Monthly Archives: July 2018
REPRESENTATIVES of United Steel Workers (USW) trade union members who are locked out in Massachusetts, USA, by National Grid, lobbied the parent company’s AGM in Birmingham, UK yesterday. A couple of the representatives went into the AGM to ask questions and call for assistance in their struggle. At the lobby...
NURSES reacted with fury last week when they received their July pay packets and realised that the 3% pay increase their union, the RCN, had promised did not in fact exist. Instead the majority of nurses only received a measly 1.5% increase, hundreds of pounds less than they were promised...
THE Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa, has ruled that an employer cannot employ a worker for more than three months without a permanent contract. This is a major victory for workers after years of a bitter union campaign against labour brokering. The victory is the result...
TORY PM Theresa May was yesterday accused of a ‘wholesale abandonment’ of Brexit promises by top QC Martin Howe. May’s controversial Chequers sell-out deal means courts will continue to be ruled by the EU, QC Howe warns. In a new report, he says that under the terms of the Chequers...
US BACKED militants in Syria have sent a delegation to the Syrian capital for talks with Syrian government officials. The so-called Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), which is linked to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – a US-backed coalition of mainly Kurdish militants holding a grip on northeastern Syria –...
THE UK faces a ‘democratic crisis’ with voters being targeted with ‘pernicious views’ and data being manipulated, a parliamentary MPs committee warns. According to their report, ‘our democracy is at risk and now is the time to act’, against the internet. What they are complaining about is that the electorate...
MEMBERS of the United Steelworkers union working for the British multinational utility company National Grid in the US state of Massachusetts will be flying in on Monday 30th July to protest outside the firm’s annual general meeting in Birmingham. Shareholders will be warned that the hard line actions of National...
TRADE unions representing Air France workers have threatened to ground more flights in September as a pay dispute with the airline’s bosses continues. Air France unions have been holding strike actions since February in a bid to earn pay rises across the board. The 15 days of strikes held between...
HOUSEHOLD debt in UK is worse than at any time on record a new report by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows. Credit cards, pay day loans, furniture and TVs on hire purchase and banking overdrafts have amounted to the biggest debt to date. PwC said its own measure...
WITH THE Tory government split, divided, and on the rocks after refusing to carry out the 2016 referendum instruction to ‘Leave the EU’, the UK ruling class is desperately seeking to avoid a general election, or prepare the grounds for a witchhunting general election, that they hope it will...
A NEW chapter in the history of the South African working class was opened in Soweto on 21st-22nd July 2018, when representatives from over 147 South African working-class formations represented by 1,000 delegates assembled to unite workplace and community struggles. It made huge strides forward to lay the foundations...
THE BMA has made a legal intervention to highlight the huge implications to doctors posed by the outcome of the Bawa-Garba case. The ongoing two-day hearing will see lawyers argue that the High Court’s decision to remove Hadiza Bawa-Garba from the Medical Register, on the grounds of promoting and...
US DEFENCE Secretary James Mattis has said that the United States will have no cooperation with the Russian military in Syria, at least for now. Presently, the only coordination between the US and Russia in Syria is through a special hotline to ensure there are no mishaps involving the...
''OUT OF TOUCH’ Theresa May has left one million people ‘in limbo’, said the GMB on Tuesday, in response to the Tory announcement that public-sector workers will receive their first pay increase above 1 per cent since 2013. The announcement was sneaked out on the last day of Parliament before...
The head of Iranian volunteer Basij (The Organization for Mobilization of the Oppressed) forces says the United States is not in a position to threaten Iran, dismissing President Donald Trump’s pugnacious Tweeter message addressed to President Hassan Rouhani as ‘psychological warfare’. ‘Trump’s statements against Iran are psychological warfare. He is...
THERE are Unite and Unison trade union protests in York and Chesterfield today against moves by two NHS trusts to set up wholly-owned subsidiaries to avoid paying tax, to cut jobs and privatise NHS services. Unite and Unison are waging a campaign against the creation of such subsidiaries which they...
THE NATIONAL Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) has opposed an application to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) Essential Services Committee (ESC) which has been tasked with determining whether public transportation is an essential service. The application by the Black Consumer Council claims that workers in...
THE MET Police’s Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS), the body which is meant to ‘root out misconduct’, is itself under investigation for ‘serious corruption and malpractice’ and ‘racism’. Scotland Yard is now embroiled in the largest police corruption inquiry for 40 years, with 14 officers under investigation. The Independent Office...
THAT well known humanitarian organisation, the Israeli armed forces, that is killing Palestinians on a daily basis, has just conducted a ‘humanitarian’ raid into Syria to ‘rescue’ at least 422 ‘White Helmets’ and their families who were then transported from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights into Jordan, from where they...
WORKERS earning wages, employed in respected professions are sleeping in the streets and working during the day, or night is something shockingly new to the modern post-1945 UK. In third world countries it is a way of life. In great cities like Colombo, a tour of the industrial districts...
THE Israeli Defence Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, threatened to initiate a ‘wide-scale and painful military operation’ against the besieged Gaza Strip due to the continued launch of incendiary kites and explosive balloons from Gaza into Israel, on Friday. Lieberman visited Gaza border residents, in the vicinity of the Israeli border town...
