Monthly Archives: July 2022
‘THERE’LL BE AN UPRISING IN THE WORKING CLASS’, CWU telecom executive member Peter Francis told News Line yesterday, speaking at the picket line outside the BT tower London ‘ ‘I agree with a general strike. It’s a matter of time, the working class have no option. We’ve got to bring...
FRENCH trade union federation CGT has called for September 29 to be a ‘day of mobilisation and interprofessional strikes’ over unemployment. The CGT stated that behind ‘the figures, lies a violent reality for the unemployed!’
Pôle Emploi (unemployed registration agency) and the DARES (Ministry of Employment) have just published the figures...
ON FRIDAY the foreign ministry of the Kuomintang- ruled territory of Chinese Taipei vowed to further deepen its close military alliance with the US following recent phone discussions between US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart. Friday’s announcement came a day after Chinese President Xi Jinping sternly warned Biden...
OVER A DECADE since the death of the Tunisian fruit seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, after he set himself on fire over the viciousness of the state and rising food prices, the fate of the so-called Arab Spring in the country where it started hangs in the balance. On Monday, three-quarters of...
THE sacking by Keir Starmer of Labour MP Sam Tarry from his post as shadow transport minister has sent shock waves throughout the Labour Party and the trade unions. Tarry was dismissed by Labour leader Starmer for the crime of attending a picket line of striking rail workers at Euston...
SUPPORTING calls for a general strike, leading Labour MP John McDonnell said he supports ‘co-ordinated action’. He also condemned Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer for sacking the shadow transport minister Sam Tarry after he stood on the picket line during Wednesday’s rail strike.
McDonnell, who was shadow chancellor under Jeremy...
THE RMT Deputy General Secretary Eddie Dempsey made the call for a general strike when he spoke out on the picket line at Euston Station in central London yesterday morning. Dempsey said: ‘We’ll keep taking action until we get a result ‘This is the fourth day of strike action and there...
President Bashar al-Assad says Syria supports joint Arab action in the face of regional challenges, stressing that the Arab country attaches paramount significance to initiatives and mechanism that promote such an ideal. ‘What matters to Syria is the mechanisms, methods and the outcomes of the joint Arab action, as it...
IN YESTERDAY’s Daily Telegraph, Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Transport, displayed his 100% hatred of trade unions and trade unionists. Reacting to the RMT’s rail strike actions, he vowed to wage a class war stating: ‘We must compete the job that Thatcher started and end brutal and habitual...
BRITAIN is in shutdown again today as 40,000 workers across Network Rail and 14 train operating companies strike in defence of jobs, pay, conditions, pensions and safety. Showing how rattled it is by the growing strike wave, the Tory government wheeled out leadership contender Liz Truss to issue a new...
Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) members in Gauteng last Friday marched to the department of trade and industry to hand in a memorandum condemning the high cost of living. ‘End poverty’ and ‘High electricity prices kill the poor’ were just some of the slogans on the protesters’ placards.
Last...
Today, over 40,000 workers across Network Rail and 14 train operating companies are continuing national strike action called by the RMT union over pay, job security, and working conditions, with the train drivers union Aslef striking on Saturday. Yesterday, the Trades Union Congress made a direct appeal to the Tories...
LABOUR leader Sir Keir Starmer and Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves trashed the party’s renationalisation policy yesterday. In a speech in Liverpool, with a back-drop bedecked with Union Jacks, Starmer described Tory leadership candidate Sunak as ‘the architect of the cost-of-living crisis,’ and his opponent Truss as ‘the latest graduate from...
UKRAINE’S Right Sector neo-Nazi battalion has deployed multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS) in a school in the New York settlement, and is firing at Russian and Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) troop positions, head of Russia’s National Defence Control Centre, Mikhail Mizintsev, said on Saturday. ‘In New York, 37 miles north of...
