Solidarity 175, 10 June 2010

Coke workers set to strike

Resistance to Coca-Cola's union busting in Colombia or its trampling of villagers’ rights in India are well-known to many activists on the left. Less well-known is the fact that Coca-Cola employs thousands of workers in the UK; now, those workers are going into battle with their bosses. Over 2,000 employees of Coca-Cola Enterprises at 12 sites across the UK are members of the GMB or Unite, and from June 11 they will be balloted for strike action to win national bargaining on issues such as pay, conditions and pensions. Coca-Cola bosses have refused to enter into bargaining to secure national...

Issues for UCU activists

The current position in the Higher Education sector is complex in terms of the mandate which the union’s HE Committee has been given in organising industrial action. The first is that we are mandated to ballot for industrial action to take place at the start of the autumn term should no adequate progress be made. Any ballot over the summer runs the risk of a low turnout. Whatever happens, we need to prepare for a highly aggressive assault by employers. We know from last year that the employers clearly have an agenda to up the ante on issues like docking pay of striking workers. On the issue of...

BT dispute: attacks when times are tough, and when they're good

British Telecom workers are holding strong as they build towards their first strike in nearly 25 years, despite attempts by management to undermine them. BT bosses put a new offer on the table at the last minute and, despite the offer including no substantial improvements on their previous proposal, they launched a vigorous press campaign trumpeting the “improved pay offer” they had extended to BT workers. CWU deputy general secretary Andy Kerr said “BT’s revised offer remains materially unchanged for this year in terms of pay. As we’ve made clear, two per cent is unacceptable for our members...

Tube workers strike to demand bosses pay for PPP blunder

The RMT has announced two 48-hour strikes, beginning on 23 June and 14 July, in a dispute over jobs and pay on London Underground. The dispute is bound up with the recent collapse of the PPP agreement, whereby the private entity TubeLines was bought back in-house by Transport for London for £310 million, becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary company of TfL. Despite the blame for the failure of the scheme clearly lying with TfL and TubeLines bosses, there have been no guarantees from management that the costs of the buyout will not be passed onto workers. RMT general secretary Bob Crow said “we...

British Airways strikes: "It's Willie Walsh or us"

As the British Airways cabin crew workers’ dispute reached an apparent impasse, spirits remained high on picket lines at Heathrow Airport. After several rounds of strikes, shenanigans in the courts (resulting in the latest round of strikes being declared illegal and then reinstated following an appeal) and a vicious campaign of victimisation from management, the apologetic and defensive attitude many workers displayed at the beginning of the strike seemed to have been replaced with a kind of kamikaze confidence as workers face up to the reality of an all-or-nothing battle with Willie Walsh....

World Cup: forced evictions and hyper-exploitation

Even for those of us who love sport, the saccharine liberal puff that inevitably accompanies any major sporting event can be a little nauseating. Once you realise that it’s not an insufficient quantity of football in the world that causes poverty, racism etc, and that these things cannot be magicked away by the unifying power of the beautiful game, you begin to begin to find statements like this one, accompanying FIFA’s “Win With Africa” campaign, very tiresome: “The goal is to reach beyond football, because FIFA firmly believes its responsibilities extend outside the sphere of the sport...

Labour takes the Brazilian road

When Brazil's military dictatorship wanted to ease off and restore civilian government, in a controlled way, in the late 1970s, it licensed two officially-permitted parties to compete, PDS and PMDB. One was safely "right", the other safely "left", so that the exercise could have the show of democratic choice. The Labour Party's easing-off from Blair-Brown dictatorship has taken a somewhat similar route. Five candidates are now in competition, but three of them only just scraped the ridiculously high minimum of 33 MPs' nominations. Evidently the dominant factions in the Parliamentary Labour...

"Greece shows other countries their future"

Vasilis Grollios is a Greek researcher in political theory, currently studying at York University. He spoke to Solidarity about the cuts in Greece. This is a longer version than in the printed paper. The standard of living for 95% of the population has been seriously reduced. Wages are already very low, and pensions are very small as well. Most hospitals have cancelled appointments. Doctors have not had money for overtime work for four or five months, and after several months of overtime pay being withheld, doctors have the legal right to cease attending appointments. That means more money for...

Stop deporting children!

Start of the anti-immigrant drive: Tories plan to send orphans to Kabul. The Government's decision to fast-track the deportation of child and adolescent Afghans from Britain to Afghanistan is an outrage against public decency and elementary human rights. If the people of Britain have not been numbed and brainwashed by the torrents of scapegoat denunciations of immigrants in the press and by politicians (including the New Labour government), then this decision will be met by the fierce outcry it merits. These are children and adolescents who sought refuge in Britain as "unaccompanied asylum...

Political hysteria won't help the Palestinian cause

On a demonstration near the Israeli embassy during the Hezbollah-Israeli war in Lebanon, I talked with a well-known anti-Israel activist, a woman in her mid-50s, whom I've know since she was 16. Discussing the agitation for a boycott of Israel, I conceded that on principle a case might be made for some sort of boycott. Except, I said, that "any boycott movement against Israel would soon turn into a Jew-hunt". She responded candidly: "So what?" So what? A boycott would be an ineffectual, crude, and indiscriminate weapon. And its political cost would be a campaign against Jews - "Zionists" - who...

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