Unite’s Graham Tran
comments, “There was recently a case where a young man was given a 24 month
prison sentence for spraying graffiti on train carriages. When Shell was
prosecuted following the deaths of two workers on Brent Bravo, they pleaded
guilty and got a fine of £90,000. That is the equivalent of the profit they
make in 45 minutes. A two year sentence for spraying paint on trains – 45
minutes for killing two men.”
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.
Pressures
have been building up in British society. High house prices, fuel and food
price increases and pay restraint and cuts particularly in the public sector
are all having a huge effect on workers. It’s obvious that there’s going to be
a change and the longer it is delayed the worse the storm is when it eventually
breaks.
Many of those living in Aberdeen and
the surrounding area were woken up by the sound of helicopters flying over
their houses, flying to the largest offshore oil piping disaster that the world
has ever seen. The crew of the Piper Alpha platform consisted of 230 men. Only
63 were to make it out of the Piper that night. This article is a tribute to
those who never managed to get out due to the negligence of their employers.
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.
At present gas prices are going up by 13.6%
in Britain. They’re rising by just 2% in the Netherlands. Prices are 25% higher
here than on the continent. By the end of the year household bills will be
£1,323 a year. This is twice as high as when Labour was elected in 1997. Some
estimate household bills could hit £1,500 next winter.
Public
sector pay is big news this summer. In fact, contrary to what the weather
forecasters might tell you, it could be a decidedly warm one. It doesn’t take a
lot to work out why either. Public sector workers are being made to pay for the
New Labour meltdown. Pay restraint is intimately tied into the government’s
finances and that means dinner ladies and civil servants footing the bill not
only for the ongoing occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan but also for the black hole
in public spending courtesy of the ex board members of Northern Rock. Alistair
Darling’s plea that the need to keep inflation under control "applies to each
and every one of us" will ring hollow in the ears of the civil servants
and other workers on the minimum wage or a marginally better pittance.
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’.
The bosses
are over the moon. “Boris Johnson’s London
will be a Tory laboratory” trumpets the Daily Telegraph (May 4th). That makes David Cameron their Doctor
Frankenstein. Don’t let anybody
fall for the line that it can’t get worse after Blair and Brown. Already one of Johnson’s top aide’s has had to
resign for saying about immigrants who don’t like Tory policies "Well,
let them go (back) if they don’t like it here."
Terry was a larger than life figure and a
fine representative of the Liverpool working
class. A ‘salt of the earth’ man who dedicated his efforts to the cause of the
working class. Always smiling and joking, he was always seen wearing his black
leather jacket, even in Parliament, a place he pretty much hated. He served his
time there from 1983, when he was elected along with Dave Nellist and later Pat
Wall as part of the Militant trio, until 1992. This was the culmination of
decades of work by Militant supporters in the Merseyside labour movement. They
had refused to abandon the struggle within the Labour Party.
Brief as it was woeful, Wendy Alexander’s
leadership of the Labour Party in Scotland has come to an end.
Alexander was forced to resign after being given a one day ban from parliament
for breaking rules regarding donations for her campaign to become Labour Party
leader. Her actions were illegal – no doubt about it. No one is quite sure why
such large sums of cash were needed for what in effect became a coronation,
given the lack of an opposition candidate.