Yesterday, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) published its plan to cut energy bills by re-nationalising energy retail companies. The plan, issued in advance of next month’s announcement by Ofgem of a further massive increase in the cap on electricity and gas prices, calls for ‘publicly owned energy retail companies’ to...
THE HOUSE of Commons Health and Social Care Committee is publishing a report this morning which calls the NHS staffing crisis a ‘national scandal’. The report on recruitment, training and retention describes it as ‘the greatest workforce crisis in history, compounded by the absence of a credible government strategy to...
N A RARE interview recorded some 20 years ago and aired this week, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah says the resistance movement rejected American offers of money and support that were made in exchange for its elimination from the Arab-Israeli conflict equation. Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen channel is airing a five-part...
SEVENTY-FIVE Palestinian inmates have gone on hunger strike in support of two of their fellow prisoners, who have been on hunger strike for several weeks in protest against Israel’s policy of so-called administrative detention. The official Palestinian WAFA news agency reported the development on Saturday, saying the inmates were to...
69,000 PEOPLE were forced to pay for private medical treatment in the final three months of last year, according to figures from the Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN), with the total number of those paying for care over 250,000 last year. These were not people covered by private health insurance...
TELEFONISTAS de Mexico are on the verge of a national strike. The Union of Telephone Operators of the Mexican Republic, STRM, issued a double strike call to Telmex, because of violations to the collective bargaining agreement and the non-fulfilment of new job openings.
In June, the strike was postponed and both...
GOVERNMENT’S refusal to properly finance the NHS has led to desperate people paying thousands of pounds for private treatment. There were 69,000 self-funded treatments in the UK in the final three months of last year – a 39% rise on the same period before the pandemic.
People have resorted to crowdfunding...
AMNESTY International UK has warned that a new UK trade deal with Israel could allow Israel to consolidate its settler-colonialism and apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories. The global organisation said in a press release that it submitted a submission to the UK government consultation spelling out dangers of loosely-drafted...
NEW YORK State baristas and other workers at the Starbucks coffee shop in Syracuse’s Armory Square, are seeking to join a union as part of a nationwide wave of organised labour initiatives at the Seattle-based chain. On June 7, Buffalo-based Starbucks Workers United filed a petition with the National Labour...
BRITISH capitalism has plunged even deeper into debt! It was revealed yesterday that interest payments on the massive £2.4 trillion national debt have more than doubled in June to £19.4 billion. This is the highest increase in debt repayment for a single month since records began in 1997. The independent Office...
UNIONS representing nurses, firefighters, teachers, council workers and every other section announced strike ballots and ‘calls to action’ to achieve inflation-busting pay rises in response to Tuesday’s miserly Tory public sector pay offer. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which has been instructed by its members to fight for a...
STAFF members of the US House of Representatives in Washington filed a petition for representation on Monday to form a union for the first time in the country’s history. The Congressional Workers Union tweeted: ‘Today we are unionising the United States Congress.’ ‘July 18 will go down as a historic day...
SRI LANKAN MPs have elected prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as the country’s new president, despite his extreme unpopularity with Sri Lankan workers and youth who burnt his house down last week. He defeated his main rival for the job, Dullus Alahapperuma, with 134 votes to 82 in the parliamentary vote....
POSTAL workers have voted overwhelmingly in favour of striking for pay, in a ballot of 115,000 members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), with 97.6% voting in favour in a postal ballot with a 77% turnout. Announcing the result yesterday afternoon, CWU General Secretary Dave Ward said: ‘First of all...
AUSTRALIA is now threatening to fine health workers and their unions for coming out on strike, in a move which is set to be replicated by the Tory government in Britain which has also just passed new anti-union laws. The NSW (New South Wales) Government has proposed new regulations that...
THE purchasing power of workers’ pay packets is falling at the fastest rate since 2001. Between March and May, pay, excluding bonuses, was down 2.8% from a year earlier when adjusted for inflation – the fastest drop in wages since records began. Millions of working class family budgets are being...
