Solidarity 113, 7 June 2007

Support the Tesco drivers!

BY Elaine Jones Following on from three days of strike action in late May, Tesco drivers based in the company’s Livingston depot are out on strike again for a 24-hour strike on 5 June in a dispute over pay, jobs and union recognition. Last March Tesco announced its plans for a new super depot in Livingston, located just 500 yards away from the current depot. Tesco took the opportunity of the eventual transfer of its staff from one depot to another as an opportunity to propose cuts in the terms and conditions of current and future drivers. Tesco wanted to slash Saturday and Sunday payments...

So much for the “awkward squad”

For five years now, every autumn, at the Labour Party conference, the big unions have voted through policies reflecting their members’ wishes but clashing sharply with the Labour leadership. Solidarity strikes and boycotts should be legal. The Health Service should not be privatised. Local councils should be enabled to renovate council housing and build more, instead of being forced by the Government to transfer it to private management and ownership. Blair and Brown ignore those conference decisions. No way to overrride them — except to change the leadership. This spring, Blair gave the...

Margaret Hodge says white workers lose out - Decent homes for all!

By Robin Sivapalan MARGARET Hodge, Labour Minister for Industry and MP for Barking, has sparked another row over immigration and housing. Last April, in the run-up to the local elections, she provided a rallying call to the BNP by claiming that eight out 10 people she spoke to on the doorstep were considering voting for the far right. She explained that this mass rejection of New Labour was due to its failure to address the shortage of council housing available to her white working-class constituents, while at the same time providing housing to asylum seekers and migrant workers. She described...

More New Labour greenwash

By Bruce Robinson The government has made three proposals — on planning, energy and waste — which constitute a typical mixture of green rhetoric without effective action and with new environmental threats, concessions to business, and further removal of democratic accountability to local communities. The government proposes to hold “national debates” on large-scale planning issues such as nuclear power or airport expansion. Following this, detailed decisions on how and where these might be implemented are to be handed to an appointed commission. One aim is to reduce the time taken to come to...

Safe standing

By Matthew Thompson The publication of a report by the Football Supporters’ Federation calling for the reintroduction of standing areas at grounds has been criticised by the Hillsborough Families Campaign, a group representing relatives of the 96 Liverpool fans crushed to death in 1989. The problem at Hillsborough, however, was not standing but a lack of crowd control by police, and terraces divided into pens and fenced at the front, allowing no escape. The implementation of the resulting Taylor Report that stipulated all-seater stadia for the top two divisions of English football coincided...

Fiddling the books while the NHS burns

By Mike Fenwick After the fuss made last year about an “overspend” in the NHS budget, the trend has been reversed. This year an underspend of some £550 million is predicted. That figure is conveniently near the previous and will be used to demonstrate how well managers have learnt the harsh business realities of the new NHS and the need to balance the books. But another way to look at it is that over half a billion pounds wasn’t spent on patient care. The surplus does not mean all the outstanding health care needs of the previous year were met. People know what is really going on: waiting for...

Unison conference: Will the union change direction?

by a Unison conference delegate Unison’s national delegate conference (June 19-22) will see a number of debates that could move the union in a new direction in the next year. Unfortunately some of the most important decisions for the union will not be played out on conference floor. The threatened industrial action on pay in the health service and potentially in local government will be decided on elsewhere. In the same way, the chance for Unison to have any positive input into the Labour leadership election has already passed, with a decision to nominate Gordon Brown and Alan Johnson. The...

Revolt over Labour Party deputy

by a CWU conference delegate Delegates to this year’s Communication Workers’ Union conference have voted heavily to censure the union’s National Executive Committee for nominating former general secretary Alan Johnson for Labour Party deputy leader, and to overturn the nomination. About 70% of delegates voted for an emergency motion condemning the Executive for ignoring conference policy, which states that the CWU will only back candidates for the Labour leadership who support the Trade Union Freedom Bill and 100% public ownership of the Post Office. Johnson’s record of support for “employee...

Super-union sells strikers short

by Dale Street STRIKERS at the Sunvic Controls factory in Uddingston near Glasgow, which manufactures controls for domestic and commercial central heating systems, returned to work last Monday (4 June) after ten weeks. The 42 employees, mostly women, and all of them members of Amicus and the TGWU (which have now merged into Unite), had been out on official strike since 21 March in a dispute over flexible working and lay-off pay. In the 14 months of negotiations which had preceded the strike, management had insisted on new employment terms which would allow them to enforce short-time working...

Isle of Wight job cuts

By Maggie Bremner PROPOSALS to radically restructure the education system on the Isle of Wight, making 150 teachers redundant and slashing their redundancy pay, are facing opposition from the unions. Steve Bynon, new Director of Children Services on the island, is attempting to push through proposals to shut middle and high schools on the island, replacing them with a new structure including a semi-private “Trust” which involves four high schools and the local college. Bynon wants to establish a reputation for innovation at the cost of workers’ terms and conditions and of the quality of...

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