Uncategorised articles from The Communist archives.
Tube cleaners who led the strike last July for a decent wage are under attack. Mary Oboakye was sacked at a disciplinary earlier in January.
We don’t accept that management can just
push these people around and treat them like dirt. Calls for Mary
Oboakye to be reinstated will be backed up with an action at Metronet
offices at lunchtime on Wednesday January 28th.
UCU (the University and College
Union – the main union for lecturers) and UNISON are battling to save London
Metropolitan University from management plans to cut at least 330 jobs. ‘Times
Higher Education’ puts it higher, estimating it “could mean up to 500
individuals (between one in seven and one in five of the current staff)" losing
their jobs(22.01.09)
A recent report by professor Paul Gregg calls for benefits to be stopped for anyone who “does not co-operate” in looking for a job. Gregg wants those who show insufficient zeal to be held in “work equal activities.” This is similar to “school detention.” The miscreant would have to get on a computer and start searching. Minister Purnell welcomed this “independent” report. In fact he had commissioned it himself to confirm his own reactionary prejudices. “The direction of travel is the right way,” he declared.
South West
Trains has declared its intention to slash 480 jobs on its operations. SWT’s
parent company is Stagecoach, which is owned by the fabulously wealthy Brian Souter.For years winning a franchise to run
one of the train operating companies has been a license to print money. Profit really
comes from the fares paid by passengers and the government subsidies, handouts
from taxpayers. Now that recession is here, passenger numbers are set to fall.
The railway companies are feeling the pinch. They have decided to make their
staff take the burden of the fall in revenues
Well, sooner or later it had to come. As we have been
saying recently sooner or later the bourgeoisie, and not just the Irish bosses,
would come for their pound of flesh. After all, someone is going to have to pay
for the crisis and it doesn’t take Einstein to work out that it’s us.So the Irish government is looking for €2bn worth of cuts and that means pay cuts for
public sector workers.
On Friday January 16th Jerry Hicks learned that he
had enough nominations to stand as candidate in the election . Jerry spoke of his great pleasure and pride at
having received official notification.
For the past 4 years PCS members in the civil service have been in
dispute over threats to their pensions, attacks on their sick leave,
massive programmes of job cuts, privatisations and endemic low pay.
Through united campaigning and strike action a number of concessions
have been won. This is testament to members’ willingness to fight back.
There has been an explosion of anger among young people all over
Europe. This anger is directed at hardline neoliberal policies aimed at
privatising education and casualising youth employment. In a word they
have been designed to make young people bear the burden of capitalism.
The youth have been fighting back. This inspiring movement recalls
memories of the pan-European movement of 1968. It could be bigger and
more significant, as it coincides with a reawakening of the organised
working class in the teeth of the crisis of capitalism.
The so-called Peace Process is dead. It will be
not be revived until the Israeli army has done its bloody work in Gaza
thoroughly. Ultimately, both Jews and Arabs must have the right to live in
peace and control their own destinies in a homeland of their own. It is easy to
state this aim, but not so easy to say how it can be achieved. In the
concluding part of his article Alan Woods shows the relation between war and
revolution and explains that the prior condition for solving the Palestinian
question is the overthrow of the reactionary Arab regimes in the Middle East.
The Irish government’s decision to nationalise the
country’s third largest Bank Anglo Irish is yet another sign of the fragility
of the Irish economy. As explained over the past period the bubble is seriously
affecting the real economy and this is the outcome. The nationalisation move comes after the government had originally proposed a
€1.5 billion bail-out plan. The situation at Anglo Irish however has clearly
got much worse. Things haven’t exactly been helped by the revelation from the
Finance Minister as to how the management had been running the bank.
Just over one year after
the Annapolis Conference that was supposed to produce a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, the Israeli ruling
class has concentrated all its military might to pulverise Gaza. Once again the Middle
East is engulfed in the flames of war. Alan Woods explains the
reasons for Israel’s
invasion of Gaza and analyses the wider
implications for relations between the powers in the Middle
East and on a world scale.
A city trader who got a£1.32m City bonus on top of his £300,000 salary is suing his employer because he wants more. Wheeler dealer Mouradian split the total pot of £1.43m in bonuses among his team, awarding just 92% to himself. He is claiming an extra £92,000 from the firm.