BARRISTERS lobbied parliament yesterday and raised with MPs the demand of an urgent injection of funds into Legal Aid. Lucie Wibberley, the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) Secretary, told News Line outside the House of Commons: ‘Barristers are meeting MPs at the Palace of Westminster today. ‘This is to raise the issue...
THE devastating impact of the Coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout continue to take a toll on the world and provide ample reason to reconsider where taxpayers’ money is being spent. Several countries have even come to the conclusion that their budget would be better spent where it can potentially...
‘THE GOVERNMENT must be honest about the threat the pandemic still poses,’ the editors of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and Health Service Journal (HSJ) wrote yesterday in a joint editorial, warning that the policy that people must learn to ‘live with Covid’ is the straw breaking the back...
SECURITY around Sri Lanka’s parliament building in the capital, Colombo, has increased, with armed and masked soldiers guarding the building and roads nearby closed to the public. More than 100 police and security personnel with assault rifles are openly deployed on the approach to parliament, with many more hidden in...
PRESIDENT Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, welcomed the official visit of the President of the United States of America, President Joseph Biden, to Bethlehem, regarded by Palestinians as the cradle of Jesus Christ, the city of peace and hope, rich in the civilisational and cultural heritage...
SATURDAY’S Daily Telegraph gave the Tory leadership candidates some advice. This was: ‘It is no good pretending to be Mrs Thatcher – and the candidates should admit we face a crisis worse than hers.’ This is the understatement of the year! In fact, Thatcher had the complete support of the...
THE United States and Israel have signed a joint strategic declaration, repeating accusations against Iran and promising to confront that country’s nuclear programme, a few days after US President Joe Biden threatened Tehran with a military attack. In a statement called the Jerusalem US-Israel Strategic Partnership Joint Declaration, signed by...
FRENCH aviation union Syndicat National du Personnel Navigant Commercial (SNPNC-FO) cabin crew members (hostesses and stewards) are on strike from Wednesday July 13 to Sunday July 17. These workers are employed by Transavia, the low-cost subsidiary of Air France.
‘On July 13, 130 strikers are expected on 136 flights,’ said Nicolas...
SRI Lanka’s prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has been sworn in as acting president, while the country reels from the economic crisis and the developing revolution He replaces Gotabaya Rajapaksa who fled to Singapore after unprecedented mass revolutionary protests which saw demonstrators overrun the presidential palace and the Prime Minister’s residence. Protesters...
SRI LANKA’S revolutionary anti-government demonstrators said yesterday they were ending their occupation of official buildings, but vowed to press on with their revolution to destroy the Rajapaksa regime after the president fled and the PM resigned. ‘We are peacefully withdrawing from the Presidential Palace, the Presidential Secretariat and the Prime...
‘SAFTU calls on the working class to mobilise and unify towards the Working Class Summit and the General Strike in August 2022.’ SAFTU said it is concerned by the rising prices of fuel, and the subsequent effects such fuel costs have on the costs of commuter transport.
‘Petrol prices have risen...
THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued another dire warning about the economic crisis raging throughout the world yesterday with its head, Kristalina Georgieva, saying that the global economic outlook ‘has darkened significantly’. Georgieva’s warning came as inflation in America, the world’s biggest economy, hit 9.1% – the highest level in...
THOUSANDS of revolutionary youth and workers defied tear gas, bullets and Sri Lankan armed forces as they stormed the office of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in Colombo and occupied it yesterday morning. Having fled his office, an absent Wickremesinghe issued an order to Sri Lanka’s military to ‘do whatever is...
AROUND 2,000 workers from a garment factory in Yangon’s Zaykabar Industrial Park in Mingaladon Township went on strike last Thursday morning, declaring that violations of their basic rights had grown unbearable. Yangon is the largest city in Myanmar and is its industrial hub. The workers are employees of JW factory, which is...