Telford There was widespread support for the strike from the 2,200 Unison union members.
Rotherham Gordon Jelley from Rotherham local government Unison said, "It’s been very good here. We’ve shut over half the primary and secondary schools in Rotherham. There are no bin lorries moving and both bin depots have been shut.
In Newcastle the city council admitted refuse collection was "severely disrupted".
Cornwall Determined strikers picketed the entrances to New County Hall and Old County Hall, two major local government workplaces in Truro, from 7.30am.
Norwich There were pickets at City Hall, Country Hall, the library and other key workplaces. Pickets were pleased that some people who had planned to go in were turned around. At City Hall a post office delivery van was also turned back.
Newport In Newport there was a lively picket line outside the civic centre. "The laundry hasn’t been delivered, the crematorium’s shut down and we’ve closed 16 schools in the area," one striker told Socialist Worker.
Up and down Britain council workers are being saddled with Gordon Brown’s public sector pay freeze – and at the same time face councils using single status to attack them.
Gordon Brown’s Labour Party is bankrupt. The millionaires who secretly lent money to Labour in the run up to the 2005 election are asking for their cash back.
Mainstream papers like to say that trade unionism only has influence in the public sector.
I’m sure that National Union of Teachers (NUT) members everywhere will be doing all they can to express solidarity with striking local government workers in Unison, Unite and other unions today and tomorrow.
The leaders of the world’s richest countries have clearly shown that they have no solutions to the global economic crisis.
‘I send my congratulations to all the public sector workers who are showing today that they are not prepared to accept pay cuts and the reductions in their living standards that go along with that.
