Monthly Archives: July 2017
THIS WEEK will mark 100 years since The Great Strike of 1917, when 100,000 workers around Australia walked off the job to protest changing workplace conditions. The source of consternation was the introduction of time cards, designed to monitor worker productivity. As part of the new workplace systems, foremen began...
WARPLANES of the US-led international coalition shelled a hospital and perpetrated a new massacre in Syria on Saturday, claiming the lives of six civilians and injuring ten others in Abu Kamal city in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor. The warplanes of the coalition shelled Aish Hospital, al-Nadi and al-Shuhada’a...
FOLLOWING the intervention of ex-PM Tony Blair to demand that the UK remains in the EU, all the counter-revolutionary, anti-working class forces have begun to show their hand. Tory Chancellor Hammond now states that there must be a three-year Brexit transitional deal to begin on 27th March 2019 and end...
‘OUR members are standing firm and determined to win,’ striking Royal London Hospital Unite rep Ebrima Sonko told News Line yesterday on the morning picket line outside the Whitechapel, east London, site. The Royal London is one of four Bart’s Health NHS trust hospitals where ancillary workers employed by private...
‘COLOSSAL profits confirm British Airways can easily afford to end the obscenity of cabin crew poverty,’ Unite said yesterday responding to BA’s announcement yesterday of profits of a whopping £975m for the half year to July 2017, a rise of nearly 40 per cent. Unite said: ‘BA mixed fleet cabin...
THE HORROR felt by millions of people after the Grenfell Tower inferno which claimed the lives of so many men, women and children, immediately turned into anger in the hours and days after the fire as it began to emerge that the disaster could have easily been prevented. Cuts to...
‘THE United Farm Workers (UFW) commends the efforts by Senators Udall, Gillibrand, Booker, Blumenthal, Harris and Markey to protect farm workers and their families from this harmful brain damaging pesticide, chlorpyrifos,’ UFW Vice President Giev Kashkooli declared on Tuesday. He continued: ‘We know chlorpyrifos does neurodevelopmental harm in children and...
THE INCREASINGLY fractious relationship between the US and its rival capitalist bloc the European Union, is on the point of erupting into a full scale economic war with both sides threatening sanctions that will bring havoc to the entire world capitalist system as previous ‘allies’ tear each other’s throats...
THE SUPREME Court ruling on Wednesday that the Tory-LibDem introduction of employment tribunal fees in 2013 was illegal is a shattering blow to the Tory government. By Wednesday afternoon Tory Justice Minister, Dominic Raab, responded that the government would cease taking fees for employment tribunals ‘immediately’ and begin the process...
DOCTORS have warned that new plans for savage NHS cuts are ‘shrouded in secrecy’ and will ‘cause uproar’, the BMA says in a statement released this morning. The BMA sent Freedom of Information requests to NHS Improvement requesting the proposal documents. NHS Improvement said the documents belong to local...
THERE was a very lively picket at the Royal London Hospital of Serco workers yesterday, on the third day of their current 14-day strike. They are demanding a 30p-an-hour pay increase and to defend working conditions against increased exploitation and cuts in staff. Elizabeth Bonsu, ward host, said: ‘We don’t...
140,000 National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) members are on the verge of a national strike, which will bring the engineering sector to a halt. The union is demanding a 15% increase, while employers are offering between 5 and 6%. Separately Phakamile Hlubi, NUMSA Acting spokesperson, said in...
THE Supreme Court yesterday dealt a death blow to the Tory strategy to make it financially impossible for workers to take their employers to an Employment Tribunal. In a landmark decision, the Court ruled that fees for those bringing employment tribunal claims were unlawful and that the government acted...
‘LOW PAY – NO WAY!’ shouted Unite Serco strikers on a lively picket line outside the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel yesterday morning. Cleaners, catering workers, porters and security staff employed by private contractor Serco were on the second day of their latest strike, this time for 14 days, to demand...
EMPLOYMENT tribunal fees will be scrapped after Unison won a landmark court victory against a government policy yesterday morning that was found to be illegal. The Supreme Court – the UK’s highest court – has unanimously ruled that the government was acting unlawfully and unconstitutionally when it introduced the fees...
HUNDREDS of ancillary workers employed by Serco at Bart’s Health NHS Trust began a two-week strike from 6am yesterday to 6am August 8th in their continuing fight against low pay. Their union, Unite, and Serco held face-to-face talks last Friday (21 July) but Serco was unable to make an offer...
MORE than 86,000 NHS posts were vacant between January 2017 and March 2017, figures for the NHS in England suggest. Today’s NHS Vacancy Statistics England (February 2015 - March 2017) revealed that in March 2017 there were 30,613 advertised vacancy full-time equivalents published in England and this compares to 26,424...
THE ISRAELI security cabinet decided on Monday night, after massive Palestinian demonstrations and international protests, to remove the metal detectors which had been installed on July 14th, along with turnstiles and security cameras at the entrances of the Al Aqsa Mosque compound. It also decided to replace them with...
A SCHEME to divert patients away from A&E resulted in a patient’s death, prompting NHS officials to launch a national review of the ‘front-door streaming’ programme. The scheme involves a GP posted at the front door of every A&E. When a patient enters the A&E, a GP assesses them and...
THE ISRAELI refusal to remove metal detectors from the outside of the Jerusalem compound which contains the al-Aqsa Mosque is fast becoming a flashpoint in the fight against Zionist occupation as Palestinians rise up against Israeli attempts to impose complete domination over the city. The metal detectors, along with sophisticated...
