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With Jerry Hicks on the campaign trail

With Jerry Hicks on the campaign trail



Jerry
Hicks is standing as general secretary of Unite-Amicus. He has been storming up
and down the country, taking on the establishment within the union in his
campaign to become general secretary. He travels everywhere by coach (because
it’s cheap), stays overnight in supporters’ back rooms, and is currently
nursing a fractured leg kindly donated by the police while he was picketing on
behalf of the workers outside Staythorpe Power Station. His campaign is financed
by voluntary donations of Unite-Amicus activists. He deserves our support.

Welfare ‘reform’ and David Freud’s defection to the Tories

Welfare ‘reform’ and David Freud’s defection to the Tories

The welfare ‘reform’ measures currently wending their way through Parliament are so right wing you might have thought they were drafted by the Tories. Funny you should mention it…David Freud, who drafted the White Paper on which the bill is based, has just defected to the Conservatives. This shows two things:

He’s a rat leaving what he sees as a sinking ship

New Labour sucking up to the Tories with anti-working class policies just paves the way for the real thing to take over and put the boot in further.

Scottish political perspectives

Scottish political perspectives



Poor old Alex Salmond. Things
haven’t been going too well for him lately. Maybe it was one too many whiskeys
with their Burns Suppers, but the Scottish National Party Government seems to
be stumbling from one embarrassment to another. First they couldn’t get their
“recession beating” budget passed on the first go. Then they were forced to
back down on their flagship policy to scrap council tax, apparently due to a
lack of “parliamentary consensus”. And then, just to add insult to injury Iain
Gray, the Scottish Labour Party leader, slammed the SNPs plans for an
independence referendum.

Bologna Process – a password for privatisation

Bologna Process – a password for privatisation



Coupled to the Bologna Process, though not explicitly included in
it, has been the privatisation of education and all that this entails. So now
not only are students faced with the fact that they will have to work harder
and longer hours for a shorter period of time, that the costs of their
education will also increase (so working on top of the hours required for
studying becomes more of a strain) but also that their courses may end up being
influenced by some company who’s only real interest in to create profit out of
the process…

The Ridley Report. How the Tories planned to take on the miners and the working class

The Ridley Report. How the Tories planned to take on the miners and the working class



Today, almost 25 years since the miners’ strike
began, the industry has been decimated, with only a few thousand jobs left. The
proud traditions remain as the Durham Miner’s Gala demonstrates each year, and
many miners have taken their fighting traditions into the wider labour
movement. But many of the pit villages are crumbling and the social effects may
never be completely overcome, on the basis of capitalism.

But this destruction wasn’t an ‘act of god’ or some huge work of nature
like the tsunami. This was a deliberately worked out plan. It was an attempt to
take on and smash the most militant determined and class conscious section of
the organised labour movement. And this was seen as a critically important task
by the ruling class ad their chosen instrument, the Tory Party. It even had a
name, the Ridley Report.

Glasgow Occupations – Balance Sheet

Glasgow Occupations – Balance Sheet



Over the course of a cold February week two
Glasgow campuses emerged at the forefront of the wave of occupations that is
currently engulfing universities across Britain and, in the process, transforming
their political atmospheres. Strathclyde and Glasgow University were both
occupied, with the occupiers protesting about the Israeli onslaught on Gaza and
their universities’ links with arms companies that were complicit in the
offensive.

Gutter press campaign aims to distort union demands

Gutter press campaign aims to distort union demands

The picture shown was published in the Daily Star on Thursday 12th
February. Derek Simpson, currently joint general secretary of UNITE, is
shown with posters that completely misrepresent the cause for which his
members are fighting.
The media in Britain and internationally
have systematically portrayed the recent Lindsey dispute as being a struggle
between “British workers and foreign workers”, when in actual fact it has
nothing to do with this. The struggle was about defending wages and conditions
as established in hard fought for trade union agreements. Here Rob Sewell
points out some of the dirty tricks of the press.

PFI madness

PFI madness



The Private
Finance Initiative was always bonkers. The idea was that, instead of the
government borrowing to build infrastructural projects, they would hand the job
over to a private consortium to raise the money.This was
always daft. The government was always the safest borrower in town. When did
you last hear of a government going bust? Because its loans are completely
safe, the government can borrow at a cheaper rate than anyone else.

Darwin’s challenge

Darwin’s challenge

February 12th
2009 saw the 200th  anniversary Charles Darwin’s birth.. The
beautifully simple idea embodied in his most famous book, Origin of the Species – evolution
by natural selection – was a revolutionary departure with profound scientific
and philosophical implications. Following the
footsteps of Copernicus and Galileo three hundred years earlier, Darwin battered an
enormous, irreparable breech in the walls of Fortress Theology and for that
reason the book has been the source of intense debate right up to the present
day. Darwin
sought and found an explanation – a mechanism – for the evolutionary changes in
species, which other scientists were beginning to suspect, using a purely materialist method, without any recourse
to God or metaphysics.

 

Build on the success of Lindsey… All-out National Strike Action Needed!

Build on the success of Lindsey… All-out National Strike Action Needed!



With workers everywhere being
forced onto the defensive through employers’ attacks on jobs, pay and
conditions the victory at Lindsey of the protests and strike action will be
seen as a marvellous example to others of what can be achieved in the face of
attack. The background to this latest dispute has been a deliberate employers’
offensive over a number of years to undermine the National Agreement for the
Engineering Construction Industry (NAECI). The slump in the construction
industry since last summer and the onset of the recession only intensified
these attacks.

 

Short… and sweet? The 2009 Local Government Pay Claim

Short… and sweet? The 2009 Local Government Pay Claim

“To improve real
pay levels, the Trade Union Side of the NJC seeks a one-year, across-the-board
pay increase of at least the level of retail price inflation, with additional
increases for the lower paid. The Trade Union Side’s
2009 -10 pay claim is for one year only and distinct from any other
negotiations over the Green Book.  We would like negotiations to take
place in an expedient manner and for settlement to be reached by 1 April 2009." Short and sweet and
utterly reasonable, at least that’s how many UNISON members will see this
year’s pay claim. In reality however, this year’s claim is likely to be a great
source of contention between the employers and UNISON, Unite and the GMB.

Fight compulsory redundancies at Transport for London and London Underground Limited

Fight compulsory redundancies at Transport for London and London Underground Limited

,



Rail unions held a protest on Wednesday
February 11th outside London Underground head offices against the
first wave of threatened cuts of 1,000 jobs. Workers turned out to demand that
those responsible for running up the massive TfL/LUL deficit of over £2.5
billion be sacked, and not the workers who are being threatened with the sack because
of senior management incompetence.

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