Monthly Archives: October 2020
THE CAPITALIST contempt for the health and safety of workers in the pursuit of profit has been highlighted this week by the giant on-line retailer Amazon. Tuesday and Wednesday this week were the days dubbed Amazon Prime Day, the annual sales event which rakes in a fortune for the company. These...
THE MIGRANTS’ Rights Network (MRN) is deeply concerned about the Home Office’s proposed condemnation and treatment of so-called ‘illegal’ migrants. Tory Home Secretary Priti Patel is planning the use of nets to prevent refugees from crossing the English Channel in small boats to the UK to claim asylum.
In an interview...
THE SUDDEN announcement on Monday that the boss of British Airways, Alex Cruz, was being sacked was greeted by the Unite union leaders as a great opportunity to ‘begin a new chapter of constructive relations with staff and the unions’. Unite assistant general secretary Howard Beckett welcomed Cruz’s sacking saying...
THE UK unemployment rate has surged to its highest level in over three years to 4.5% in the three months to August, compared with 4.1% in the previous quarter. Redundancies rose to their highest level since 2009, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. The bad news came as the Johnson...
ALEX Cruz, the author of the notorious BA ‘fire and rehire’ policy, has been sacked as chief executive and chair of British Airways with immediate effect, owner International Airlines Group said yesterday. Aer Lingus chief Sean Doyle will replace Cruz as chief executive and take over as chair after a...
TORY PM Johnson announced severe restrictions to be imposed on Liverpool yesterday to try to tackle the coronavirus crisis. He said he supported the Metro Mayor of Liverpool: ‘I would like to put on record my thanks to Steve Rotherham and his collegues in very difficult circumstances.’
He added: ‘I can...
ON WORLD Day For Decent Work, trade union federations in South Africa declared a national strike against ‘the winds of austerity blowing out the national treasury’. Workers across trade union federations marched against austerity measures, poor working and living conditions and corruption in different cities and towns last Wednesday. Putting forward...
IN THEIR latest attack on refugees the Tories are preparing to use nets to disable boats and dinghies attempting the dangerous Channel crossing. This tactic was revealed in a Daily Telegraph interview with the ex-Royal Marine, Dan O’Mahoney, appointed as ‘clandestine Channel threat commander’ by Tory Home Secretary Priti Patel...
IN A statement to Parliament today Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce a new three-tier lockdown system where each region in England is placed into a tier based on the severity of coronavirus cases in the area. Yesterday afternoon, amid complaints by Tory backbench MPs that he...
THE Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) have censured the latest comments by Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief and ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz against Palestinians and their cause. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, in a brief statement released last...
‘WE WERE hoping for a V: a rapid economic bounceback. We would have probably settled for a W: a wobbly recovery, with dips along the way. Right now even an L – a steep plunge that at least bottoms out – would be acceptable. Instead it is starting to...
TORY CHANCELLOR Sunak set out yesterday more massive support for businesses forced to close by law, with much tighter virus rules expected in England next week. Sunak outlined ‘the next stage of the Job Support Scheme’ to help firms that ‘may have to close in the coming weeks or months’. He...
THE SECOND wave of coronavirus has hit the UK with devastating consequences, and the Tory government’s efforts at bringing in measures to curb the spread are like a modern-day King Canute attempting to command the waves to retreat. The Tory government are responsible for creating conditions in which the virus...
HORRIFIC pay cuts of up to £8,000 a year being imposed on thousands of Heathrow airport workers are the cost of eye-watering levels of debt and excessive payments to directors and shareholders, the Unite union claimed yesterday. Research by Unite, released to coincide with the beginning of an industrial action...
BOTH COSATU (the Confederation of South African Trade Unions) and the South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) have vowed to bring the country to a halt, as they marched and picketed against state capture, corruption and gender-based violence (GBV) on Wednesday. The two federations embarked on joint protests in...
THE DEMAND for capitalism to ‘reopen’ under the umbrella of the discredited theory that herd immunity is the only way to combat coronavirus has intensified this week with the publication of the Great Barrington Declaration. This ‘declaration’, named after the US town where it was drawn up, argues for the...
‘NO MEDALS, badges or claps this time – just pay nursing fairly’, a nursing union leader told Boris Johnson yesterday. The leader of the UK’s RCN nursing union accused politicians of ‘hollow’ clapping and letting down nursing staff after the first phase of the pandemic. Dame Donna Kinnair called on the...
‘THE PRIME Minister’s promises are nothing more than hot air,’ the GMB trade union said in response to Boris Johnson’s speech to the virtual Tory Party Conference on Tuesday. Jude Brimble, GMB National Secretary, said: ‘The Prime Minister loves to promise the grass is greener in the sunlit uplands – without any kind...
