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Fannie  and Freddie Mac sound like two characters
out of the old West – with her in a gingham dress and him in a check shirt. But
Fannie Mae is the Federal National Mortgage Association and Freddie Mac is the
Federal Home Mortgage Corporation. They’re both in big trouble and, if they’re
in trouble, so are we.

This
new book by Alan Woods is a polemic against a well-known (in Latin American
terms) intellectual Heinz Dieterich. Dieterich claims to have invented a new
"Socialism of the 21st Century" and much else into the bargain. He offers a
great deal of advice to those involved in the Venezuelan Revolution dressed up
in all manner of revolutionary rhetoric. However, when you clear away all the
verbiage that surrounds his "new" socialist philosophy, there remains
nothing new at all, simply a rehash of stale petty-bourgeois ideas of the past.

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.

Socialist Appeal 164 is out now!

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.

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.

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’.

Mansour Osanloo, the leader of the Vahed Bus Company drivers, has serious
health problems and yet the Iranian authorities show no mercy, treating him as
if he were a dangerous criminal. He needs the solidarity of workers around the
world.

THE TYNE and Wear Metro is a public-sector success story and should be
kept that way, delegates at the annual conference of Britain’s biggest rail
union insisted today. As RMT’s AGM called on the government to implement Labour policy on
public ownership, RMT general secretary Bob Crow and Northern TUC secretary
Kevin Rowan issued a joint plea for an end to the threat to fragment and
privatise the northeast’s Metro network.

PCS union reps in the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(Efra) Group are currently gearing up for an industrial action ballot in the
Rural Payments Agency (RPA), the civil service body that is responsible for
making subsidy payments to farmers. The RPA is based at several large offices
in Exeter, Reading, Northallerton, Newcastle, Workington and Carlisle.
Members are angry that they are having a flawed reporting system
imposed on them without agreement of their union.