Monthly Archives: November 2017
THE 371 USW United Steelworkers/Syndicat des Métallos workers in Quebec, Canada, have won their nine-month strike against Glencore-managed CEZinc. The workers went on strike at the CEZinc refinery in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec, on 12th February, after the company tried to cut costs by raiding their pension scheme. On Saturday, November 25th,...
NURSES and midwives will fight Tory Health Secretary Hunt’s plans to fund a pay rise by smashing their employment conditions, their unions insisted yesterday. A spokesperson for the Royal College of Nursing, responding to reports in the Health Service Journal on Jeremy Hunt and pay reform, said: ‘Jeremy Hunt...
BOTH the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) trade unions yesterday warned that Health Secretary Hunt is planning a new war on NHS workers, ‘repeating the junior doctors row’ in order to give NHS workers a pay rise with one hand and...
THE CLOSURE of maternity departments at hospitals up and down the country and the severe lack of midwives has created a situation where as many as 1,000 babies are dying during childbirth or are left with severe brain injury every year. A NHS-backed investigation into why so many babies are...
PALESTINIAN Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah on Monday warned Israel that the Jabal al-Baba community to the east of Jerusalem is a red line, warning Israel that it must not cross it! The prime minister stressed that his government stands with the Palestinian community against any Israeli attempts to uproot and...
AN INVESTIGATION by Sky News into the role of the firms that produce the plastic used to cover the exterior of Grenfell Tower has thrown a light into the complicity of these companies and the Tories in the death of 71 people in the inferno that engulfed the block. he...
IT IS time for the South African working class to follow the example of the Russian workers who overthrew not only the Tsar and feudal aristocracy but the emerging capitalist system. It is even more necessary for us to overthrow our diseased and rotting capitalist system, says the South...
THE TRUMP administration performed an abrupt U-turn last week when it reversed a decision made just the week before to close the diplomatic mission of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in Washington DC on the grounds that the PLO were pursuing the demand that Israel be brought before the...
WORKERS at six Amazon distribution centres in Germany and one in Italy began a 24-hour strike on Friday, in a protest timed to coincide with ‘Black Friday’ to demand better wages from the American online giant. In Germany, Ver.di union spokesman Thomas Voss said some 2,500 workers were on strike...
IRELAND’S EU commissioner yesterday threatened that his country will continue to ‘play tough’ on the border issue, claiming that the solution is for the UK to stay in the Customs Union after Brexit. Phil Hogan, the EU’s agriculture commissioner, is demanding guarantees that there will not be a hard border...
THE United Steelworkers (USW) union has called on the Canadian government to intervene after violence flared last Saturday in a labour dispute at a Guerrero, Mexico, mine, leaving two striking workers dead. Armed civilians calling themselves the Tonalapa community police killed the workers, who are among about 800 employees of...
IN THE wake of Tory Chancellor Hammond’s budget – a budget in which he declared war on the working class, war on pensioners, war on the NHS and war on students and youth – the working class was hit again, just a day later, with another bombshell. After analysing the...
SPORTS Direct, the infamous zero-hours employer, is asking shareholders to approve £11m in back pay for Mike Ashley’s brother John. Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner commented: ‘If Mike Ashley is so concerned about ensuring his brother gets the back pay he says he is entitled to, why not the...
A REVOLUTIONARY new therapy in which patients suffering from schizophrenia create an ‘avatar’ of their other self and confront it, has had positive results in reducing the amount of voices the patient hears. Hallucinations are common in people who are suffering from schizophrenia with many hearing threatening and insulting voices....
FIGURES released this week by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show a dramatic increase in the number of preventable deaths among the elderly during the winter of 2016-2017. Over last winter there were 31,800 excess winter deaths among the over-65s from cold-related illness, including heart attacks and strokes. This...
TODAY’S Budget is far from the ‘game-changer’ the country needs and will do little to ease the biggest squeeze in living standards the country has ever seen, Britain’s largest union, Unite warned on Wednesday. Responding to the Budget delivered by chancellor of exchequer Philip Hammond, Unite general secretary Len McCluskey...
TORY Chancellor Hammond kicked public sector workers in the teeth in his class war budget yesterday, refusing to lift the seven-year pay freeze which has seen their pay fall by at least 16% since 2010. Signalling that British capitalism is rapidly collapsing, Hammond began by complaining that ‘regrettably our productivity...
CHANCELLOR Hammond outlined a bankrupt policy for a bankrupt Britain yesterday in the House of Commons. The paper-thin disguise for this bankruptcy was Hammond’s words about ‘An economy set on a path to a new relationship with our European neighbours and a new future outside the European Union.’ The truth...
THE NATIONAL Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has demanded that Australia’s government takes ‘urgent and immediate action to stop unconscionable employers ripping off international students by paying them well below the legal minimum wage’. The NTEU called on the government to ‘crackdown on this illegal behaviour’ following Monday’s release of ‘Wage...
ON Budget Day when the Chancellor is expected to ignore the cash crisis facing the NHS – after the service has suffered massive cuts and faces many more – drug companies are literally robbing the NHS and harming the interests of NHS patients, for the benefit of their shareholders. Drug...