IN HIS speech to the Tory party conference on Monday, chancellor Rishi Sunak pledged to ‘use the overwhelming might of the British state’ in order ‘to create, support and extend opportunity’ to as many people as possible. In fact, the Tories have used the might of the state to enrich...
‘THE STATE must step back and let the private sector get to work,’ Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared in his virtual Tory Party Conference speech yesterday. He warned that the UK will ‘not return to normal’ after the coronavirus pandemic, which would be a ‘catalyst’ for major change. He said...
THE Iraqi prime minister says as many as 2,500 US troops have left the country as part of agreements reached with Washington to enable a full withdrawal of American troops. Mustafa al-Kadhimi made the announcement on Saturday in an interview with the state al-Iraqiya television.
He called the development a great...
IN RESPONSE to legal action taken by Adalah – The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel – Israeli authorities have clarified that they are freezing home demolitions, said an Adalah press release yesterday. On 17 August, Adalah Attorney Suhad Bishara sent a letter to Israeli Attorney General Avichai...
OLDER PEOPLE in care homes were abandoned to die amid government failures during the coronavirus pandemic, Amnesty International accuses the Tory government in a new report published yesterday. Key failings included decisions to discharge thousands of untested hospital patients into care homes and the imposition of blanket DNARs (do not...
YESTERDAY Tory chancellor Rishi Sunak unveiled his new Job Entry Targeted Scheme (JETS) that he claimed will ‘provide fresh opportunities to those that have sadly lost their jobs, to ensure that nobody is left without hope’ for the four million workers being thrown out of work in the coming...
YESTERDAY, Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak, speaking at the Tory Party conference, assured the party that his main objective is to get the debt under control. ‘We will protect the public finances, over the medium term getting our borrowing and debt back under control,’ he said, indicating the cuts and tax...
A series of ‘shockingly irresponsible’ government decisions put tens of thousands of older people’s lives at risk and led to multiple violations of care home residents’ human rights, said Amnesty International yesterday, following an investigation by its Crisis Response team. Amnesty’s 50-page report – As If Expendable: The UK Government’s...
‘ONE of the world’s largest airports is facing complete shutdown,’ the Unite union has warned, ‘as members of Unite prepare to ballot for strike action over the company’s attempts to slash the pay of 4,000 workers by up to £8,000’. It went on to stress: ‘Members of Unite employed directly...
US PRESIDENT TRUMP going down with the coronavirus has sharpened the crisis of the imperialist powers, including the UK, who were up till now in Trump’s back pocket, but have now been thrown into disarray with the prospect that there could be a Biden presidency, after a contest with...
THE GMB union has demanded assurances from the new owners of Asda over the future of over 100,000 workers as the supermarket chain was sold by previous owners Walmart. The sale announcement was made yesterday as retail giant Walmart completed a £6.5 billion sale of Asda to a consortium comprising...
ON October 1st, 1995 56 domestic and catering workers at Hillingdon Hospital were sacked by Pall Mall for refusing to accept a £40 per week wage cut. This was a momentous struggle that ended after five years with Unison shop steward Malkiat Bilku leading her members back to work on...
UNEMPLOYMENT is set to soar to levels not seen since The Great Depression, the ‘Hungry 1930s’, when workers starved. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is predicting four million unemployed, or an unemployment rate of 13.2 per cent. However, as the economy collapses under the weight of a national debt...
AS OF YESTERDAY the Tory government’s contribution to furloughed workers’ wages was cut, marking the beginning of the end of the scheme – with the Office for Budget for Responsibility (OBR) predicting as many as four million will now become unemployed within months. Yesterday was also the deadline for some...
THE CONFEDERATION of South African trade unions (Cosatu) is planning a nationwide shutdown next week, and has announced that its affiliated workers will not be reporting for duty. ‘It will continue to intensify,’ the federation’s announcement stated, during its ‘national mobilisation efforts in the build-up to its protest action next...
ON WEDNESDAY it was revealed that the Tory government is considering building an ‘asylum processing centre’ in the South Atlantic on Ascension Island. The Foreign Office was reported to have carried out an assessment of transferring asylum seekers 5,000 miles and dumping them on this remote overseas UK territory. It...
‘WIKILEAKS publication represents a great victory for freedom of expression in the face of government secrecy,’ said a statement by respected journalist Patrick Cockburn, read out at the Old Bailey yesterday morning. Cockburn’s statement, who is the ex-Middle Eastern corespondent for the Financial Times, was one of a number of...
BY FRA HUGHES IN WEST BELFAST BRITAIN has been involved in duplicity and skulduggery in Palestine from the secret signing of the Balfour agreement in 1917 to ‘establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine’ to the partition of Palestine and the eventual birth of Israel on the...
IN AN unprecedented move, the American trade union AFL-CIO federation (the US equivalent of the TUC) issued a statement last Friday warning that the unions were prepared to intervene if president Trump carried out his threat to overturn the result of the Presidential election on 3 November if it...