion unanimously condemning the victimisation of Haverstock shop steward William Westwell. Westwell was suspended as a direct result of the Unison decision to take strike action in defence of its members’ pensions...
HEALTH Secretary Lansley announced yesterday that he is putting South London Healthcare NHS Trust into administration. The trust was created by merging three hospitals – the Princess Royal in Orpington, Queen Mary’s in Sidcup and the Queen Elizabeth in Woolwich – and serves more than one million people. Lansley said long-standing...
RIOT police fired rubber bullets Wednesday at Spanish coal miners protesting in the streets of Madrid, along with tens of thousands of other workers. Hundreds of workers were arrested and injured in the struggle that ensued. The Asturian miners march into the capital was the culmination of a nearly three-week march...
THE Tory Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, announced yesterday that, following the legal period required for consultation, he was implementing the threat made last month to put the South London Healthcare NHS Trust into administration. From 16th July Lansley’s chosen ‘special administrator’ – Matthew Kershaw, at present the national director for...
UNISON is calling on MPs from the South West of England to give their backing to local health workers including nurses, therapists, porters, and NHS cleaners, by opposing plans to cut their pay in the South West. The union briefed MPs in the House of Commons on Wednesday, about damaging...
SPANISH PM Mariano Rajoy has just announced a 3% VAT rise from 18%-21%, and a series of austerity measures that will cut the Spanish budget by 65bn euros (£51bn), down to 6.5% of GDP over two years. The price for this will no doubt be an extra million on...
Rupert Murdoch sought assurances from prime minister Thatcher in the 1980s about policing of print union strikes, the Leveson Inquiry has been told. In a written statement, ex-Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil disputed Murdoch’s claim to Leveson that he had ‘never asked a prime minister for anything’. Neil also wrote that...
UNEMPLOYMENT in the eurozone will rise by another 4.5 million in the next four years under the current austerity programme, the International Labour Organization (ILO) warned yesterday. That rise would take unemployment in the 17-nation bloc to 22 million. However, the ILO report added: ‘It’s not only the eurozone that’s in...
NEW Yorkers continued to face power cuts in boiling temperatures on Tuesday as talks resumed to end a lockout of skilled power workers. Yet again talks between New York City electricity provider Consolidated Edison and its 8,500 locked out workers stalled last weekend. Consolidated Edison (Con Ed) bosses failed to come...
THE Coalition regime is in big trouble after it faced defeat in the House of Commons last night over its measure to reorganise the House of Lords, along the lines favoured by its Liberal component. The Coalition parties are at each other’s throats because of the crisis of British capitalism....
As the scandal engulfing the banks accelerates daily, so the attempts by both Labour and coalition party leaders to pretend they can stop future crises become more desperate. The latest attempt to ‘discipline’ the banks was unveiled yesterday by Labour leader Ed Miliband who proposed measures that would lead to a...
DELAYS in Palestinian Authority employees salaries are unacceptable and government workers’ concerns must not be ignored, a union leader said last Tuesday. Government employees union director Bassam Zakarneh called on the Palestinian Authority to update workers on the situation and ensure banks, electricity and water companies made concessions for late...
UK banks do not have enough capital to withstand an escalation in the eurozone crisis, the Bank of England’s risk regulator has warned. The minutes of the Financial Policy Committee’s (FCP) June 22 meeting state that its members ‘judged that the overall capitalisation of the banking system was unlikely to...
WORKERS attempting to hold a free and democratic unionisation vote at a Mexican silver mine owned by Canadian mining company Excellon Resources were confronted by heavily armed police and goons from a company-controlled union. As workers at Excellon’s La Platosa Mine in Durango, Mexico, attempted to cast their unionisation votes...
THE ‘Friends of Syria’ meeting in Paris on Friday saw the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, frantically beating the war drums against Syria, openly consigning the Annan peace plan and mission, and its programme for democratic changes in Syria, to the dustbin. The Friends of Syria meeting took...
GREEK Prime Minister elect Antonis Samaras has declared a massive privatisation plan for the entire transport and energy sectors as well as dozens of state organisations in scientific research, arts, sports, education and social services. Speaking last Friday in the Vouli (Greek parliament), Samaras outlined his coalition government’s priorities emphasising...