WORKERS at Siemens AG, the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe, are demanding strike action against a programme of mass sackings. Thousands of Siemens employees demonstrated in defence of their jobs in various German cities last Friday, following the company’s announcement of a plan to cut 6,900 jobs. While...
‘ROBERT Mugabe has handed me his letter of resignation,’ the speaker of Zimbabwe’s Parliament announced yesterday, sparking wild celebrations. Cheers, singing, shouting and dancing erupted across the country, with mass celebrations going on all through the night. Mugabe’s letter read: ‘I Robert Gabriel Mugabe hereby formally tender my resignation with...
AMBULANCE workers union GMB have called for the chief executive of the South West Ambulance Service to quit as they ‘struggle to maintain a crumbling service’. GMB union members from South West Ambulance Service (SWASFT) have written a letter ‘apologising’ to the public for ‘potentially putting them at risk’. They...
A MONTH of intensive talks designed to cobble together a new coalition government in Germany ended late Sunday night when the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) walked out of negotiations, declaring that: ‘The four discussion partners have no common vision for modernisation of the country or common basis of...
SAUDI Arabia’s foreign minister last Friday accused Hezbollah, which Riyadh blames for the shock resignation of Lebanese premier Saad Hariri, of holding Lebanon hostage and using its banks to launder money. Adel al-Jubeir told reporters in Madrid that the Shiite group was destabilising Lebanon by maintaining its arsenal and fighters...
UNIVERSITY lecturers union UCU has warned of ‘chaos on campus’ as a nationwide strike is looming in response to a full frontal attack on their pensions which would cut their pension by a savage 20%! The University and College Union warned on Friday of chaos in universities as lectures and...
SAEB Erekat, Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) Executive Committee, said on Saturday that ‘the US State Department notified us with an official letter that they cannot certify the continuance opening of the PLO office in Washington DC due to the fact that we are pursuing and...
TENS OF THOUSANDS of workers and youth have marched to President Mugabe’s office and residence and say that they will stay there till he resigns and new elections are called. This revolutionary mass action comes just days after the Zimbabwe army general staff organised a coup in response to 93-year-old...
PATIENTS suffering from serious conditions, requiring hip or knee replacements, hernias repaired and cataracts removed, all considered ‘non-urgent surgery’, have been told that they will have a minimum three-month agonising wait. Three months, in which time their conditions can rapidly deteriorate. Untreated cataracts can lead to blindness, while those requiring...
OVER 100 Civil Society Organisations produced the following Joint Statement on the Military Take Over in Zimbabwe on November 15, 2017. ‘We the undersigned civil society organisations guided by the Constitution express our concern over the political developments in Zimbabwe, today, Wednesday 15 November 2017. ‘We call for the peaceful...
THE POLICE have claimed that the final death toll for Grenfell Tower is seventy one and have for the first time admitted that CCTV showed 223 people escaping the fire. The number of victims includes baby Logan Gomes, who was stillborn in hospital on 14th June, the day the 24-storey...
THE Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) yesterday supported the call by Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell for ‘an emergency Budget for our public services’. The PCS said: ‘This comes after almost 99% of the union’s public sector members in a ballot result last week indicated they want to see the...
TWO Palestinian prisoners have entered the critical stages of hunger strikes undertaken in protest at how they have been detained without charge or trial. Hassan Shokeh, 29, from Bethlehem, has been refusing food for more than 30 days. Shokeh was previously detained by Israeli forces before he was released on...
THOUSANDS of families in England will be spending Christmas in fear that the New Year will bring eviction from their homes. This was the message hammered home by a private landlord in a letter sent out to hundreds of his tenants in anticipation of the roll-out of Universal Credit in...
MANDATE Trade Union members on Tuesday called on all TDs to sign the ‘Secure Hours – Better Future’ charter which would end zero-hours and ‘If and When’ contracts in Ireland. The Union said Dunnes Stores workers, along with tens of thousands of others, do not know from week to week...
‘MINISTERS are colluding in a growing scandal. Their promises about Grenfell, about new council homes, and action on safety are proving hollow,’ said Eileen Short of Homes for All yesterday, announcing an ‘all-day Housing Action’ for Budget Day next Thursday. The action is on Budget Day 22nd November,...
PM MAY is facing a revolt from at least 15 Tory MPs who are threatening to vote with the majority of Labour MPs against the government’s amendment to leave the EU on October 25 2019, thus creating the conditions to bring the May government down from the right...
THE US House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a resolution clearly stating that US military assistance to Saudi Arabia in its war against neighbouring Yemen is not authorised under legislation passed by Congress to fight terrorism or to invade Iraq. The House adopted the nonbinding resolution by a 366-30 vote...
THE SOUTH African Federation of Trade Unions’ (SAFTU) claim that South Africa is becoming a kleptocracy – a country ruled by thieves – is no exaggeration and has now been proven, says SAFTU president Mac Chavalala. SAFTU’s congress in Salt River, Cape Town on Saturday, he said South Africa suffers...