Monthly Archives: February 2022
LABOUR leader Keir Starmer yesterday threw down the gauntlet to the trade union movement when his office announced that ‘Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is under new management’ and will act only in the national interest not in the interests of the trade unions and the millions of workers who...
THE MEETING between the UK foreign minister and her Russian counterpart yesterday was ‘like the mute talking to the deaf’, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a joint press conference with Tory Foreign Secretary Liz Truss on her visit to Moscow. He said that the sides had struggled to...
‘IT IS MY expectation that we will be able to end the last domestic restrictions, including the legal requirement to self-isolate if you test positive, a full month early,’ Tory PM Johnson told the House of Commons yesterday to a roaring cheer from the extreme right-wing of his party. This...
The General Industries Workers Union of SA (Giwusa) has lambasted Clover, claiming that the massive South African dairy producer is lining its pockets at the expense of its employees. Clover workers have been on strike since November 22nd against sackings and closures.
The General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (Giwusa)...
STARBUCKS, the world’s largest coffee chain, has been stunned by an explosion of its workers demanding trade union rights across America. Last year, a group of Starbucks workers in western New York started the fight for a union, Starbucks Workers United, that has spread across the country and become a...
ISRAELI special forces killed three Palestinians and arrested another in the city of Nablus in the northern part of the occupied West Bank yesterday. The incident took place in the city’s al-Makhfeya neighbourhood. The Israeli soldiers opened fire on a Palestinian car killing three of its passengers in what was...
LEADING Tunisian judges on Sunday rejected President Kais Saied’s moves to disband the Supreme Judicial Council that oversees them, a move they see as undermining their independence, thus setting up a new struggle over his consolidation of power. This came after Saied announced overnight he was dissolving the council, one...
AS MILLIONS of families face massive increases in their energy bills when the Tories raise the cap on prices by 54% in April, the giant oil companies are reporting record profits. Yesterday, BP posted a profit of $12.8 billion (£9.5bn) for 2021 – the biggest in eight years. BP made over...
THREE weeks of strikes at Goldsmith’s University in south London began yesterday morning and continue today by members of the University and College Union (UCU) in an escalating dispute over plans to sack 46 members of staff. Goldsmiths wants to make the cuts as part of a ‘recovery plan’ after...
Palestinian political prisoners currently being held in Israeli detention have declared a state of general mobilisation against a new series of repressive measures by the Israeli regime. The Palestinian Authority’s Detainees Affairs Commission said the decision was made after the Israel Prison Service (IPS) reneged on understandings that were previously...
YESTERDAY, NHS England was due to publish the Tory blueprint for dealing with the huge NHS backlog and reducing the record six million patients on waiting lists for treatment. However at the last minute, publication of this National Recovery Plan, which had been fully written and approved by the Department...
A LAST minute intervention in Whitehall delayed plans to tackle the backlog of patients on hospital waiting lists in England. Details of the NHS England scheme were expected to be published yesterday. The Tory Health Secretary Sajid Javed denied reports the Treasury had blocked the announcement, blaming the Omicron wave for...
THREE Cumbria fire stations risk closure as the entire service is under threat of being taken over by the Police and Crime Commissioner, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has warned. The expansion of Police and Crime Commissioner Peter McCall’s responsibilities to include fire – with his role expanding to that...
THE MET POLICE Commissioner Cressida Dick in light of scandal after scandal engulfing the police force has sent a letter to all 43,000 officers and staff, admitting the force’s ‘public reputation had been damaged’ by too many instances of ‘poor conduct and nasty and inappropriate behaviour’. She warned everyone serving...
RUSSIA’S Foreign Ministry has said that the only way to guarantee security in Syria is for the Syrian state to regain control over its entire territory. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova made the remark when calling for an investigation into the killing of civilians during the operation carried out last...
WITH INFLATION in the UK running at over 7% and gas and electricity bills shooting up by 54%, millions of workers face being driven into destitution – eat or heat is today becoming the choice for workers and their families. Last week, the Bank of England announced it was heaping...
TRANSPORT union RMT announced strike action yesterday on all lines of the London Underground (LU). The announcement comes in the wake of a recent ballot of over ten thousand members across all grades of LU staff with 94% of members voted to strike. The action will be taking place as follows: All...
