Solidarity 525, 20 November 2019

In recent decades, there has been much discussion of “populism” as newly significant form of political movement. Some on the left even say we should embrace it. Admittedly, there are major conceptual difficulties when discussing “populism”. Even if we limit ourselves to examples on the ostensible left, movements labelled “populist” can be so different in their substantive politics and theoretical groundings that they conflict directly. On the one hand, there is Chantal Mouffe’s highly pluralistic and heterogenous “left-populism”, which is very much oriented towards liberation politics such as...

On Mondays my cohort attends college. The building is made of slick modern metal and glass, and built on the site of the battle of Orgreave. The Economist magazine described its construction as “a promising attempt… to tackle an ancient and ridiculous class divide” by getting Boeing and Rolls Royce to invest in working-class children’s education. Over the road is the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, hosting buildings dedicated to factory automation and nuclear research. My class is twelve men and three women, aged 17-30. Our Health and Safety Trainer is a 30-40 year old Brummy called “P...

What is SI Cobas? How was it created? SI Cobas is an Italian militant workers’ union. It was established in 2010, by about a hundred workers who left SLAI Cobas, another union. Now it has about 20,000 members in most of Italy’s regions, and it is still growing. It organises mainly immigrant workers, in the logistics sector, where it has become the strongest union, but also increasingly in other sectors: transport, food and meatpacking, engineering, hotels, cleaners, carers and others. It is organising most of the strikes occurring in Italy, winning better wages and conditions for workers...

Elizabeth Butterworth reviews the Workers’ Liberty pamphlet on The German Revolution. Get and read more about the pamphlet here . Around the anniversary of Rosa Luxemburg’s brutal murder, I saw numerous posts on social media apparently celebrating Luxemburg’s contribution to anti-fascism, Marxism and free thinking. Luxemburg must be one of the most quoted Marxists on the internet. These two quotes are often shared: “Those who do not move do not notice their chains” and “Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.” In my ten years on the left, I’ve seen...

After a meeting with the National Education Union’s Action Committee, school workers in Lewisham hope the committee will allow us to have another indicative ballot on boycotting high stakes testing in primary schools in December. That should be followed by a formal ballot in January. We hope to be boycotting the preparation for the tests by the beginning of March. We hope other Districts will follow our lead. In the national indicative ballot on boycotting, in June, of National Education Union, members over whether to boycott high stakes testing in primary schools, around 12 Districts beat the...

Tube union RMT will ballot its members across London Underground, after a reps’ meeting on 7 November rejected LU bosses’ latest pay offer. Tube workers’ current deal expired on 1 April 2019, and unions have been in negotiations to secure a new settlement since February. A central demand has been for a reduction in the working week, with unions citing scientific evidence that extreme shift working shortens life and demanding additional time off for workers. LU’s latest offer is for a four-year deal, with RPI + 0.2% pay increases in years one and three, and 1.4% pay increases in years two and...

The election for the Support Staff sector seat on the executive of the NEU is now running and will close on 2 December. The candidate for the rank-and-file Education Solidarity Network is Workers’ Liberty supporter Tracy McGuire. She is supported by many militant support staff, including the Durham Teaching Assistants’ Value Us campaign. Tracy says: Support staff should be treated as equal citizens in our Union. That means the NEU fighting for the right to represent and negotiate on behalf of our support staff members at every level. The union should campaign for national pay arrangements for...

Members of the University and College Union (UCU), the national union for academic staff in the UK, are set to strike at 60 universities for eight days between 25 November and 4 December 2019. This follows a highly successful pair of strike ballots among UCU members in higher education: one on pensions, the other on pay, equality, casualisation, and workloads. The pensions strike continues the long-running dispute over proposed cuts to the United Superannuation Scheme (USS), the main pension plan in the “pre-92” universities. The pay dispute affects both the “pre-92” and “post-92” universities...

UCL, LouLou’s, St Mary’s Outsourced workers at University College London struck on 19 November, after voting for industrial action by a 98% majority. The workers, who include cleaners, porters, and security guards, are members of the Independent Workers’ union of Great Britain (IWGB), and are striking to demand equality with directly-employed staff. IWGB members at “LouLou’s”, the exclusive celebrity members’ club in Mayfair, have also voted to strike. Their threat of industrial action has already secured two of their three demands – the reversal of outsourcing and the London living wage...

PCS has been making efforts to develop links with United Voices of the World (UVW) and the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB), small unions not affiliated to the TUC which organise mainly precarious and migrant workers. Unlike some other TUC unions, we are not hostile to UVW and IWGB. We see them as an inspiration, and allies, rather a threat. They’ve done something the “mainstream” labour movement should have done, but hasn’t: organise precarious and outsourced workers and empower them to take direct action. We fully support their disputes, and have been promoting them to PCS...