Solidarity 094, 1 June 2006

By Paul Hampton The Venezuelan Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT) congress, held on the weekend of 25-27 May, broke up in acrimony, with two distinct tendencies holding separate plenaries by the end. The congress was the first the confederation has held since it was founded in August 2003. What was the dispute over? Essentially the degree to which the union should be independent of the Chávez government. The immediate cause of the split was the date of elections for the UNT leadership. The more pro-Chávez current in the union wanted to put off elections until next year, in order to...

By Peter Tatchell Russian gays have won an important moral and political victory. Yuri Luzhkov said a gay pride parade would never happen while he was Mayor of Moscow. But Moscow Pride did happen, on 27 May, despite the Mayor’s ban, police arrests, and violence from neo-fascists, right-wing nationalists and Orthodox Christian fundamentalists. Moscow Pride has been a milestone in Russian lesbian and gay history. By insisting on the right to protest, they were defending more than gay rights. They were defending the democratic freedoms of all Russians, gay and straight. Some gay people say Moscow...

By Tom Unterrainer DRIVERS working for NCT in Nottingham struck for 24 hours on 27 May in the first of a sequence of actions planned for consecutive Saturdays. The first strike saw the city’s bus system grind to a halt as TGWU members picketed the main depot in a solid day of action. People from around the East Midlands normally flock to Nottingham to spend their money but stores were very quiet this Saturday morning. The strike took place in reaction to a miserly pay increase of 2.4% - equating to just 20p. After 95% of drivers voted to reject the offer and three meetings where management...

By a CWU conference delegate AT the postal section of the CWU conference (21-6 May) the plans for tackling Allan Leighton’s attempts to push the liberalisation agenda further in Royal Mail were discussed, but at General Conference which deals with the whole union the issue arose in motions on policy and politics. There was a negative motion that called for suspension of payments to Labour if the Government backs Leighton on the issuing of shares to staff. It was carried with the support of the executive as Government intervention on this issue would certainly lead to a review of the CWU-Labour...

By Pete Keenlyside, CWU Postal Executive (personal capacity) THE CWU has given notice to Royal Mail management that if acceptable progress has not been made on a range of outstanding issues within the next four weeks, a ballot for industrial action will be implemented among the entire CWU membership in the business. The anger caused by management’s imposition of this year’s pay deal was reflected in the emergency motion, carried unanimously, presented to the CWU annual conference held last week. This labelled their actions “an act of union derecognition” and called for the reopening of the pay...

By a pcs socialist caucus member THE annual conference of the civil service union PCS, in Brighton on 7-9 June with group (sector) conferences on 5-6 June, will debate an emergency motion from the union's Executive to "welcome" the pension agreement made earlier this year. Pensions will be the crucial issue of the conference. PCS was central to the trade union alliance that accepted that new entrants to the civil service, the NHS and teaching will have to work five years longer in order to receive their full pension, with the pension rights of existing workers supposedly "ring-fenced". This is...

By delegates to the conference of further and higher education lecturers’ union natfhe A resolution calling for an academic boycott of Israel was passed at our conference [on 29 May] passing by 106 votes to 74 (with 21 abstentions). The debate and vote reflects the less than perfectly democratic make-up of NATFHE conference — it is made up of delegates from regions, not branches. Nonetheless this was a very poor decision. The text of the motion reads: “Conference notes continuing Israeli apartheid policies, including construction of the exclusion wall, and discriminatory educational practices...

THE quote above comes from Ring Lardner Jr, the famous writer and member of the Hollywood Ten — who were convicted in 1947 of criminal contempt for refusing to cooperate with the House Unamerican Activities Committee. The ten were imprisoned for a year for their defiance. In fact, Lardner was one of the few who did respond to a question put to him. The question of course was whether he was or had ever been a member of the Communist Party. To which he replied “I could answer the question exactly the way you want, but if I did I would hate myself in the morning”. I am sure Lardner, whatever his...

If a North Korean mathematician wants to come to a conference in Britain, we will be happy to discuss maths with her; we will not demand that she repudiates her state’s constitutional claim that North Korea is a socialist paradise on earth. This is how it should be. Discuss integral calculus during the day; discuss politics over dinner; help her to defect, if she wants. But if an Israeli wants to come to the same conference, she would now have to sign a statement saying that she repudiates Israel’s “apartheid policies”. If she refuses, she won’t be allowed to attend the conference, to have her...

rail On Tuesday 6 June the rail unions RMT and TSSA will report the results of their ballots for industrial action over pensions. Their demands, covering all railworkers outside the London Underground, are for pensions to be maintained, worker contributions limited to 10.56%, the Railway Pension Scheme to be open to all railworkers, and the Scheme to be simplified into three sections in place of the over 100 sections which have proliferated since privatisation. Unlike other public service unions, the rail unions are clear in rejecting any “two-tier” deal which would protect existing workers at...