Unite

Members of teaching unions NUT and UCU at K College in Kent struck for half a day on Monday 8 October as part of a battle to save 145 jobs. The workplace is spread over six campuses and has more than 25,000 students. College bosses want to make cuts to shrink an £11 million deficit. 57 jobs have already been lost, and workers fear that campuses in Ashford and Dover could be sold off altogether. Staff walked off the job at 1pm and held pickets and protests at college sites. Tesco jobs fight Delivery drivers for Tesco based in Doncaster could strike for 48 hours from 18 October. Drivers’...

Street cleaners in the richest borough in London will vote on whether to strike, with action likely to take place on 29 October if the strike vote wins a majority. The workers, who are employed by contractor SITA in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, are paid £7.85 an hour — less than the £8.30 that even Boris Johnson admits is the minimum amount necessary to live a decent life in the capital. Their pay is also significantly lower than other workers working for contractors in London Boroughs; street sweepers in the City of London earn £8.30 an hour. According to GMB, the union which...

Women’s refuge workers in London are fighting a £6,000 pay cut. In the refuges where I work as a health visitor most of the women workers are themselves survivors of abuse, and have worked for years in the refuge setting, with extensive training and experience. Recently, the refuge service was put out to tender by the local council and the contract awarded to Hestia, a housing charity founded in 1970, whose stated aim was to provide a service for London’s vulnerable homeless population. In this case, at the first meeting with the refuge staff after transfer (seven women working across five...

French ferry workers employed by Brittany Ferries, which serves several ports in the UK, launched a prolonged strike against pay cuts and increases in working hours. The workers, who are members of the CGT and CFDT unions (both based in France), walked out on Friday 21 September after bosses refused to back down on plans to recoup some of the company’s £56 million deficit by increasing working hours by up to 25%. The strike has already caused considerable financial disruption to the company, forcing them to reimburse passengers whose journeys were disrupted. Rail workers in pay strike Members...

Plumbers and heating and ventilation engineers in the Unite union have overwhelmingly rejected a below-inflation pay offer, with their union threatening to move to an industrial action ballot unless the offer is improved. The Building and Engineering Services Association (BESA) is offering a two-year deal with a freeze in the first year and a 1.5 percent increase in the second year, despite what Unite calls their “healthy profit margins and order books”. Workers rejected the deal by a margin of nine to one. BESA employers are the same contractors behind last year’s attempt to comprehensively...

Workers involved in a long-running battle with contractor Carillion at Swindon’s Great Western Hospital (operated under a Private Finance Initiative) took the fight to Portsmouth’s Queen Alexandra Hospital (QAH) on Tuesday 18 September. Carillion managers at QAH have been accused of the same bullying and harassment practises against which the Swindon workers have taken 21 days of strike action. One Carillion manager from Swindon also works one day a week at QAH. GMB Regional Secretary Paul Moloney said: “We are not anywhere near resolving this dispute at Swindon. The company has yet to meet...

Cleaning workers on East Coast and London Midland rail routes became the latest cleaners to launch strikes for higher pay when they walked out on Monday 10 September. The cleaners work for contractor ISS, and are paid marginally above the minimum wage (between 42p and £1.42 more). Cleaners at depots in Northampton, Bletchley, and King’s Heath (which are all operated by London Midland) have already struck for 24 hours. The workers have not received a pay increase for three years, and are demanding a living wage. Bob Crow, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime, and Transport workers union (RMT...

The outcome of this year’s Labour Party conference, opening in Manchester on 30 September, will depend on how seriously the Unite union, Labour’s largest affiliate, takes its own policy. The Unite union adopted a new document at its Policy Conference on 25-28 June 2012, for a more aggressive political strategy in the Labour Party On the agenda in Manchester is a rule change proposed by Bridgend CLP to allow Labour conference to amend National Policy Forum documents. Though the change sounds technical and fiddly, it could change conference dramatically. What was done at Labour conference before...

Workers at Sheffield’s five household recycling centres have recommenced industrial action after deeming management’s latest offer unacceptable. The action, which aims to reverse cuts to the services’ budget and opening hours (leading to working hour and therefore pay cuts for workers), began earlier this year. 28 days of strikes by GMB members forced Sheffield Council and Veolia/SOVA (the private contractors which operate the centre) into negotiations over the cuts. Affected staff at the sites have found themselves economically devastated by reductions in hours; since many of them are barely...

20,000 London bus workers win a clear-cut victory in the first London-wide bus strike since 1982. Unite’s demand was for a £500 bonus payment to compensate for the increased workload caused by the Olympics and they finally won £577. What is the response published in Solidarity ? Not to celebrate the victory — oh no! That would be too simple and waste the opportunity to attack the London leadership of Unite. So the unnamed author of the piece that Solidarity published belittles the result as “a very minor and limited victory” and even dismisses the campaign for the bonus as a “diversion.” (...