Monthly Archives: June 2018
FOUR thousand six hundred jobs have been axed at Rolls-Royce which ‘will not only have a devastating impact on workers but also on the economy’ GMB warned yesterday, while Unite said that the city of Derby, where most of the jobs were based will be hit hard. Unite assistant general...
‘This programme is a disgrace to all Australians and must be scrapped,’ ACTU (Australian Council of Trade Unions) Indigenous Officer Lara Watson said on Tuesday. The fight against the racially discriminatory Community Development Programme (CDP) continues, with the Turnbull Government standing by a policy which subjects Indigenous workers in remote...
LAST Tuesday afternoon, in the House of Commons, the knives were out for the Brexit referendum result, and for the millions of workers who voted ‘Leave’ in the 2016 referendum. Tuesday’s debate was on the anti-Brexit amendments put down by the non-elected House of Lords to sabotage the Brexit...
‘WE FEEL tomorrow is about remembering and honouring the 72 that died,’ Justice4Grenfell campaign co-ordinator Yvette Williams told News Line yesterday ahead of today’s first anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn told Parliament yesterday that he is joining tonight’s Silent March for Grenfell, which assembles...
TRADE union Unite has signed a historic union recognition agreement with Ryanair, which is infamous for fighting to stop the unionisation of its workforce. This represents a major victory for the Ryanair workers and a defeat for the Ryanair management who only conceded after strikes loomed amongst pilots and cabin...
THE SIGNED Joint Statement of US President Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, issued from the Singapore Summit yesterday morning, commits Trump ‘to provide security guarantees to the DPRK,’ while Kim Jong-un reaffirmed his ‘firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.’ There is even a hint...
US PRESIDENT Trump announced he has agreed to suspend ‘war games’ with South Korea in return for a commitment to the ‘complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula’. Speaking at a press conference in Singapore after meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for the first time, Trump said: ‘The sanctions...
REMAINER MPs were defeated in their attempts to reverse Brexit yesterday after the majority voted to disagree with Lords Amendment 19 on a ‘meaningful vote’ on the final Brexit deal. 324 voted to disagree with the Lords amendment, and 298 MPs voted to adopt it. The Lords Amendment 19 would...
‘EVERY square inch of Palestine must be liberated,’ Palestinian born in Lebanon Sandra Wafta told News Line on Sunday as hundreds of people lined up for the March on Quds Day (Jerusalem Day). ‘The world will not be at peace until the Zionist entity is completely 100% dismantled,’ she continued,...
THE ANNOUNCEMENT by the Welsh government yesterday that it was embarking on a strategy to ensure patients only go to hospital when it is absolutely essential marks yet another determined push to make hospitals a thing of the past and return patients to the days before the NHS was...
‘THE POOREST students will graduate with the largest debt. We concur that the reintroduction of grants is essential,’ Emily Chapman, NUS Vice-President (Further Education) said yesterday. Both the NUS students’ union and lecturers’ union UCU responded to the report released yesterday by a Parliamentary Committee by demanding that student...
AFTER departing early from the G7 summit in Quebec for Singapore, President Donald Trump called on US representatives not to endorse the joint communique put out by the heads of the Group of Seven industrialised nations. Trump made the statement on Twitter following ‘false statements’ made by Canada’s Prime Minister...
ENGLAND will lose more than 600 GP practices by 2022 without urgent investment, BMA analysis reveals. More than 600 GP practices in England will be lost in the next four years if investment is not increased, according to analysis by the British Medical Association. The BMA has produced two projections...
THE G7 summit has ended in tantrums, with US President Donald Trump lashing out at Canada’s Trudeau, who was hosting the gathering. Trump from his jet tweeted a bombshell, that he had instructed his representatives at the Quebec G7 to withdraw support from the G7’s final statement. He accused...
FRENCH rail workers walked out on another day of strikes on Thursday June 7th. Rail unions have carried out a series of two-day rolling strikes since the beginning of April. The unions are opposed to plans to strip new SNCF recruits of jobs-for-life and early retirement, part of President Macron’s...
AMNESTY International carried out a field investigation in the city of Raqqa in Northern Syria. They have reported the true horror of the UK, French and US military campaign which the US Defence Secretary James Mattis promised would be a ‘war of annihilation’ against IS. The reality was that it...
THE LONDON Fire Brigade (LFB) and the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) gave evidence on Day 11 of the Grenfell Inquiry, answering media slurs at their response to the fire. The Metropolitan Police announced yesterday that it has launched a criminal investigation into the use of the ‘stay put’ policy...
TORY prime minister Theresa May is this week teetering on the brink of political annihilation as it emerged that her Brexit secretary, David Davis, is at the point of resigning and causing a massive split in her party that would doom both May and the government. The immediate cause of...
