At an emergency meeting of the National
Executive of the Unite union in October a decision was made to postpone the
implementation of the Unite Rulebook until May 2008 and to call an election for
a twelve month period of office for a Unite-Amicus section General Secretary.
The decision, supported by both current Joint General Secretaries of Unite,
Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson, was made as a result of the legal challenge by
former Bristol Rolls Royce convenor Jerry Hicks over the extension of office of
Derek Simpson without election until December 2010. The Instrument of
amalgamation voted for last year by members of the Amicus & TGWU provided
for the new union rulebook to be in place by the 1st November this
year.

65 electricians, all Unite members, took
unofficial strike action on 17th November for two days at Fiddler’s Ferry
Power Station in Warrington. This was over false redundancies.

The
action eventually prevented any lay-offs on the site. The electricians were
working for Alstom through the agency BMS on the NAIECI Agreement. Last week
BMS had informed the workers that there would be 65 redundancies as they had
not been paid by Alstom.

At
the very last minute on the 7th November the National Executive
Committee of PCS decided to suspend the national strike due on the 10th.
This difficult decision was taken after talks were offered from Sir Gus
O’Donnell, head of the civil service. In a letter to general secretary Mark
Serwotka he agreed that discussions
should take place to address the concerns that form the basis of the national pay
campaign.

This was the headline thrown up by a BBC File on 4
investigation into CDC, formerly the Commonwealth Development Corporation. This
was a government body set up in 1946 as part of Britain’s overseas aid programme. In 1998 CDC had over 400 different projects in 50 countries.
Crucially more than 40% of its funding went into agriculture – helping to feed
the world’s poor. But CDC had a problem. New Labour was determined to privatise
it

It is probably clear to most of our readers that American
capitalism has entered a period of acute crisis. Even the boom preceding this
recession was one marked by the emergence of the ‘rust belt’ – decaying cities
once epicentres of the world’s most prosperous industrial working class, such
as Detroit and Baltimore. Baltimore, which is majority black, used to have one
of the US’ most wealthy black populations. It is now synonymous with crime,
drugs and decaying industry, with the second highest murder rate in America.
And all this before the looming recession. It is no wonder it has been reported
that many Americans feel like they have been in a recession for some time.

The
LRC combines a growing part of the Labour left as well as a few groups outside
of the party who don’t stand in elections against it. Most significantly it has
affiliations from a number of national unions (including the RMT and FBU) and
branches and a good third of the 203 accredited delegates who voted in the
National Committee elections were from affiliated organisations. Total
attendance was around 270.

More than 200 delegates and visitors met at
the Conway Hall on Saturday November 15th for the Annual Conference
of the Labour Representation Committee, the organising hub of the left wing
within the Labour Party and among trade union activists. There was a determined
mood among those meeting. After years of right wing drift and domination of the
labour movement, LRC members rightly felt that the crisis had brought out the
urgency for socialist ideas to be heard and taken up. The Conference was opened
by a stirring speech from Tony Benn.

By Jeremy Dear, General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists

Last year, Richard Desmond, the proprietor of Express Newspapers announced he was paying himself a chairman’s
remuneration of some £52m – the equivalent of £1m a week.

It hardly raised an eyebrow. 

Although hefty by historical standards, it was not by contemporary ones. Just a few months earlier Lakshmi Mittal had paid himself a record £1.1bn dividend. At the time it was the highest private dividend on record. But that record did not last for long as high street
retailer Philip Green topped it with a dividend of £1.2bn from his Arcadia
Group – the equivalent of the annual pay of 54,000 people on average earnings.