Monthly Archives: July 2019
SHIPBUILDERS have occupied the Harland & Wolff site in Belfast, closing the gates and refusing to leave, with their unions GMB and Unite demanding that the shipyard is renationalised. By 5.00pm today, the workers will know if the plant is to shut and their jobs axed. Not prepared to await...
‘ANY TALK of cutting salaries and benefits will be met with hellfire,’ Tahir Maepa, deputy general manager of the 200,000-strong Public Servants Association of South Africa (PSA) trade union, said on Monday. And Mugwena Maluleke, general secretary of the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union (DTU), added that pay cuts will ‘be...
ON JULY 4th, 30 Royal Marines boarded the Iranian oil tanker Grace 1 off Gibraltar, allegedly on orders from the USA, because of suspicions the tanker was transporting oil to Syria. That action began the current crisis which has seen the Iranians seize a British flagged oil tanker in...
‘SUDANESE generals must free journalist Sadiq Rizaigi now!’ the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) in the UK and Ireland demanded yesterday joining calls from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) for his immediate release. Rizaigi is the head of the Sudanese Journalists Union (SJU). He was arrested and held by...
RESIDENTS of Syria’s Raqqah, which once served as the capital of the self-proclaimed ‘caliphate’ of the Daesh terrorist group, yearn for the return of President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, US magazine Foreign Policy reports. Many Raqqah locals mistrust the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed anti-Damascus alliance of mainly Kurdish militants...
THE UNITE union, representing car workers, said yesterday that its members will fight ‘tooth and nail’ to safeguard Vauxhall’s Ellesmere Port plant, and urged Boris Johnson’s Tory government to take a ‘no-deal’ Brexit off the table. The union was responding to comments by Carlos Tavares, the boss of Vauxhall’s owner...
LABOUR leader Corbyn, appearing on the Sophy Ridge show on Sunday yesterday, was asked: ‘Can you guarantee that you’ll call a confidence motion before we leave the EU in October?’ Corbyn replied: ‘I can guarantee you this; we’ll do everything to avoid a no-deal exit, we’ll do everything to challenge...
PRESIDENT Trump’s proposed H-2A rules would harm not help, US farm workers and reduce protections for both domestic and foreign field labourers, warns the United Farm Workers (UFW) union. In a statement last Friday, the UFW said: ‘Donald Trump’s proposed changes in rules governing the H-2A agricultural guest worker programme would make...
EIGHT SENIOR military officers are to be charged in Sudan with crimes against humanity over their part in the mass killing of over 150 protesters on 3rd June. The continuous mass actions by the Sudanese workers and youth have forced the junta to announce the charges after investigating the massacre,...
THE GOVERNOR of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) said yesterday that plots to force a massive devaluation of Iran’s national currency to ruin the country had failed. Abdolnasser Hemmati said on Friday that ‘enemies’ failed to realise their objectives from imposing sanctions on Iran which was ‘as they had...
BRITISH broadcast regulator Ofcom has just slapped Russia Today (RT) with a six-figure £200,000 fine for allegedly breaching impartiality rules. The fine comes before a pending Judicial Review and dwarfs fines imposed on media outlets that gave air to hate speeches. Last December, Ofcom said that in seven instances over the...
PUERTO RICO’s Governor Ricardo Rosselló resigned on Thursday – just three days after a million demonstrators marched down Puerto Rico’s Las Americas highway insisting he quit there and then. Fuelled by a general strike called by the island’s unions, around one in every three islanders converged on the capital San...
THE TORY government, using their NHS Long Term Plan have stepped up their war against the health service, attempting to drive through measures that will smash the NHS. The plan is to proceed with a mass closure programme, cutting patient care and bringing in big American private health companies...
NISSAN is to cut 12,500 jobs worldwide as it reduces its production capacity and the number of models it produces by 10% by the end of 2022, the car giant announced yesterday without specifying where the cuts will fall. Union sources said they ‘were hopeful Nissan’s Sunderland car plant would...
THE Health & Other Services Personnel Trade Union of South Africa (Hospersa) has declared a dispute against SANParks following months of protracted wage negotiations. Union spokesperson Kevin Halama has also said that two other unions are joining their dispute to negotiate for better working conditions. He says that if the dispute...
THE NEW Tory PM, Boris Johnson, now has a cabinet dominated by ‘Leavers’ after his massive clear-out of ‘Remainer’ ministers, following his victory in the Tory poll for a new PM. In his maiden speech outside 10 Downing Street on Wednesday afternoon he was at his most militant, forecasting that...
THE NEW PM Boris Johnson, making his first speech outside the doors of 10 Downing Street yesterday at 4pm, denounced the ‘pessimists at home and abroad’. Before Johnson went to see the Queen, leading Remainer members of May’s cabinet, Chancellor Hammond, EU Minister Lidington, Rory Stewart and Secretary of State...
STAFF at Balham benefit centre are being balloted for strike action having been told that their office is due to close on 31 December. This is because the building’s landlord wants to redevelop the site and DWP is committed to moving all processing work outside of London. The department has also...
‘Get Ready For A Stayaway,’ the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) General Council has instructed its member organisations. In a statement last Saturday, ZCTU secretary general Japhet Moyo confirmed that a meeting of the unions’ General Council has resolved to defy a possible state backlash and fight to secure...
THE HIGH Court on Tuesday dismissed an attempt by British Airways to secure an interim judgement that would make planned strike action by pilots illegal under Tory anti-union laws. On Monday, the British Airline Pilots’ Association (Balpa) had announced that its members backed industrial action over a pay dispute by...
NURSES at the University of Chicago Medical Centre (UCMC) demonstrated against unsafe working conditions and inadequate staffing levels at a rally organised by the National Nurses Union (NNU) on Monday. NNU is the largest nurses’ union in the United States and represents approximately 2,300 nurses at UChicago Medicine. Illinois State Senator...
