Monthly Archives: September 2016
‘THE junior doctors’ dispute is an issue for all of us,’ declared Unison delegate James Anthony moving Emergency Motion 5 Support for the BMA and junior doctors at the TUC Congress in Brighton yesterday. The motion calls on the TUC to ‘(i) continue to provide solidarity and support to the BMA...
‘WE demand a full public inquiry into blacklisting!’ Gail Cartmail, assistant general secretary of Unite said while addressing the TUC conference in Brighton yesterday. Speaking in support of ‘Motion 22 on Surveillance and Blacklisting’ Cartmail warned that it would be naïve to think that the construction industry had been ‘cleansed’...
THE TUC Congress in Brighton on Monday made a show of defending the steel industry and steel jobs. Steel workers were guests of honour in the conference hall and were welcomed for a ‘Save Our Steel’ photocall on the conference stage. However, ‘Composite Motion 4 Steel’ did not propose industrial...
TODAY Emergency Motion E5 is to be heard and voted on at the TUC Congress in Brighton. Despite being called ‘Support for the BMA and the Junior Doctors’ and being moved by Unison and seconded by the RCM, it does not mention one concrete action that the trade union movement...
A 45 strong delegation of Tata steel workers from Port Talbot were at the Trade Union Congress in Brighton yesterday. They had come to the TUC to fight for support for their struggle to defend their jobs and pensions. They told News Line: ‘We don’t know what Tata...
ARAB Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi, said that the Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu’s recent comparison of Palestinian citizens of Israel with its illegal settlers in Occupied Palestine is not only immoral, but a total departure from rationality, history and Israel’s obligations under international law, said an opinion piece published...
THE Young Socialists lobbied the TUC Congress yesterday in Brighton to demand that it must call a general strike in support of the Junior Doctors. Andy Travers, Joint Unison Branch Secretary at Medway told News Line: ‘This TUC conference must vote for action to support the Junior Doctors. I work...
DOES the PM really want to return to labelling children failures at the age of 11, the ATL asked yesterday. Answering the question the Association of Teachers and Lecturers’ general secretary, Dr Mary Bousted, said: ‘The blight caused by academic selection at age 11 affects children’s self-worth, ambition and...
AFTER a tortuous series of talks in Geneva the Russian Foreign minister Lavrov has announced the signing of five documents which include agreements reached by the US and Russia that would lead to the ‘resumption of the political process in Syria’. Lavrov indicated that the Russian-US deal focuses on the...
NHS leaders in England say they have reached a ‘tipping point’ and cannot maintain standards for patients on the funding they are getting. Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said many hospital bosses wanted to ‘sound a warning bell’ to political leaders. It comes after latest figures showed record...
TORY PM May yesterday launched her new offensive attempting to restore ‘secondary moderns’ by allowing every school to become a selective grammar school, and to have an elite status for unlimited expansion. Faith schools are to be particularly favoured, and allowed to expand to 100% membership of the same faith,...
TORY PM Theresa May yesterday unveiled plans, despite all denials, to drive education back to the 1940s by allowing any school to become a ‘selective’ grammar school. In a speech given in London, she announced the new Tory drive to reverse the ban on grammar schools expanding and new ones...
‘THERESA May’s plans for new grammar schools are a regressive move and a distraction from the real problems facing schools and education,’ Kevin Courtney, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) said yesterday. Courtney was responding to the Tory PMs plans to expand the grammar school programme, a...
SYRIA says the UK is ‘detached from reality and delusional’ after the British Foreign Minister backed a proposal by President Bashar al-Assad’s opponents calling on him to step down. The Syrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday: ‘Statements of British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson reveal his complete separation...
‘THOUSANDS of our Post Office members will strike next Thursday, against attacks on their job security and pensions and in defence of the Crown network and Supply Chain in a National Post Office strike,’ the CWU union declared yesterday. CWU General secretary, Dave Ward, said: ‘The Post Office is relentlessly...
AFL-CIO leaders Richard Trumka (president), Liz Shuler (secretary-treasurer) and Tefere Gebre (executive vice president), travelled the country on Monday, US Labor Day. Delivering speeches bashing arch reactionary Donald Trump while obsequiously endorsing imperialist warmonger Hillary Clinton, the US trade union leaders said their purpose was ‘to celebrate working people and...
ON Wednesday night TV viewers were treated to a film clip on the news of the managing director of Sports Direct, Mike Ashley, pulling from his pockets a huge wad of £50 notes while being filmed going through one of his company’s notorious ‘security’ procedures. When asked why he carried...
MPs on the House of Commons Committees on Arms Export Controls have urged in a draft report that the UK government stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia because of its war crimes in the Yemen. It said: ‘The weight of evidence of violations of international humanitarian law by the Saudi-led...
‘AUSTERITY-LED changes of the past decade have stirred up a “perfect storm”. The Government in England shifts responsibility for providing services from the centre to local level, and then cuts funding for local authorities.’ So says the chairman of the British Medical Association’s health committee in a new report. The...
