Gordon Brown’s 2 percent pay limit for the public sector has outraged millions of workers.
The PCS civil service workers’ union has called a national strike of over 250,000 members in its fight against 104,000 job cuts, low pay and privatisation.
Pressure on the Unison union to end its victimisation of the leading health activist Yunus Bakhsh continues to grow.
A construction worker was killed on Thursday of last week in Liverpool’s third fatal crane accident in the last three months.
The annual conference of the National Union of Students (NUS), which took place last week, was undoubtedly a difficult one for the left.
The Transport and General Workers Union has suspended its planned 24-hour strike action on Thursday by over 2,600 pork and poultry workers at Grampian Foods. It has agreed to attend Acas, the Arbitration Conciliation and Advisory Service.
Civil service workers in the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) struck a blow against Gordon Brown’s public sector pay cuts on Friday of last week.
The postal strike at Burslem, Stoke, is reaching a crucial point. On Monday over 100 workers at the delivery office finished a three-day strike. They have now struck for 15 days over a sacking of a 62-year-old worker for alleged aggressive behaviour towards a manager.
Hundreds of postal workers and their supporters marched through Coventry last Saturday to save the mail centre. Royal Mail wants to close the Bishop Street operation and move the mail centre to Northampton.
Every local authority was supposed to implement the single status pay deal by 1 April, but only about a third of councils have reached agreements.
The Government and the School Teachers’ Review Body fixed teachers’ salary increases for September 2006 and September 2007 at 2.5 percent – below inflation.
