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Martin Hartnett, a union convenor at Peugeot in Coventry, spoke to Darrall Cozens from Coventry TUC on the upcoming election in Unite for the General Secretary position.

It has now been confirmed that Jerry Hicks is on the ballot paper for
the UNITE general secretary election. With over a quarter of the nominating period to go,
he has already secured more than the required nominations to be able to
declare that he will be a candidate in the coming election, gaining
support from every region and sector of the union.

Nothern Ireland: There
are storm clouds on the horizon for the economy in the North. While the
recession took longer to bite than in the South this only reflects the
weakness of capitalism and the predominance of public sector
employment. There are now as many people who are economically inactive
(26%) than work in “private industry.” But the crisis has now caught up
with a vengeance and it is only going to get worse.

Connexions
staff in Northumberland are facing a meltdown situation after Northumberland
County Council cut their funding at a stroke by 24% . Management at Igen which
runs the contract have approached UNISON with a proposal for all staff to move
to a 3 day week up until the end of March.

Campaign Press Release: Yunus Bakhsh, a highly respected trade unionist from
Newcastle, has won a four-year battle to clear his name after a landmark
Employment Tribunal victory. Bosses at Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS
Trust
sacked the mental health nurse in 2008, claiming he had bullied and
intimidated
other workers. But in a scathing judgement the tribunal last week found
that
the Trust had unfairly dismissed Yunus for his trade union activities.

IRELAND: Recently we
reported on the vote of the public sector unions to back the Croke Park
Deal. We argued that despite the apparent victory of the ideas of
“Social Partnership” as espoused by Peter McLoone and David Begg; under
the present conditions it would be extremely difficult for any deal to
be brokered that was worth the paper it was written on.

We are pleased to inform our readers that "Ted Grant: Writings Volume One 1938-1942" is now in stock and orders are being accepted.

IRELAND: There’s
been a steady procession of attacks on the public sector over the last
couple of years. Wage cuts, levies and a deluge of propaganda. We’ve
made the point elsewhere that the FF and the Greens are in a cul de
sac, they are most likely going to be slaughtered in the next general
election. So by all accounts they have nothing to lose. They have
launched a one sided civil war against the working class at the behest
of the bourgeois, the home grown variety of course, but also the multi
nationals based in London and New York.

IRELAND: A
ban on trade union donations to the Labour Party will not benefit
anyone other than the enemies of the working class and the organised
working class in particular.

Once again, though, the new Tory/ Lib Dem government has
turned its eyes towards the redundancy payments of civil servants. The
Tories reckon on saving more than the £500 million envisaged last year by the Hoonites when the time comes to destroy over half a million jobs across the
public sector, a good portion of which is to come from the civil
service.

The following motion was passed by Southwark unison at a special members
meeting to discuss how to fight the cuts in local government. We are
publishing it here as it represents a good template that can be used by
trade unionists elsewhere in drafting similiar resolutions.

The results of the SIPTU and IMPACT ballots recently
that the Croke Park deal was eventually pushed through by the ICTU
leaders, aided and abetted by the whole of the bought and paid for press
and with the full support of the bourgeois. After all, the whole of
official bourgeois society was united around one thing, the Irish
working class, if not to blame directly for the crisis are going to have
to foot the bill.