FIVE Tory advisors to Prime Minister Boris Johnson have now resigned. They are leaving the sinking ship while more Tory MPs have handed in their letters to the Conservative Party 1922 Committee calling for a leadership contest. The Metropolitan Police has launched an investigation into 12 of the Downing Street...
CIVIL servants in the PCS union have shared how they are dreading the steep rise in energy prices as energy regulator Ofgem yesterday confirmed a 54% increase from April after it lifted the cap on default tariffs to £1,971. Many PCS members, the government’s own workers, are already feeling the...
A MASS Rally of over 150 Serco strikers and supporters took place at Walthamstow’s Whipp’s Cross Hospital yesterday morning, as part of their two-week strike demanding that the workforce is taken ‘in-house’ and that they work directly for the NHS with NHS pay and conditions. Len Hockey, the Unite Rep...
SOME 1,500 hospital workers and doctors, along with delegations from public and private sector trade unions and university students, staged a militant rally and a three-hour stoppage last Tuesday afternoon outside the Health Ministry in central Athens. They then marched to the Vouli (Greek parliament building).
The rally was organised by...
YESTERDAY, the energy regulator Ofgem announced the amount by which charges for gas and electricity will shoot up in April as it raised the energy price cap by 54%, the largest on record, that will hit 22 million households. This massive increase follows an increase of 12% in energy bills...
THE AVERAGE household’s energy bill will rise by £693 annually after a 54% increase to the price cap announced yesterday which will undoubtedly plunge masses of homes into darkness! With cold weather still to come, the elderly and vulnerable are now at greater risk of literally freezing to death in...
TRADE UNIONS led by Unite, have submitted a pay claim to the Construction Industry Joint Council (CIJC) seeking a 10 per cent pay increase in a bid to redress pay cuts and the galloping rise in the cost of living faced by its members. Unite argues that with a construction output of...
‘ISRAELI authorities must be held accountable for committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians,’ Amnesty International said on Tuesday in a damning new report. The investigation details how Israel enforces a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people wherever it has control over their rights. This includes Palestinians living...
WHEN Tory Home Secretary Priti Patel is forced to say that she is ‘appalled and sickened’ by the behaviour of Metropolitan Police officers, then you know that the stench from the police has reached stomach churning proportions. Patel, known for her devotion to the forces of the state and willingness...
ISRAEL is carrying out ‘the crime of apartheid against Palestinians’ and must be held accountable for treating them as ‘an inferior racial group’, Amnesty International said in a new report released yesterday. The 280-page report details how Israel enforces a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinians. Its damning investigation...
In early 2021, AT Medics was taken over by Operose Health Ltd, a subsidiary of the large US health insurance corporation Centene. AT Medics was a private company which ran 49 GP surgeries across London, some on APMS, (Alternative Providers of Medical Services) contracts and some on standard contracts. It...
PM Johnson yesterday fled the country to go to the Ukraine, where he will be able to adopt what he hopes will be a winning anti-Russian stance by waving his fist in the general direction of Moscow. Patriotic warmongering is truly the last refuge of a scoundrel. No doubt Johnson...
TORY PRIME Minister Boris Johnson refused to resign yesterday despite calls to do so from MPs of all parties across the House of Commons, including his own, after the publication of the Sue Gray report into Downing Street parties. Gray blamed a ‘failure of leadership’ for allowing parties to take...
MASSES of workers and supporters turned out for the first day of the 15 day strike action at the Royal London Hospital yesterday, part of Barts Health Trust, which began at midnight on Sunday 30 January. A big Unite union banner said: ‘End Unfair Pay! Stop outsourcing!’ Workers were enthusiastically chanting:...
‘THE ANC NEC lekgotla was the opportunity to address and correct the existential crises facing the nation, the state and the movement. The question is whether or not we will. Former and current leadership of the ANC, the SACP (South African Communist Party) and Cosatu, members of the movement, On behalf...
WHILE the Tories tear themselves apart awaiting the heavily redacted report by Sue Gray into Boris Johnson and all the parties at Downing Street during lockdown, and splitting apart over the decision by Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak to increase National Insurance Contributions, the working class is taking its...