IN A Sunday Telegraph interview, Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab threatened to withhold the £39 billion ($51 billion) divorce fee from the EU, unless the UK gets its way in negotiations. Raab said Britain could choose not to pay the severance settlement after leaving the European Union in March...
EXILED Chagos Islanders were yesterday continuing their five-day occupation of Trafalgar Square that was launched on Friday. Jean Paul France of the Chagos Islanders Movement told News Line: ‘We are still here in Trafalgar Square. ‘We are raising awareness. People have been coming up and asking questions day and night....
OVER 50 exiled Chagossians living in the UK camped out in Trafalgar Square yesterday, the first day of a five-day occupation. ‘Help us to go back and live in our homeland,’ says the Chagos Islanders Movement, who organised the sit-in. Their leaflet said: ‘Our people may become extinct in a...
MORE than 130 parents queued outside a school in Cardiff, Wales from 3am Thursday morning to try and get their child a space at a breakfast club next year. Every year, Ysgol Y Berllan Deg in Llanedeyrn opens up applications for its before-school breakfast club, which has limited spaces. The...
THE TOLPUDDLE Martyrs annual festival where thousands of people come together to celebrate trade unionism and remember the role of the Tolpuddle Martyrs began yesterday and continues through Sunday. In 1834, farm workers in west Dorset formed a trade union. Unions were lawful and growing fast but six leaders of...
DOCTORS union the BMA is ‘strongly opposed to the fragmentation and privatisation of the NHS, which is divisive to hardworking NHS staff and could affect continuity of care at ward and department level,’ BMA Representative Body chair Anthea Mowat said yesterday. The BMA put out a statement which warned that...
THE ORCHESTRATED witch-hunt against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn over scurrilous accusations that he and indeed vast numbers of Labour Party members are in fact anti-Semites has reached fever pitch this week after right-wing Labour MP Margaret Hodge publicly attacked him in the House of Commons. According to reports, Hodge launched...
THE ‘incendiary kites unit’ of the Gaza Strip announced on Wednesday that the amount of incendiary kites and balloons targeting Israeli areas surrounding Gaza would increase as a response to the increased siege on the Gaza Strip. The unit, calling themselves the ‘Sons of Zouari’ in reference to the Tunisian...
Education International supports its affiliate, the Federación Colombiana de Educadores, in denouncing and firmly condemning assassinations and threats targeting Colombian educators, trade unionists, and social leaders. Several teachers have been assassinated, threatened and targeted by violent groups in Colombia. Colombia’s Human Rights Ombudsman, Carlos Alfonso Negret, has deplored the fact that...
THE MAY government on Tuesday defeated an attempt by 12 pro-EU Conservative MPs, supported by Labour EU Remainers, to destroy its revised post-Brexit trade policy by seeking to establish that the UK would join the EU Customs Union if it is unable to agree a Free Trade Deal with...
BESIEGED GAZA is under a heavy non-stop Israeli siege and onslaught. The Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, has warned Israel of ‘dangerous consequences’ as the Netanyahu regime tightens the inhumane siege on the Gaza Strip by blocking fuel shipments, to bring life, including hospitals and schools, to a halt. On Monday...
FIVE South African miners have died after being trapped underground at the Palabora Copper mine in Phalaborwa, Limpopo province. Initially, six workers were trapped and the whereabouts of the sixth worker was not immediately known, or whether he was still alive. Palabora Copper confirmed last Sunday night that it...
THE UK could well be ‘complicit’ in US War Crimes committed using drones, and could face prosecution, a new report released yesterday after two years of research by a parliamentary committee warned. It states that the British military, including individual personnel, could be prosecuted for civilian deaths and alleged war...
CHAGOS Islanders demonstrated outside the High Court in London’s Strand yesterday, in support of Dominique Elysse, who is seeking to establish British citizenship. The court however, ruled against Dominique Elysse. Before the hearing Elysse told News Line: ‘I am going to the High Court this morning to challenge the...
RMT Union leader Steve Hedley was attacked after taking part in a counter-protest to the Trump and Robinson rally on Saturday. The union leader was attacked after speaking at a counter-protest to a rally in support of Donald Trump and jailed far-right leader Tommy Robinson. Steve Hedley, Senior Assistant General...
PRESIDENT of the European Council Donald Tusk yesterday issued a desperate plea for Europe, China, America and Russia to ‘work together’ and ‘prevent conflict and chaos’ on an international scale. In an unprecedented warning that economic catastrophe was looming and that the world is being ripped apart by the crisis...
THE TORY government confirmed that it will accept all four amendments put by the Tory pro-Brexit MPs to the Chequers sell-out White Paper. Prime Minister May yesterday insisted that there will not be a second referendum ‘under any circumstances’ and ‘there wasn’t going to be a snap election either’. The...
US PRESIDENT Trump and Russian President Putin held a historic meeting in Finland yesterday in which they talked about joint cooperation with Israel in dealing with Syria. At the joint press conference in response to a question on Syria, Trump said: ‘We have worked with Israel long and...
30,000 NEW Zealand nurses went on strike across the country last Thursday over pay and conditions, the first national nurses strike for 30 years. The New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) said last Wednesday: ‘The democratic, online voting process run by Electionz.com has resulted in the majority of members voting to...