ON JUNE 30th, hundreds of thousands of people will be marching to celebrate and defend our National Health Service. The NHS is facing many problems because of under-funding, one of those being the decline in pay and working conditions for staff. Unison is told this by its members on a...
The South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) has condemned the privatisation of energy generation to ‘capitalist companies’ and expressed its support for social ownership of the renewable energy project. Saftu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi came out guns blazing against the introduction of independent power producers (IPPs) as part...
THE UK was changed forever when the over-confident Tory leadership of Cameron and Osborne got the House of Commons to agree a resolution to authorise a ‘United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016’. The advisory leaflet was titled: ‘Why the Government believes that voting to remain in the European...
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn twice refused to rule out a second referendum yesterday when challenged during Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons. MPs are to vote on the Brexit Bill at the end of a marathon session in the House of Commons next Tuesday night. Yesterday, in...
THE REFURBISHMENT of Grenfell Tower ‘rendered it a death trap’ through the installation of cladding ‘more flammable than petrol,’ Stephanie Barwise QC told the inquiry yesterday. She said: ‘As it stood before the refurbishment, Grenfell was constructed of virtually incombustible concrete. ‘It was however covered by the polyethylene cladding now...
TORY MP Sir Nicholas Soames, grandson of Winston Churchill, told the House of Commons and Transport Secretary Chris Grayling yesterday, that the Rail Industry Readiness Board should be ‘taken quietly outside and disposed of’. He said people’s private lives are being ‘destroyed’ by collapsing rail privatisation, adding: ‘This whole thing...
THE TORY government’s ‘hostile environment’, blocking students from studying in the UK, blocking overseas doctors from working in the NHS, while demanding landlords check the immigration status of their tenants, is being challenged, driving the Tories back on a number of fronts. Doctors union BMA, lecturers union UCU and...
EXAMS at the Walter Sisulu University (WSU) in South Africa’s Western Cape have been postponed due to an on-going strike by workers. Unions representing staff are demanding an 8% wage increase while management is offering 6.3%. The National Health Education and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU)’s Mcebisi Jojo says the union is...
TODAY we are living in the period of the death agony of the world capitalist system. Everywhere the crisis is ripping apart nation states, pitting former allies against one another as the ruling class of every country engages in a life and death struggle to be the survivors in...
A LITANY of safety breaches which led to the horrific Grenfell Tower fire were revealed yesterday during the opening of the next stage of the inquiry into the tragedy. On its first formal day, hearing legal submissions, Richard Millett QC, lead counsel to the inquiry, outlined the conclusions...
CASINO workers’ Culinary Union Local 226 and Caesars Entertainment, one of the largest resort operators in Las Vegas, reached a tentative labour agreement on Friday that would cover about a quarter of the 50,000 employees threatening the first citywide strike in more than 30 years. The new five-year deal with...
THE EU Brexit chief negotiator has declared that he is not prepared to compromise with the UK government over the decision of the British people to leave the EU. Michel Barnier told the US channel Vice News: ‘It is the decision of the British to leave the union that has...
THE squeeze on Britain’s 10 million low paid workers is at risk of intensifying over the coming decade said a report on ‘The State of the Nation’, from the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). The intensified squeeze comes from the impact of mounting global economic competition, automation and new...
SYRIAN President Bashar al-Assad says Damascus has nearly won the seven-year war, despite continued US ‘interference’. In an interview given to RT, President al-Assad was asked: ‘How much nearer the end of this war are we now in your estimation?’ Assad replied: ‘With every move forward in the battlefield, with...
WORKING in an Amazon warehouse, a woman in the last months of pregnancy was forced to stand for ten hours a day, while another says she suffered a miscarriage, a new study published yesterday showed. The report highlighted the terrible conditions where ‘workers are treated like robots’. The woman,...
THE CAPITALIST world was rocking yesterday after President Trump’s declaration of a trade war on his European Union, Canadian and Mexican rivals. The US tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminium came into effect yesterday. Labour’s shadow trade secretary Barry Gardiner said the UK must not...
UNDER the umbrella of ‘Social Alliance’, the GSEE (Greek TUC), the ADEDY (public sector workers’ unions federation) and the small and medium sized business associations called a 24-hour strike on Wednesday against austerity. The seafarers’ trade union PENEN reminded workers that both the GSEE and ADEDY bureaucrats, along with the...
Naji Maysara Ghneim, 23, died on Wednesday of wounds sustained a few days ago when hit by Israeli army gunfire east of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, according to the Ministry of Health. Ghneim died at an East Jerusalem hospital where he was transferred following his critical injury....
AS THE EU crisis continues to sweep through the continent, a German MEP, Markus Ferber, offered his blunt assessment of the steps that the European ruling class would need to take to stop its complete destruction as a result of the political eruption in Italy. When asked by German television...