THE JUST-elected Tory leader Boris Johnson has already faced an attempt to remove him by Tory Minister of State for Europe Sir Alan Duncan, even before his victory was announced yesterday mid-day. Duncan resigned on Monday in an attempt to trigger an emergency debate in the House of Commons on...
‘COBRA emergency meetings were held this morning and throughout the weekend. We must now take appropriate action to support the safe passage of vessels through the Strait of Hormuz,’ Tory Foreign Secretary Hunt told the House of Commons yesterday afternoon. He said: ‘We made it clear to Iran that we...
‘There is no good reason to keep these people on Manus and Nauru ... The cruelty, the brutality has to end,’ Chris Breen, co-organiser of Australia’s Refugee Action Coalition (RAC), said last week. He was speaking ahead of demonstrations and protests in towns and cities across the continent held over...
IN JANUARY this year the Tory secretary of state for health, Matt Hancock, told MPs that ‘there is no privatisation on my watch’ of the NHS, a solemn pledge that figures obtained this week show to have been yet another monumental Tory lie. Not only has privatisation of NHS services continued...
LABOUR’S Shadow Brexit Secretary, Keir Starmer, yesterday welcomed Tory Chancellor Philip Hammond’s announcement on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that he will resign on Wednesday and join with other MPs from all parties to seek to organise a parliamentary coup to stop Brexit. Starmer tweeted: ‘I respect Philip Hammond’s decision...
THE ISRAELI occupation authorities have transformed the images of joy, play and education that should be the norm for Palestinian children into a shocking number of violations committed by the army against them in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Around 1.3 million Palestinian children in the West Bank...
CRISIS-RIDDEN British imperialism, split over whether to serve the European Union or the United States, is now like a ship without a rudder, and is heading for the rocks. The split in the ruling class is irreversible. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hammond, has announced that before the outgoing PM...
TRADE Union leaders of Nigeria’s JNPSNC are telling members in public service, in all 36 states and in Abuja, to prepare for ‘total showdown’ with the government should negotiations on the adjustment of the N30,000 new national minimum wage break down. This is coming as the Senate yesterday appealed to...
Commons on Thursday to try to ensure that Parliament is able to block any attempt by the expected Johnson-led Tory government to shut Parliament down to ensure Brexit takes place on October 31. A fierce showdown over Brexit is now underway! The only way to ensure that the UK leaves...
AN AMENDMENT aimed at blocking any attempt to shut down Parliament to ensure that Brexit is carried out, was passed by a majority of 41, with 315 MPs voting for the amendment and 274 against, yesterday afternoon in House of Commons. Seventeen Tory MPs rebelled against the whip and voted...
‘Parliament & Peterloo’ Exhibition in Westminster Hall between 4th July and 26th September 2019 THE Parliamentary Archives invites people to visit the ‘Parliament & Peterloo’ exhibition which opened on 4th July to mark next month’s 200th anniversary of the brutal state attack on unarmed workers and youth.
This free, small display explores...
THE BBC has announced that it intends to send squads to the homes of over-75s to make sure that they pay their TV licence when their free licence entitlement ends next year, a move clearly designed to terrorise them into either paying or giving up their TVs. These visits from...
THE RMT East Midlands Trains (EMT) strike is to go ahead on Saturday after the company bosses snubbed talks. The dispute is over EMT management’s failure to bring a meaningful resolution to RMT members’ concerns over pay discrimination and contract issues. RMT has made every effort to broker a negotiated settlement...
WORKERS from three separate government departments, some of them engaged in indefinite strike action, will hold a joint demonstration and march through central London at midday today. Outsourced workers at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), HMRC and the FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) are joining up...
FOLLOWING hard on the heels of last week’s hatchet job carried out by the BBC Panorama programme, the Labour Party right wing have launched their major attack on the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn based on lying and unfounded accusations of anti-Semitism. Yesterday, a full-page advert appeared in the Guardian newspaper...
LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn is to hold an emergency shadow cabinet meeting next Monday to discuss alleged anti-Semitism within the party. The meeting was called after Labour came under attack from right-wingers within the party over Corbyn’s response to a BBC Panorama TV documentary. The documentary attacked the Party, levelling all...
MORE than 2,000 workers at seven Amazon sites across Germany have gone on strike over pay for at least two days, trade union Ver.di said on Monday, as part of a global movement of Amazon workers fighting atrocious working conditions worldwide. The walkouts, under the motto ‘No more discount on...
A NEW war between Israel and Palestinian factions in the occupied Gaza Strip ‘is not far away’, and ‘will be deadlier and more destructive than any previous’ offensive, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post on July 12. The Military Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Aviv Kochavi, ‘has already approved...
OVER 20 PCS catering workers at the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), working for contractor Aramark, walked out on indefinite strike at 12 noon yesterday. They were greeted by cheers and applause from a crowd of trade unionists and BEIS staff. A rally outside the BEIS building in...
CLAIMS that trade union officials collaborated with the blacklisters of the Consulting Association are being investigated by Unite. The union has launched an inquiry into longstanding allegations that union officials colluded with the notorious blacklist, which was run and funded by large construction firms to prevent specific workers from getting...
WORKERS at the online retail giant Amazon warehouse in Minnesota were out on a six hours-long strike yesterday called to coincide with the company’s largest sales event of the year in the first major US strike the company has faced. July 15 was the start of a two-day Amazon ‘Prime...
Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott has retweeted a call for Labour Party deputy leader Tom Watson to quit after he publicly attacked the party’s General Secretary, Jennie Formby. The call was backed up by Unite General Secretary Len McCluskey, who described Watson at the Durham Miners Gala on Saturday as...