ATOS, an Olympics sponsor at the centre of the government’s controversial cuts to disability benefits, faces industrial action during the Games by Public and Commercial Services union members trying to improve poverty pay levels. Multi-million pound company Atos has faced heavy criticism for its handling of ‘back to work’...
UNISON has responded to the Institute for Fiscal Studies review into NHS funding, and warnings that in future, patients may have to pay for some NHS treatment. Christina McAnea, Unison Head of Health, said: ‘We warned when the Health and Social Care Act was still at the Bill stage that...
THE fight goes on to continue child heart surgery at London’s Royal Brompton, Leeds General Infirmary and Glenfield Hospital, Leicester. An NHS review concluded on Wednesday that the three children’s heart units should stop doing operations from 2014 on safety grounds. But the NHS trusts involved believe they are being...
‘DIRECT action by dairy farmers is imminent,’ Farmers for Action leader David Hanley warned yesterday. He told News Line: ‘This is due to the fact that they are expected to produce milk at at least six pence per litre below the cost of production. ‘We have for some considerable time been...
CHRISTINE Lagarde, the chief of the IMF, warned the bosses and the bankers yesterday, in a speech in Japan, that the crisis is a world crisis and that it is deepening with the prospect of an even more explosive banking collapse than was seen in 2008. She opened by...
‘WE now have the prospect of Remploy workers taking strike action to defend their jobs to avoid their certain destiny of being chucked on the economic scrapheap’ say the unions. Members of GMB and Unite, employed by Remploy in 54 factories across the country, have voted by an overwhelming majority...
THE Bank of England is to extend its Quantitative Easing (QE) programme (printing money) by another £50bn over the next four months in a bid to boost the economy. The latest increase decided by the Bank’s Monetary Policy committee (MPC) will take the total stimulus to £375bn. The MPC has also...
IN the same week that the capitalist banking system was exposed as a centre of criminal venality, lying and cheating in order to secure vast profits at the expense of ordinary working people, it has been reported that an estimated one million children in Britain are living with ‘food...
Carillion workers were supported by Unite workers from Honda and BMW and officials from GMB yesterday lunch time, outside The Great Western Hospital in Swindon. Carole Vallelly told News Line: ‘I am the GMB organiser for Swindon and Wiltshire and we are here to support ten GMB members who are...
EX-Barclays Chief Executive Bob Diamond was asked point blank yesterday if he believed bankers who broke the law should be jailed. He was asked the question after he told the parliamentary committee he had written a memo to former Barclays chief executive John Varley, of his conversation with Bank of...
SECRETARY of State for Health, Andrew Lansley, delivered his Annual Report to Parliament on the Health Service yesterday, to coincide with the publication of his report on the NHS Constitution and the Draft Mandate for the NHS Commissioning Board. He announced that the government was ‘standing back’ from the...
YESTERDAY the Secretary of State for Health told the House of Commons that the government will be taking a step back from the day-to-day running of the NHS and will be leaving it in the capable hands of the just established NHS Commissioning Board. What the real job...
IT seems an official nurses’ strike is looming in Swaziland after the union called a special urgent meeting scheduled for today. The meeting is for the Swaziland Nurses Democratic Union (SWADNU) National General Council, where top of the agenda is the issue of salary review and 4.5% adjustment. SWADNU Secretary...
WORKERS at Swindon’s Great Western Hospital are holding a mass lunchtime rally outside the hospital today, against victimisation by their multi-national privateer employer Carillion. Swindon and Wilts GMB Regional Officer Carole Vallelly told News Line yesterday: ‘Tomorrow’s lunchtime rally is in support of our members who are being put through...
THE GMB trade union is staging a protest demonstration outside Wandsworth Town Hall from from 6.45pm on Wednesday 4th July 2012, where the borough’s Finance and Corporate Resources Overview and Scrutiny Committee meets at 7.30 pm. The protest is over the sale of playing fields to finance a school’s refurbishment,...
OVER the past two days, Palestine National Authority security forces have been using force to try to prevent peaceful demonstrations of Palestinian youth opposing the meeting of President Abbas with the Israeli minister Shaul Mofaz, who is considered to be a war criminal by the Palestinian masses. Members of the...