THE International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has warned that about 600,000 people in the war-torn Yemen could contract cholera by December this year, a figure which is almost one in every 45 people in the 27.5-million-strong country. The ICRC’s news on Sunday came as the relentless bombardment of...
THE scale of the housing crisis today is revealed in a report issued by the Local Government Authority (LGA) which exposes the scandal that the number of homeless children living in temporary accommodation has soared by 40% in the past three years. Councils across England are putting 120,540 children with...
‘FREE, FREE, Palestine! Free Al-Aqsa!’ shouted participants in an over 1,000-strong lobby of the Israeli embassy in West London on Saturday evening. They also shouted ‘Israel is a terror state! Occupation no more!’ The lobby was called in response to the Israeli crackdown barring men under 50 from worshipping at...
EXPERTS who helped recover remains after the September 11th 2001 terror attack on the Twin Towers in New York, are now helping police investigating London’s Grenfell Tower fire, which in scale and complexity is comparable to the 2001 attack in the US, according to UK police. London’s deputy police commissioner,...
THE United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) returned to leaflet customers of US Phillips Seafood restaurants in support of The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) members at the Phillips Seafood processing plant in Lampung, Indonesia. The union there is...
'THE COUNCIL needs to be shut down … Workers should take over and workers' unions should defend them,' Zoe Bernard from Ladbroke Grove, said on Wednesday evening. She was speaking to News Line during the mass demonstration outside the Kensington and Chelsea Council meeting in which new Tory council leader...
EIGHTEEN per cent of young people on slave labour apprenticeship schemes are illegally being paid less than the minimum wage, according to the government’s own long-delayed survey. This is an even bigger scandal when you consider that the minimum wage for 16-18 year-olds at the time when the data...
TORY council leader Elizabeth Campbell was called a ‘murderer’ and told to immediately resign by survivors of the Grenfell Tower tragedy after they pushed their way into the Kensington council meeting on Wednesday night. The meeting was meant to ratify Campbell as the new council leader after the last leader...
ON WEDNESDAY the Tory Work and Pensions Secretary, David Gauke, cynically used the fact that parliament was closing down for the holidays to announce that 7 million people in their late 30s and early 40s will have to wait until they are 68 before they can claim their state...
‘TORIES out!’ ‘Resign!’ shouted angry Justice for Grenfell demonstrators on Wednesday night, lobbying the first meeting of Kensington and Chelsea Council since the fire tragedy. RMT assistant general secretary Steve Hedley told the crowd that the proposed inquiry would be a ‘whitewash’. He said: ‘Where I grew up in Northern...
THE Brexit negotiations have just begun and already it is being spelt out to the UK ruling class that the ‘divorce settlement’ that the EU requires is 100bn euros, and that this must be agreed before there can be any further negotiations. This EU negotiating tactic was developed out...
THE UNITED Auto Workers union and automaker Nissan said on Monday that they reached an agreement to let workers at a Nissan plant in the southern state of Mississippi vote on whether to unionise. Controversy over unionisation at the largely African-American plant in the town of Canton, which opened in...
‘FACING 10 years of pay cuts in real terms, our vital public sector workers – nurses, midwives and refuse collectors – have had an average of £9,000 pinched from their pay packets since 2010,’ Unison said on Monday. ‘And they face losing £4,000 more in the next three years,’ the UK’s biggest...
ONLY a fraction of the donated £20 million has reached the survivors and families of the victims of the Grenfell Tower tragedy which claimed the lives of well over the official figure of 80 men, women and children. Meanwhile, a mass protest outside the first full meeting of Kensington and...
PRESIDENT Trump’s efforts to smash ex-President Obama’s healthcare system, which provides cheaper health insurance for the low paid and the poor (Obamacare), have collapsed after his own party, the Republicans, refused to go along with his plans. rump had made repealing and replacing Obamacare, under which more than 20...
PILOT representatives from the European Cockpit Association (ECA) and the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) have voiced concerns about British Airways’ (BA) use of aircraft and crews from Qatar Airways to fill gaps in BA’s schedule caused by a long-running industrial dispute at the UK national carrier. Since late 2016,...
‘AMBULANCE workers skills are being downgraded by schemes which suggest that a video call can be a substitute for an emergency service arriving at your door,’ Gary Palmer Regional Organiser of the GMB union at the South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) told News Line yesterday. He was responding to alarming...
The US is on the verge of slipping below bankrupt Greece on a world index of wealth inequality – this is the stark conclusion of research by the charity Oxfam. At present the US is ranked 23rd in its global Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) index but is set...
OVER 500 SERCO strikers and their supporters marched through East London on Saturday demanding 30p an hour wage increase. What do we want? A pay rise! When do we want it? Now!’ rang out across the busy Whitechapel market. They have been on a week-long strike since last Monday demanding...
THE Tory party leadership is now breaking apart at the seams with information about the leadership battle being leaked by the different contenders and their supporters. It is now known that Brexit Secretary, Dave Davis, has the support of 30 Tory MPs for a leadership contest in October, just before...
CHANCELLOR Philip Hammond yesterday refused to deny that he said at last Tuesday’s Tory Cabinet meeting that public sector workers are ‘overpaid’. Hammond was repeatedly asked on the BBC Andrew Marr Show but became more and more evasive. Hammond said: ‘This is a relative question. This is about the relationship...
TODAY more than 700 SERCO cleaners, security guards, catering staff and porters, who are in the middle of a week-long strike across four hospitals, and their supporters are marching from the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel to the Mile End Hospital in Stepney Green. They are striking to demand an...
THE government’s financial watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), issued its latest report on Thursday, warning that British public finances are in a worse state to withstand a crisis than they were on the eve of the world banking collapse in 2007. According to the OBR this crash is...