THE Syrian government has dismissed a peace proposal from the umbrella group representing Syria’s US and UK backed political and armed opposition. The opposition’s High Negotiations Committee (HNC) proposed holding six months of negotiations with President Bashar al-Assad, accompanied by a full ceasefire. Assad would then hand over power to...
‘BRINGING in industrial mercenaries shows just how little Anglo cares about their existing workforce,’ CFMEU (Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union) Queensland District President, Stephen Smyth said on Monday. Anglo American has escalated the situation at their German Creek mine by advertising for a new workforce while existing employees conduct...
SHOWING contempt for parliament, the watchdog for university access (Offa) yesterday gave the green light to all universities to increase tuition fees in England to £9,250 from the year 2017-18. However, more than 30 universities are to have this as their minimum, enabling them to follow the example of Exeter...
THE Tories have no plan to stop youth on apprenticeships being ‘exploited as cheap labour by unscrupulous employers,’ Mark Serwotka, general secretary of public services union PCS, said yesterday. PCS was responding to the the National Audit Office report released yesterday which the teachers’ union ATL says is further...
ALL day yesterday the junior doctors were under heavy attack with Tories demanding that their strike be made illegal and suggestions being made that they could be hauled before tribunals and lose their jobs. In response to this onslaught the BMA leadership have cancelled the first round of 5-day strike...
THE war against junior doctors and their fight to defend the NHS has been ramped up by the Tory government acting through the General Medical Council (GMC). Yesterday the GMC, the body responsible for registering and regulating doctors, came out with the blunt threat that any junior doctor taking...
MORE than 90,000 Syrian refugee children in Jordan weren’t able to attend school last year, along with hundreds of thousands in neighbouring refugee host countries, prompting warnings of a ‘lost generation’ as a result of Syria’s five-year-old imperialist-driven war. Boosted by international funding, the kingdom has now promised to...
FOLLOWING a decision from the US National Labour Relations Board (NLRB) to restore their rights, graduate student employees at private universities across America are launching a massive drive to build unions with SEIU. Graduate assistants at Duke, Northwestern, St. Louis University, American University and countless other colleges and universities are...
THE initial stages of the G20 talks in China were yesterday dominated by the world crisis of capitalism, the sharpening antagonisms that this crisis is creating between the G20 countries, and within them, and the fear of revolution – Brexits as it were, with arms in hand. PM May left...
LABOUR Party leader Jeremy Corbyn welcomed the contribution of refugees and overseas workers in the NHS when he addressed a 1,500-strong Burston Strike School anniversary rally yesterday. It is now 102 years since the strike began on April 1st 1914 and continued until 1939. Corbyn said: ‘We...
‘VICTORY to the junior doctors!’ shouted the 50-strong mass picket of Ealing Hospital yesterday morning, adding, ‘Call a general strike!’ The picket, called by the West London Council of Action, demanded the re-opening of the Charlie Chaplin children’s ward at Ealing Hospital, as well as the re-opening of the maternity...
ISRAELI forces detained at least ten Palestinians, including a journalist, in Wednesday night raids across the occupied West Bank, Israeli and Palestinian officials said on Thursday. The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) reported on Thursday that four Palestinians were detained in the southern West Bank district of Hebron, including journalist and...
BRITISH capitalism is bankrupt. The ruling class, abetted by the trade union leaders, are letting the historic steel industry go to the wall. Five months ago, Tata steel announced that they were selling the massive steel works in Port Talbot, Wales. That announcement was a death sentence to Port Talbot....
IN recent editions of the News Line we have reproduced in full a speech delivered by Zwelinzima Vavi, former general secretary of the Confederation of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and now Vice Chairperson of the Millennium Labour Council, to the congress of the Food and Allied Workers Union...
‘THIS STINKS of another multi-million pound taxpayer subsidy to bail out the failing Southern rail part of the Govia Thameslink franchise,’ Mick Cash general secretary of RMT said yesterday. He was responding to Tory transport secretary Chris Grayling’s announcement of a £20 million taxpayer bail-out of Southern rail. This...
THE decision by the British Medical Association to authorise fresh strike action by junior doctors over the imposition of a new work contract is a decisive blow against the Tory government. When Theresa May was installed as Tory leader after Cameron was forced to resign over his crushing defeat over...
FORMER Army chief of staff Lord Dannatt has apologised on the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme for allowing British troops to take an anti-malaria drug despite knowing it can have ‘catastrophic’ mental health effects, and deciding not to use it himself. The MoD’s doctors prescribed Lariam to more than 17,000 troops...
‘THE STRIKE will continue at Telkom!’ South African Communication Workers Union (CWU) vowed on Tuesday, despite the company trying to drive its employees back to return to work. CWU general secretary Aubrey Tshabalala said the union remained confident that the strike, which has now entered its fifth week, was...
AN ESCALATING programme of five-day strikes, every month until the end of the year, has been authorised by the BMA, as junior doctors take Health Secretary Hunt head on, determined to stop him imposing the latest contract which they rightly insist is unfair and unsafe for patients. The first...