Privatisation

On Friday 1 May, the UCU union at Lewisham and Southwark college will begin the ballot for industrial action to save 110 full-time equivalent jobs. We are now one of several colleges in London preparing to resist attacks on our jobs and our ability to serve local working class students with what is for many the last chance to escape poverty and the hopelessness of unemployment. The bulk of the leadership and governance of further education in the UK are socially useless and parasitic on the funding of further education. They do little more than administer the dismantling of educational hope...

After voting for strikes over outsourcing by 87%, Unison members in Barnet Council will strike on Thursday 30 April and Friday 1 May. On 1 May Unison hold a march and rally, followed by a members meeting to review the strike and any proposals from the council. If the council has not moved, a second phase of strikes will follow on Thursday 21 May and Friday 22 May, and a third on Monday 1 June and Tuesday 2 June. Libraries are one of the services to be affected by outsourcing and cuts. Activists have been holding a “grand tour of Barnet libraries” with marches between local libraries in protest...

Conservative-run Northamptonshire (Northants) County Council is planning to transfer its 4,000 workers to four semi-private “community interest companies” in a bid to save money. Only 150 staff will remain directly employed by the council, to commission and administer the contracts for services with these new semi-privatised companies, or with fully private companies. Already, private company Balfour Beatty runs the street lighting and, another, Kier the roads. The community interest companies will be able to make surpluses and it is planned they will sell services to other “customers” as well...

Following strikes on 3-4 February, 27-28 February and 2 March, management at the Information Commissioner’s Office have imposed the disputed new pay offer on staff. This is despite half the staff having refused to sign up to the offer on an individual basis and demanding they negotiate with the recognised unions. The pay offer was improved slightly as a result of the strikes, but it remains far short of meeting PCS’s demand for a 5% or £1,200 increase in annual pay. Management have been keen to draw a line under the dispute and move on by making vague promises about looking for ways to “jump...

Seventy Unison members who work with the homeless in Glasgow Council started an indefinite strike on Tuesday 31 March. The strike is to win recognition of their work reflected in their pay grading. Unison says workers doing similar jobs are paid a pay grade higher than the homeless support workers. Workers have been taking action short of strike action since January. Send messages of support to: Glasgow City Unison Lewisham academies fight wins extension Two school reps involved in the fight against academies in Lewisham attended NUT conference this weekend and spoke at the Lanac organised...

Members of the GMB, NASUWT and NUT, in the three schools in the Prendergast Federation in Lewisham, have escalated their strikes against the threat of the schools being turned into academies. The unions will strike for two consecutive days on 24 and 25 March. The escalation is in response to the governors of the schools immediately beginning “formal consultation” about becoming academies rather than postponing it until after the election as they had suggested they might. Although the action will disrupt education at a critical time for some students, the unions felt they had no choice, and...

Whipps Cross Hospital in Leytonstone has been rated as inadequate by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), and the whole of Barts NHS Trust which runs the hospital has been placed in special measures. The CQC say patient safety has been seriously compromised. But the CQC failed to identify the background to the hospital’s difficulties — cuts in staff and the serious financial problems facing Barts NHS Trust, as the result of debts incurred under PFI contracts. Barts Health NHS Trust has a £1.25 billion yearly turnover and a workforce of 14,000. It is the largest NHS trust in the country. The...

Pat Hutton, GMB rep at Queen Elizabeth Hospital where workers have been on strike to win the same terms and conditions as in-house workers, spoke to Solidarity . "Since our last strikes at Christmas, GMB has been going round hospitals where they recruited scabs — in Liverpool, Coventry, Westminster, Chelsea, Kingston — organising to stop it. A lot of the scabs were casuals and didn’t know what was going on. With the help of GMB in those places we put a stop to it. Here at QEH we’ve been pushing on with recruiting new members — we have over 250 now — and geeing people up. We had a plan for the...

Fire control operators in Essex have escalated strike plans to eight days this week in an increasingly bitter row over cuts and shift changes. FBU control members walked out at 07:00 on Tuesday 10 March and vowed not return until 07:00 on Wednesday 18 March. A new imposed shift system has seen some emergency control operators having to leave their jobs or drastically reduce their hours and pay, with many more considering their future with the service. The majority of strikers are women, who say these shift changes are unfair and completely unnecessary as there are alternatives on the table...

Workers at the National Gallery threatened with outsourcing will be on strike for seven more days on 14 and 15 March and 24-29 March. Gallery bosses plan to outsource 400 staff, including guards and visitor assistances. CIS, the company that will employ the staff once outsourced, has contracts in many industries, meaning that staff could be transferred to other workplaces. PCS union also argues that TUPE protections only protect existing staff, and new staff can be employed on worse terms and conditions. In The Guardian on 20 January, Polly Toynbee revealed how CIS removed chairs used by...