Months
after Branch Secretary Michael Gavan was sacked from Newham Council, after he
was victimised for undertaking trade union activities, the left have taken
control of the branch. This is an indication of the way things are moving.
Hedge funds are in the news again. They don’t much
like being in the public gaze. We wonder why. Does their speculation cause
prices to go up? Do they drive firms into bankruptcy so workers lose their jobs?
These are the questions being asked. Let’s see what they get up to.
The cleaners on London Underground are taking strike action
for a decent standard of living. Successful 24 hour action on the 26th of June
was followed by a 48 hour strike starting on the 1st of July. The organising Union, the RMT, has reported that there was
widespread bullying of the strikers. Bob Crow said, “Reports coming in from the
picket lines over the last 36 hours indicate that the employers are so
desperate that they are resorting to gangster-style intimidation and using the
worst sort of fear attacks to stop more people joining the strike.
Unite’s Graham Tran
comments, “There was recently a case where a young man was given a 24 month
prison sentence for spraying graffiti on train carriages. When Shell was
prosecuted following the deaths of two workers on Brent Bravo, they pleaded
guilty and got a fine of £90,000. That is the equivalent of the profit they
make in 45 minutes. A two year sentence for spraying paint on trains – 45
minutes for killing two men.”
For 30 years it has been illegal to sack a worker for
his or union activities and it is commonly thought that blacklisting is also
against the law. It was included in the 1999 Employment Relations Act, but in a
discreet U-turn the government never formally brought in regulations to bring
it to the statute book. Technically it remains legal.
Pressures
have been building up in British society. High house prices, fuel and food
price increases and pay restraint and cuts particularly in the public sector
are all having a huge effect on workers. It’s obvious that there’s going to be
a change and the longer it is delayed the worse the storm is when it eventually
breaks.
Many of those living in Aberdeen and
the surrounding area were woken up by the sound of helicopters flying over
their houses, flying to the largest offshore oil piping disaster that the world
has ever seen. The crew of the Piper Alpha platform consisted of 230 men. Only
63 were to make it out of the Piper that night. This article is a tribute to
those who never managed to get out due to the negligence of their employers.
It has
recently been agreed by the government after intensive lobbying by the entire
trade union movement that agency workers should get the same rate of pay as
directly employed workers after 12 weeks. Has it gone
far enough? I believe the legislation
should apply from day one and should also include the same terms and conditions
as directly employed full time workers.
At present gas prices are going up by 13.6%
in Britain. They’re rising by just 2% in the Netherlands. Prices are 25% higher
here than on the continent. By the end of the year household bills will be
£1,323 a year. This is twice as high as when Labour was elected in 1997. Some
estimate household bills could hit £1,500 next winter.
Public
sector pay is big news this summer. In fact, contrary to what the weather
forecasters might tell you, it could be a decidedly warm one. It doesn’t take a
lot to work out why either. Public sector workers are being made to pay for the
New Labour meltdown. Pay restraint is intimately tied into the government’s
finances and that means dinner ladies and civil servants footing the bill not
only for the ongoing occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan but also for the black hole
in public spending courtesy of the ex board members of Northern Rock. Alistair
Darling’s plea that the need to keep inflation under control "applies to each
and every one of us" will ring hollow in the ears of the civil servants
and other workers on the minimum wage or a marginally better pittance.
This year’s Conference held in Liverpool in June debated vital issues facing postal and telecommunications workers in this country.Delegates from Coventry and the Welsh Valleys moved a resolution calling for an end to funding the Labour Party and a campaign for the creation of a new workers’ party. The proposal was overwhelmingly rejected by Conference, which recognised that ‘now was not the time for a split’.