Solidarity 167, 18 February 2010

Leeds University: striking to save jobs

In the face of a threatened £35 million wave of cuts, with 54 jobs already axed and 700 more at risk, lecturers at Leeds University have voted overwhelmingly to strike to save their jobs. On a 65.8% turn-out, lecturers voted overwhelmingly for strike action and for action short of a strike. Leeds University UCU have called a series of strike dates, on Thursday 25 February, Tuesday 2 March and Thursday 4 March. These dates should see mobilisations of students, education staff and workers in other sectors in solidarity. The teachers voted to strike despite an anti-strike campaign waged by the...

Higher education: build a coordinated movement against cuts

Over 150 students, lecturers and campus staff, representing anti-cuts campaigns from more than a dozen campuses around the country, attended the National Convention Against Fees and Cuts on Saturday 6 February in London. They were participating in the launch of a National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts. This network of grassroots anti-cuts campaigns is something all student activists should get involved in. In the last few months, college campaigns against the government’s huge education cuts have been springing up. Demonstrations, meetings and strike ballots are taking place sporadically...

Engineering construction: correction and update

In our article on conditions in engineering construction ( Solidarity 3-166) it was not unambiguously clear that employers are not using the Posted Workers Directive as such to attack workers. Rather they have used loopholes in the Posted Workers Directive created by recent European Court of Justice rulings. (We said the Directive had been “amended” by the court). Those rulings — to the surprise of the unions — have established an interpretation of the PWD as guaranteeing posted workers only those terms and conditions which are established by law in the country they are posted to. Because...

Civil Service Compensation Scheme: vote for strike action!

The civil service union PCS has announced that it is continuing to ballot its members over strike action, despite the announcement by the Cabinet Office that five unions have agreed to changes to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme (CSCS). The ballot, which is scheduled to close on February 25, is covering around a quarter of a million civil service workers across all sectors, including Jobcentre staff, tax workers, court staff and driving examiners. The “agreement” reached by the five other unions (Prospect, FDA, GMB, POA and Unite) is a mixture of reserved rights for those over 50 and...

London Underground: signal workers win

London Underground signal maintenance staff have forced their employer — the former Metronet — to withdraw the threat of imposed weekend working. They achieved this through solid industrial action. Rather than accept the imposition of new rosters that would mess up their lives, signals workers demanded that RMT ballot them, then called not just a token one- or two-day strike, but more than a dozen days of action, and “action short of strikes” too. On the first strike day, Friday 5 February, there was 100% support — no scabbing — and workers from other grades refused to cross the well-organised...

My life at work: working in the energy industry

Tom Fawley is an office worker for N-Power in northern England. Tell us a little bit about the work you do. I work for the energy company N-Power. I mainly do office work so spend most of my time behind a desk. Our workplace deals with tasks like making sure electricity meters get set up and connected in new builds. Do you and your workmates get the pay and conditions you deserve? My pay is okay. Some of my colleagues are pretty badly paid, and there are some temping agency workers in the workplace too; they’re paid dreadfully. I’m on £20,000 a year, which is slightly above the average...

Tory co-ops: a smokescreen for cuts and privatisation

The Tories say they want to create “employee-owned” cooperatives within key public services. Under the scheme, participating workers — in, say, a clinic or a school — would be “freed” from the shackles of central government bureaucracy and would be able to have a share of any “financial surplus” that the service generates. Have the Tories been taken over by 21st century Owenites? Hardly. The plan is about: • Creating a smokescreen for massive cuts. By hiving partial responsibility for funding off to independently-run “cooperatives”, the Tories can increase their ability to cut central...

Turkey: general strike to save jobs

Trade unionists launched a one-day general strike in Turkey as our last issue went to press. On Thursday 4 February, tens of thousands of public sector workers staged a one-day walk out in solidarity with employees of the government’s Tobacco and Liquor Administration (TEKEL). Workers from industries as diverse as textile production, railways, mining and highways workers all downed tools to support the 12,000-strong TEKEL sit-in protest in Ankara, which was in its 53rd day. Since general and solidarity strikes are banned in Turkey, the event was labelled as workers “exercising their right to...

Greece: a "new wave" of crisis?

The Greek government could run out of money to pay its bills in the next couple of months. Usually governments are guaranteed at least to be able to pay their bills inside their own countries — because, in the last resort, they can always print more of their national money — but the Greek government, in the eurozone, has no power to print more euros. Immediately, the result is promises by Greece's social-democratic government that it will make huge cuts in public spending to free up cash to pay the international financiers to whom Greece has debts. At present Greek prime minister George...

Raped, tortured then locked up by the British state: stop detaining refugees!

On Friday 5 February a hunger strike broke out at the Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre in Bedfordshire. As many as 50 women took action to protest against the period of time they have been locked up and the treatment of themselves and their children. The women were from a wide range of countries where human rights abuses and violence are common, including China, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe and Eritrea. Many women are in detention having been convicted of “crimes” of destitution or for travelling on false papers, which is unavoidable when you are fleeing persecution. Many women have been...

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