FIREFIGHTERS in Tower Hamlets, east London, have voted 122 to 21 on a 55 percent turnout for action to stop them being used as a replacement ambulance service. They voted to boycott training on the use of defibrillator machines, which management want to impose not to help the public, but to get firefighters doing paramedics' jobs. Local GP and Respect supporter Kambiz Boomla explained to an 80-strong FBU meeting last week how international studies have shown no benefit for heart attack victims from such \"co-responder\" schemes.
AVIANCE, THE airport handling company, suspended the TGWU union convenor and sacked four workers at Gatwick airport in March in response to unofficial action. The TGWU union got an agreement at an employment appeal tribunal to lift the suspension on the convenor and reinstate the sacked workers.
OVER 30 representatives of trade unions, political parties and campaign groups met on Thursday of last week in Swansea to plan the local launch of Unite Against Fascism.
SOME 750 RMT members on South Central trains started a ballot on Tuesday of this week for action over casualisation. The workers are angry at the company's attempt to introduce agency staff at £2,000 a year less than full time revenue protection officers.
HEALTH WORKERS in the Unison union assembled in Glasgow on Monday for the union's health sector conference. It discussed issues that could lead to a major confrontation with the government in the autumn.
OVER 1,000 workers in Scotland and Lancashire walked out unofficially last week in response to management's suspension of PCS civil servants' union activists. Management also suspended four PCS members in Leeds on Monday of this week. Some 500 workers in two offices, Hume House and Park place, walked out. Eight offices in East London walked out unofficially on Tuesday of this week after managment suspended Nigel Prendergast, a union activist in Hackney. These activists refused to carry out staff appraisals under the Performance Development Scheme.
AROUND 2,000 protesters marched through Glasgow last Saturday calling for an end to the council tax. The demonstration marked the launch of a national \"Axe the Tax\" campaign and was led by Scottish Socialist Party MSP Tommy Sheridan. He told the rally at the Barrowland Ballroom, \"The council tax has a death warrant issued. Let's establish 'Axe the Tax' committees in every part of the country in trade unions, communities and pensioner groups to establish a campaign that puts the interests of ordinary workers and pensioners before the wealthy and big business. Let's stop taxing the pensioners and start taxing the rich.\"
THOUSANDS of nursery nurses across 17 councils in Scotland were still on all-out strike as Socialist Worker went to press. They were battling on even though officials of their union, Unison, had abandoned the key plank of their fight.
GEORGE BUSH has chosen a replacement for Paul Bremer as governor-in-chief in Iraq. It is John Negroponte, the mastermind behind the death squads of Central America. Negroponte could give lessons to the most brutal dictatorships in the world on how to organise death squads, assassinate opponents and terrorise popular movements into submission.
THE FRENCH Nazi leader Le Pen was due to come to Birmingham on Sunday. The leader of the National Front organisation announced on his website this week that he was planning an \"official visit\" in England on Sunday. He was likely to be speaking at an £80 a head fundraising dinner for the British National Party (BNP) in the West Midlands.
THE TUC has promised to organise one of its biggest demonstrations for years on Saturday 19 June. The unions are responding to a series of savage attacks on pension rights. The government plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 65 for teachers and civil servants, making them work longer for their pensions.
