Solidarity 053, 10 June 2004

by Sean Matgamna On D-Day, 6 June 1944, an armada of ships and planes launched British, American and Commonwealth soldiers into a full-scale invasion of Hitler-ruled mainland Europe. The official celebration of the 60th anniversary of that momentous event cannot but arouse mixed feelings in socialists. We watch George W Bush and his junior partner Tony Blair, surrounded by the leaders of bourgeois-democratic Europe, rolling out the clichés and conventional bourgeois-democratic pieties. Yet, though pluto-democratic capitalism rules Europe still, it is a fact that those armies did in 1944-5...

By a tube worker The RMT have cancelled strike action on the Underground set for Thursday 10 June. They did this against the wishes of the union's branches, reps and the majority of members. The members voted 80% yes to strike action. The Regional Council voted unanimously to put the first strike date on 10 June. The mandate could not have been clearer. And yet the RMT leadership has reneged on that for no good reason: was called off for nothing more than further talks. Tube workers want an end to low pay, inequality and long, anti-social hours, We are sick and tired of years-long negotiations...

By Pat Murphy, Secretary Leeds NUT Some 10,000 school staff in Leeds are to be balloted for strike action in protest at compulsory redundancies in the city. The four main unions organising teachers and support staff, the NUT, NASUWT, GMB and UNISON are involved. If we win the ballot, there is likely to be a one-day strike which will shut down the vast majority of Leeds schools. Around 50 teachers and 60 support staff face the threat of compulsory redundancy this term. About half of those are in schools with falling rolls and budget shortfalls. Most of the rest are in five schools due to close...

On the fringes of the annual conference of the public services union Unison (from 22 June in Bournemouth), there will be opportunities for both local government and health activists to get together and debate attitudes to the current pay offers, and a meeting to launch an exciting new campaign to raise support for the newly emerging trade union movement in Iraq. There will also be a meeting in the official fringe on the TUC Play Fair at the Olympics campaign - talking about issues around sweatshop workers and how trade unionists in this country can and should get involved in campaigns like...

By Kate Ahrens A key issue coming up on the agenda of Unison local government conference in Bournemouth on 21 June will be the Workforce Remodelling agreement in schools which Unison and most other education unions signed up to last year, but which the NUT has maintained opposition to. The plan will replace teachers with less well-trained - and lower paid - support staff. Many teaching assistants are finding that the implementation of the deal is developing as the NUT predicted - extra work with little or no extra reward and, in many areas, the prospect of support staff teaching whole classes...

By Nick Holden After suspending conference on 11 May the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) exec went into extensive negotiations with the employers over the conditions they wanted to implement in stage two of the 2002 pay award. A "compromise" agreement was struck and agreed by the Executive that firefighters would give up the right to "stand down time". The deal followed widespread unofficial action over the issue - stand down was widely seen as a dispute which the FBU leadership couldn't lose, and couldn't afford to. Yet apparently they were prepared to "give it away". Later the FBU heard that the...

By a RMT member The RMT is holding talks with bosses at Network Rail in their dispute over pay and the closure of the pension scheme to new workers. Both signal and infrastructure staff. have been offered the reinstatement of their Christmas bonus (£35) which they lost last year, a 25% discount on season tickets for work related travel and a Joint Working Party (talks) on pensions. If any action is taken, it will effectively boil down to a one day strike with no indication of what would follow. On a strike day the action will be called in 4 hour "windows" and there will be three of these...

By a PCS member Research published by J P Morgan Fleming in May 2004 revealed that nearly two-thirds of the UK's top pension funds have closed their final salary pension schemes to new members. According to the TUC these closures have already saved employers £4 billion in contributions. In one of the most recent developments, RMT members working for Network Rail have voted to strike over the closure of their final salary pension scheme to new staff. Quite obviously, once a company has succeeded in dividing workers in this way there is every temptation on greedy bosses to attack the relatively...

By John O'Mahony The latest restrictions which the Government proposes to inflict on immigrants are a downright disgrace! Rejected asylum seekers who can't leave are to be forced to work for no wages! What refugees in Britain face already is depicted in recent newspaper headlines. "Racist arson attack in Dungannon", "Ukrainian man attacked", "Hull asylum seeker persecutors found guilty", "Liverpool man jailed for racist behaviour". Those are the headlines, culled by the Independent Race and Refugee Network, for just one day, 7 June 2004. Multiply that by 365 and it is plain to see, physical...

By Pablo Velasco Colombian oil workers halt privatisation: solidarity works! "Massive summer strikes" planned in Korea ANC against anti-privatisation activists Argentine workers fight for a six-hour day Colombian oil workers halt privatisation: solidarity works! Colombian oil workers have won their struggle against privatisation, thanks to their resolute strike action backed up by international solidarity. In the last issue of Solidarity we reported on how the Colombian government was trying to break the month-long strike at Ecopetrol, the national oil company, using military force. The Uribe...