Solidarity 190, 26 January 2011

Courts and the Government are making a two-pronged attack on the right to strike. It becomes more and more urgent for the unions to launch a big political campaign for union rights. On 19 January, Justice Michael Tugendhat granted Serco Docklands, the operators of the Docklands Light Railway, an injunction (legal order) banning a strike by the rail union RMT due to happen on 20-21 January (see page 2). Judges’ interpretations have pushed the circumstances in which bosses can get injunctions wider and wider, and this judgment pushed them wider still. Yes, the RMT had given Serco a list of the...

The Daily Mail has a problem with the Tory-led coalition. It’s gone too far and some of its policies are not what they expected from David Cameron. Does the Mail think the cuts, or the reforms of the NHS have gone too far? No. The target of their fury is the impeccably Conservative Home Secretary, Theresa May. Conservative MP Philip Davies captured just how serious the problem in the Mail on Sunday (24 January 2011) “In many respects, Theresa May is as bad as Harriet Harman.” In Mailworld that’s about as bad as it gets. It is the fact that Harman’s Equality Act is being left on the statute...

A major study released in December has confirmed that websites belonging to independent media and human rights organisations around the globe are increasingly vulnerable to cyber-attack. The report issued by Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society has implications for all civil society organisations, including trade unions and leftist groups. Though the study focussed on distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks on websites, the researchers learned through surveys and research that organisations have reported a whole range of issues. Hijacking of domain names, filtering...

AWL comrades joined trade union and community activists in a day of action called on 15 January by South East Region TUC. Norfolk Coalition Against the Cuts (NCAC) held protests across the county, petitioning, leafleting and staging a “crime-scene” in Downham Market with a cuts-victim’s outline chalked on the pavement and scene-of-crime officers on hand to detail the damage done by the government’s policies. Norwich Topshop was picketed to draw attention to the millions of pounds in tax “avoided” by capitalists such as government advisor and Topshop owner Philip Green. NCAC is organising to...

The fight against cuts can happen in the most unexpected of places. Tendring District Council, a Conservative-led administration in north east Essex, has announced the first round of cuts to close a budget deficit of £4.3 million by 2014. The cuts are from the “leisure” portfolio: the council is justifying the cuts in the name of “maintaining front line services”. Among the cuts is the ending of more than £100,000 of small grants to voluntary organisations who plan to lobby the council against it. The fees levied on beach huts are also set to rise. Beach hut owners are not renowned for their...

Scottish councils are lining up not just to cut jobs and services but also to attack the terms and conditions of their workforces. Over the next two years Glasgow City Council plans to axe at least 3,500 jobs and cut its spending by £100m, on top of nearly £40m cut in the current financial year. Additional job losses are likely when Glasgow “pools” some of its departments with neighbouring councils. Further “savings” are to be made by attacks on its workforce’s terms and conditions: cuts in annual leave entitlements, longer working day, more rigorous absence management policy, end to flexible...

Nearly 3,000 civil servants in the Department for Work and Pensions across seven sites struck on Thursday 20 and Friday 21 January. Some of the offices in Bristol, the Chorlton district of Manchester, Glasgow, Makerfield near Wigan, Newport in south Wales, Norwich, and Sheffield, have already been set up as call centres. Others are due to transform to call centres in the near future. The workers are demanding that they are given a mixture of duties, rather than just answering telephone calls. This work is very stressful. This, coupled with the harsh management regime, means that “Contact...

A campaign has succeeded in forcing governors at Tidemill Primary School in Deptford to withdraw their application for the school to become an academy. The precise reason for the withdrawal is a technicality; a legal challenge mounted by the campaign exposed the governor’s financial model to be flawed. But the key lesson is that campaigning can win. Without a strong parents’ and teachers’ campaign, the investigative work into the technicalities would never have been done and even if they had been exposed, the governors might have felt confident to find ways around them without significant...

After four months with four one-day strikes against job cuts on London Underground (LU), and a two-month lull since 28-29 November, RMT general secretary Bob Crow announced on 21 January: “It was agreed that we continue to take part in the ongoing review process and we will advise [members] of developments when the work of the reviews become clearer.” In other words, RMT will not name any more strike dates before the station job cuts come in on 6 February. Nor will the other station staff union, TSSA, which joined with RMT in four strong strikes between 6-7 September and 28-29 November. The...

A judge has banned a planned strike by RMT members on Docklands Light Railway, issuing an injunction that makes it even harder for trade unions to hold lawful strikes. RMT balloted members employed by Serco Docklands over several issues, including attacks on pension rights, differences in working hours, and the sacking of two members. The union's ballot did not break existing anti-union law, so the judge announced an extension of the law and declared that the ballot notification did not meet its requirements and therefore the strike could not go ahead! Legislation dating back to 2004 states...