Union organising

Lecturers at Edinburgh College are continuing their rolling programme of strikes. The aggressive campaign of walk-outs has met with the overwhelming support of members of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) at the college, 92% of whom backed strike action. The union is striking in protest at the 3% pay rise offered by management, a deal which is tied in with a number of attacks on workers’ terms and conditions, including the abolition of a class-contact maximum. Lecturers fear that with these protections removed, they could face a major increase in their work load with little to show...

Five three-quarter truths , piled one on top of another to reach a conclusion, make a conclusion which is only three-quarters times three-quarters times... true. Or 24% true. Or three-quarters false . Example: the SWP's current argument on "work, class, and resistance", as developed in a day school sponsored by the SWP's International Socialism Journal in London on 8 February. The SWP enounces five three-quarter truths: 1. The working class is a whole. It is not two separate segments with a wall between. There is no separate "precariat" class. 2. Public service workers are part of the working...

Unite is the UK’s largest trade union, with approximately 1.5 million members in industries as diverse as cabin crew, speech therapy, power stations, and car production. It has 100 full-time organisers, organising workers in mainly unorganised workplaces and industries. Its General Secretary Len McCluskey boasts that he has never blocked or repudiated a strike during his tenure and its “leverage” campaigns have seen noisy protests and intense lobbying beating the likes of Honda, London Buses, and major contractors and firms in the construction industry. Yet Unite still suffers from the same...

Outsourced workers at the University of London’s central administration, employed by Cofely GDF-Suez (until recent by Balfour Beatty), will be striking from 27-29 January. Terms and conditions for Cofely GDF-Suez workers, specifically sick pay, holidays, and pensions, are much improved after a previous strike, but still inferior to those terms and conditions of direct employees of the University of London. The demand for parity forms the basis of the “3 Cosas” (“3 Things”) campaign, which has seen workers mobilise against university management for over a year. The first and third days of the...

The “Fast Food Rights” campaign, launched at a meeting on 8 January and involving the Bakers, Food, and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU), plans a day of direct action on Saturday 15 February. For more information, see here . Curzon Cinema workers win union recognition fight Workers at the Curzon cinema chain have won their battle for union recognition. Curzon bosses signed an agreement with the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union (BECTU) on Monday 13 January which means the company will have to bargain collectively with its employees on issues of pay, terms, and conditions...

The British labour movement needs more migrant workers. It needs to be invigorated by the spirit shown, for example, in the Tres Cosas campaign of ancillary workers at the University of London, almost all migrant workers. Our movement needs to be enlivened by the militancy shown by a series of battles in the last year by cleaners and fast food workers, again almost all migrants. Historically, our labour movement owes a lot to migrants, right back to the start. The Chartist movement in the 19th century owed a lot to Irish migrants, who faced even worse narrow-minded hostility than East European...

On Wednesday 22 January, students in London have organised a “March on Senate House” to put pressure on the management of the University of London to grant the demands of the “3 Cosas” strikers (outsourced workers), and to support the pay claim of higher education workers in their national dispute. Students are also demanding that their organisation, the University of London Union, is not disbanded, as the university’s management currently proposes to do. This demonstration comes after a series of student rallies in solidarity with workers’ strikes last term, which were subject to violent and...

Click here to download the agenda and reading list for the event. (Please note: the agenda incorrectly refers to the "Australian Building Workers' Federation", instead of the "New South Wales Builders Labourers Federation") Click here to download resources from the session on "the role of the bureaucracy" Click here to download resources from the session on "the role of Marxists" Click here for a report of the event. Click here to download the "Marxism and Trade Unions" study course on which the school was based.

Outsourced cleaning, catering, and security workers at the University of London have been fighting for sick pay, holiday, and pension equality with directly-employed staff through the “Tres Cosas” (“Three Things”) campaign since they won the London Living Wage in 2012. On 27 and 28 November, they struck to win those demands, as well as to stop job cuts at the Garden Halls, and to win recognition of their union, the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB). Workers mounted pickets at the university’s flagship Senate House building from 6am on both strike days, and succeeded in turning...

Outsourced workers at Uni of London have won sick pay and holiday terms of very-near equivalence with directly-employed staff after a long campaign and a two-day strike (27 and 28 November 2013). Massive victory for 3 Cosas campaign, workers' self-organisation, and militant industrial action. Two demands down, one to go (plus union recognition)! Tres Cosas campaign blog Photos and reports from the strikes .