Privatisation

Labour’s new shadow transport secretary, Michael Dugher, has signalled a shift towards rail renationalisation. In an interview with the New Statesman on 19 February, he said: “The public sector will be running sections of our rail network as soon as we can do that”. He added that he was “adamant about putting the whole franchising system, as it stands today, in the bin”. These statements show that consistent campaigning can push Labour, even today, towards support for trade union and labour movement policies, as it has done on the bedroom tax and on repeal of the Health and Social Care Act...

Cleaners at financial analyst Bloomberg planned to strike from 23-25 February in a continuing struggle over pay and conditions. The cleaners, members of the IWGB union, won the Living Wage in November last year after strikes and occupations. The cleaners also got the Living Wage updated to the newest rate after threatening to strike earlier this month. However Bloomberg still does not pay sick pay, and workers are concerned about a culture of disrespect towards them in the workplace. Matilda, a mother of two and a cleaner at Bloomberg, said “Until we are treated with the respect we deserve, we...

London bus drivers will strike again for 24 hours on Friday 13 and Monday 16 February in their dispute to level-up pay between bus companies. This follows a 24 hour strike on Thursday 5 February, and one on Tuesday 13 January. Solidarity visited several picket lines which were lively, confident and staffed throughout the day despite propaganda from Transport for London (TfL) claiming high numbers of services were still running. Drivers at Hackney Central, an Arriva depot — the lowest payer for starter drivers — told Solidarity that 90% of their services were not running. Arriva driver John...

Teachers at Merrill Academy, Derbyshire, have been on strike for six days through January in a dispute over unattainable appraisal targets and denial of pay progression. Both teaching unions, the NUT and the NASUWT, are taking part in the strike and have been staging daily picket lines. However picket lines were suspended on January 29 after drivers, believed to be a non-striking members of staff, drove aggressively at pickets over several days, leading to a striker and a student being hit by a car. School management have aggressively attacked the unions in the local press, and have run...

On Tuesday the 13 January the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) branch of the PCS union voted by an overwhelming majority to call strikes over pay. The ICO has been lagging behind civil service pay for some time, with members’ salaries a grade behind what the rest of the civil service receive. This year’s pay offer was limited to a 3% rise for workers who have been in the job longer, and bumping newer workers up the pay scale. Whilst this allows management to bribe newer staff with superficially large increases in pay this is money they are contractually obliged to over time. It does...

Spurred by waiting times in Accident & Emergency departments which are the worst since records began in 2004, the Tories have promised an extra £2 billion a year above inflation for the health service. Labour says it will go £2.5 billion a year above that (funded by a mansion tax, a levy on tobacco companies and closing tax loopholes). Both are completely inadequate NHS boss Simon Stevens says that the NHS will need at least £8 billion a year above inflation even with dramatic “efficiency savings” – by which he means attacks on NHS workers. “Efficiency” could have a different meaning however...

John Cunningham reviews Private Island: Why Britain Now Belongs to Someone Else, by James Meek (Verso Press) and How To Speak To Money by John Lanchester (Faber and Faber). Both these books perform a valuable service to those concerned with mounting a sustained critical analysis of how capitalism in its present day forms actually works. Although neither author draws any radical conclusions from his analysis, there is rich material in these pages to learn from. Much of what James Meek has to say about the state of the British economy will probably come as no surprise to readers of Solidarity...

Following a re-ballot which returned 83% in favour of strikes on a 58% turn out, Lambeth College UCU will be on their first day of new strikes on Thursday 4 December. The dispute is over changes to contracts which see two weeks cut off annual holidays, a massive reduction in sick pay entitlement, and extra hours of teaching with no extra pay. UCU members at Lambeth college were re-balloted following a court injunction against their previous indefinite strike plan. Mandy Brown, UCU branch secretary, said “The strike action taken so far has resulted in some small improvements to the offer made...

Over two hundred outsourced workers who are members of the GMB at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, South London struck for 48 hours on 24-26 November. On the 24th the workers, who are employed by Dutch multinational ISS as cleaners, security, ward hostesses, caterers, on the switchboard and as porters, struck alongside directly employed NHS staff striking for their national pay dispute. The outsourced GMB members are looking to level up to the same terms and conditions as directly employed NHS workers — on basic pay rates, unsocial, weekend and bank holiday hours rates, sick pay and other...

The housing crisis in London has not bypassed student accommodation one bit. Currently students at UCL halls of accommodation in Camden are organising weekly meetings to fight back against worsening living conditions (including no hot water for two weeks) as well as above-inflation increases in rent year by year. UCL is one of the worst offenders for overpriced student housing, with an average price of £157.77 per week for a basic single room, and many rooms costing more than £200. Many students are having to pay more for their rent than they receive in their student loan. As well as this...