Tube Lines boss
Terry Morgan should stop throwing petty insults around and get around the table
to negotiate a solution to the current pay and conditions dispute, London
Underground’s biggest union says today.
Some 1,000
RMT members are set to down tools from noon on Wednesday in the first of two
72-hour strikes called after the company tabled a pay and conditions offer
substantially below that agreed by Metronet for people doing identical work.
MORE THAN 120 RMT cleaners working for OCS on its Eurostar contract will
strike for 24 hours from 06:00 on Bank Holiday Monday, August 25, in their
campaign to end poverty pay and win decent working conditions.
The cleaners, whose hourly pay is more than £1 an hour below the London
Living Wage, returned a 100 per cent vote for action and will not book on for
shifts that commence between 06:00 on Monday August 25 and 05:59 on Tuesday
August 26.
For centuries the Scottish education system has fiercely
maintained itself as an independent entity at all levels and has been seen by
many as superior to that of England and Wales. After devolution the Scottish
Parliament was granted responsibility for Scottish education and with this for administering
the associated fees and benefits. The Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition scrapped
tuition fees in favour of a one off graduate endowment payment, it was £2,289
when scrapped, and paid at the end of a course once a student was earning over
£15,000 per year.
On Wednesday 20th August up
to 150,000 public sector workers in Scotland will be taking unified
action on pay. GMB, UNISON and Unite members will all be on strike because local
government workers have been offered a measly 2.5% a year deal over three
years. This after the Cost and Price Index published last week shows the cost
of living going up by 4.4%. This sudden jump has called the government’s bluff.
Everybody knows the CPI doesn’t reflect the real increase in prices we face.
We appeal to all our readers to keep us posted with reports and pictures of the action in Scotland.
NEARLY 500
guards, drivers and customer service hosts on Southeastern Trains are to be
balloted for industrial action by Britain’s biggest rail union after the
company declared war on the safety role of the guard and insisted on an
extension of driver-only operation.
The RMT
ballot, which will open on August 21 and close on September 11, has been
sparked by the company’s intention to transfer control of power-operated doors
to drivers and scrap guards on its new Hitachi ‘Javelin’ 395 rolling stock.
After
avoiding meeting union reps for many months the company finally revealed that
it intends to remove all control of power-operated doors on 395s from guards,
along with the guard’s entire safety role other than train evacuation – in
breach of existing agreements.
The two previous parts of this article analysed the processes of change in England in the period from the late fifteenth century to the early seventeenth century and tried to explain why King and Parliament found themselves on a collision course which culminated in a bloody civil war.
In this part we attempt to show how one major effect of the struggle against the King and other forces of reaction was to open up an unprecedented ferment of hopes and aspirations among the supporters of Parliament. As the war proceeded, these aspirations became increasingly polarized, reflecting the constantly changing balance of class interests and class forces within the ranks of the Parliamentarians.
Production
is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those
able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an
“army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of
losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a
profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great
hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more
unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit
motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for
an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to
increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of
labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I
mentioned before.
£8.80 for a 39 hour week!
The ‘Guardian’ reported (30.06.08) “After a 39-hour week, one man took home
£8.80 when his monthly rent of £155 was deducted in one week. Another man
worked a 70-hour week, earning £420, but was not paid overtime and after having
£228 deducted for repayment on tools was left with £66. A third man worked a
40-hour week but was left with £13 after paying £155 for a month’s rent. As
self-employed workers they received no holiday pay.
Alan Ritchie, general secretary of Ucatt, said: "This case is the worst
we have seen. These workers were virtually destitute.
In the first part of this article we attempted to identify the interacting economic, social and political processes which led to the crucial confrontation between classes known as the English Civil War. In Part Two we will examine these processes in greater detail.
The English Civil War was part of a social revolution. It was not a clash of personalities between King Charles, he of the flowing locks, frills and furbelows and Cromwell, austere and even dour though he may have been. It was not simply a clash between old and new forms of religious worship although there was always a suspicion that James perhaps, but Charles more definitely, wished to rehabilitate Catholicism. Nor was it simply a clash between a monarch who wanted absolute power and a Parliament defiantly determined to defend and develop its political influence. Material interests were involved. This was class struggle.
Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal
income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress.
The study by the Government Accountability Office, said about 68% of foreign
companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes.
"It’s shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing
to support our country," said
Senator Byron Dorgan.
As I write, it is one year since the great
global credit crunch began. On 6 August 2007, America’s second-largest mortgage
lender American Home Mortgage Investment Corp filed for bankruptcy. Three days later, France’s biggest bank,
BNP-Paribas announced that it was freezing redemptions on three of its
investment funds in sub-prime mortgages.
Immediately, the European Central Bank announced it was injecting E75bn
into the financial system. Only a few
days later, the US Federal Reserve Bank announced a 50 base points cut in its funds rate
and injected extra liquidity into the system.
The credit crunch had begun!
One year on, this earthquake in the global
financial system has left banks, insurers, pension and municipal funds, hedge
funds and private equity companies tottering and falling. Collateral damage has been immense and the
after- shocks are still to come.
As food prices
soar world-wide it was reported recently on the BBC that ‘Ethiopia has launched an urgent
appeal to international donors for more than $300m (£154m) of emergency aid’.
According the news item, ‘a
total of 4.6 million people are now thought to need food aid, because of the
drought which struck most of the country in the early part of this year. In
some parts of the country, health centres and feeding clinics are already being
overwhelmed with large numbers of severely malnourished children. Existing
stocks of food aid will cover June, but the crunch will come in July.’