After a string of strikes and street protests, Staffordshire county council leaders were last week forced to meet union reps from schools in Tamworth threatened with academy status.
After months of small victories and some setbacks, sometimes a single day sees a campaign jump to a new level. A strike by NUT union members at Norlington School in Leyton, east London, on Thursday of last week was such a day.
The UCU union branch at Nelson and Colne College has unanimously passed a resolution criticising management’s announcement of one, and possibly more, compulsory redundancies.
Lecturers at Manchester College struck on Wednesday of last week in protest at 13 planned job cuts.
At the end of each year there is the usual trawl for redundancies in further education.
Unions have put back a planned strike at London Metropolitan University.
Over 100 pickets shut down Tower Hamlets College in east London last week, setting an example of how to fight the drastic cuts that are hitting education.
This year I stood as an independent left candidate in the local elections in Cambridge. I polled a close third with nearly 18 percent–less than 3 percent behind Labour.
Michael Rosen’s idea of creating an umbrella organisation or federation of the left is a great idea. However, haven’t we been here before?
Business secretary Lord Mandelson’s plans to privatise Royal Mail are in tatters. But bosses at the company are determined to wreak revenge against those they believe are responsible for the calamity that has befallen them – postal workers and their CWU union.
When it came to preparing for this week’s three-day strike by postal workers in London, aggressive Royal Mail managers "did our job for us," says Micky Rowell, secretary of the CWU’s east London branch.
After his humiliation over privatisation, Lord Mandelson now wants to unleash a further attack on postal workers – he wants to slash their pensions.
