Health & safety

Lecturers strike over pensions Staff at 61 universities have voted to strike in a dispute over pensions, beginning on 22 February. University bosses want to remove guaranteed pension provision, in favour of a “defined contribution” scheme where the eventual pay-out is dependent on performance of investments. Staff face losing up to £200,000 over the course of retirement. The ballot achieved a 58% turnout nationwide with an impressive 88% vote for action. The universities involved are primarily the older “pre-92” universities, and the affected workers are academic and academic-related staff...

As strikes by train guards in the RMT union against the imposition of “Driver Only Operation” continue, the role of drivers, most of whom are in the Aslef union, is thrown into sharper and sharper relief. On MerseyRail, activists have organised magnificent solidarity which has led to Aslef drivers refusing en masse to refuse to cross RMT picket lines. On other companies the picture is less positive. Off The Rails, a platform for rank-and-file rail workers hosted by Workers’ Liberty, recently published an “open letter to fellow Aslef drivers”, calling on drivers to refuse to cross picket lines...

RMT guards on Merseyrail, Northern, Greater Anglia, South Western and Southern Train Operating Companies struck on 8, 10, and 12 January, as the fight against Driver Only Operation escalates. Guards on Northern were very solid again, and Merseyrail workers kept up their usual high standard of solidarity with the vast majority of guards supporting the strike, as well as almost all drivers, who are members of Aslef. Elsewhere the support seems to have been patchier, for example on South Western where the urban depots are solid but the outlying depots are reportedly less so. An important factor...

RMT guards on Northern, Merseyrail, Greater Anglia and South West Railways trains will strike on 8, 10 and 12 January, with Southern members also joining the action on 8 January. This represents a necessary escalation in the fight against DOO, and will cause disruption to trains for most of the first proper working week of 2018. With the escalation have come some other developments - by choosing a Monday, Wednesday and Friday the union has ensured that 3 days of action span a full working week but only hit strikers for a maximum of 2 days pay each. Further, this is being coupled with a £200...

Members of train drivers’ union Aslef working for GTR Southern voted to accept the deal recommended by their leadership to settle their long-running dispute over Driver Only Operation. The headline pay increase looks impressive at first — 28.5% over five years, with a minimum of a 2.5% increase (or more if RPI is higher than 2.5%) in the last year of the deal, bringing the basic pay to a big-sounding £63k. However, even working on a very conservative assumption that the union secures RPI-level increases over that period, and that RPI runs at an average of 3%, the element of the deal that...

PCS members at Eastern Avenue Jobcentre in Sheffield started a continuous month long strike on 23 October in opposition to the closure of the site. On the same day it was announced that members at Plymouth Processing Centre, another site marked for closure had voted 76% in favour of strikes to defend that site and would begin their strikes on the 6 November. Members at Eastern Avenue have already struck for 27 days since the proposal to close the Jobcentre was announces earlier in the year. The closure of both sites is part of the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) estates rationalisation...

On Saturday 30 September, workers and supporters protested outside the HR Owen car showrooms in London. HR Owen sells a number of luxury sports cars, including Maserati and Ferrari, some of which sell for over £250,000 each. Last year it made a profit of £400m. Yet it only pays the minimum wage (through an outsourcing company) to its cleaners for the last five years. The inequality between rich and poor could not be clearer. Workers have been balloted by their union, United Voices of the World (UVW), to strike for the London Living Wage (£9.75 an hour). After the ballot Freddy Lopez and...

So far all 95 tower blocks which have had their cladding tested since the fire at Grenfell in Kensington, west London, have failed fire safety standards. These buildings are potentially as dangerous for their tenants as Grenfell was. Many hundreds of buildings are still to be tested. Tenants have been evacuated from tower blocks in Camden while cladding is removed; Sheffield council is removing cladding and says it cannot afford to re-clad buildings. Cladding is being removed from tower blocks in Brent, Hounslow, Lambeth, Manchester, Islington, Doncaster, Merseyside, Oxford, Plymouth...

June 2017 was the hottest June for 176 years. Across Europe temperatures went up to 38°C, and groups of school children and workers defied instructions and wore skirts to school and work to try and keep cool. In Nantes, France, a group of bus drivers asked their employer for permission to wear shorts. When this request was denied they decided to wear the only item that was authorised in hot weather — a skirt. One worker told the Guardian “Our bosses’ offices are air-conditioned, which isn’t the case with the majority of our vehicles. To spend more than seven hours in a vehicle in 50°C...

On 16 June over 100 people attended a short-notice demonstration called at Brixton’s Ritzy cinema, in protest at the sacking of three trade union reps. Three reps for the Bectu union at the Ritzy were sacked for failing to report to management the contents of an email sent from a Bectu branch email address to members’ private emails, which mentioned actions that community supporters of cinema workers’ strikes planned to undertake. One other rep remains suspended and awaiting disciplinary. The implication is chillingly feudal: that workers should be compelled to report everything to their...