WORKERS WHO waived their pay rises for three years to help their troubled engineering company have voted overwhelmingly for a strike. Around 60 staff are planning to walk out for 48 hours from 15 April at ABB in Sunderland.
Bracknell POSTAL WORKERS in Bracknell, Berkshire, have voted for strikes after a postal worker was sacked. George McComb, aged 55, was dismissed last month for allegedly leaving post unattended which was then stolen. He has received huge support form the people he delivers to and his workmates.
NEARLY 3,000 RMT union members working for rail contractor Jarvis were to begin voting for strike action this week to protect their employment rights when they are transferred to Network Rail. Jarvis's maintenance contracts are due to be brought in-house and the workers re-employed by Network Rail on 1 April.
WORKERS at Anglian Water have gone "absolutely ballistic" over their bosses' plans to axe their pensions, says Unison union officer Tracy Lambert. Some 3,500 water workers are set to strike against threats to their final salary pension schemes. The first half-day strike is planned for next Tuesday.
INSPECTORS, researchers, scientists and support staff at the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) were preparing for their first strike in almost 20 years as Socialist Worker went to press. Members of the PCS and Prospect unions, 40 percent of HSE's 4,000 staff, face a pay cut as management tries to squeeze down the maximum level of all pay bands. HSE management can afford to pay an inflation-based rise, maintain previous commitments on pay progression and stay within Treasury-imposed limits-but with top managers' bonuses based on reducing budgets they have a vested interest in reducing the pay bill dramatically.
THE Communication Workers Union (CWU), with 280,000 members in the post office and telecoms, is set to debate its relationship with Labour at its conference in June. Already one of the union's biggest branches, covering Edinburgh and Lothian, has affiliated to the Scottish Socialist Party.
COUNCIL employers were clearly coming under pressure as the strike by nearly 5,000 nursery nurses in Scotland entered its fourth week on Monday. Seven local authorities, including Glasgow and Edinburgh, issued a joint statement saying they were prepared to come to local pay settlements with the nursery nurses. "Our reply to that is simple," the nursery nurses' Unison union convenor Carol Ball told Socialist Worker.
SPAIN'S ELECTORATE shocked the world by voting out its pro-war government on Sunday. There is no mainstream party you can vote for in Britain that has been unequivocally against the war. The Tories backed the war, the Lib Dems supported the war once it started.
"AN OPINION poll carried out in Iraq will make good reading for US president George Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair." So claimed the BBC on Tuesday morning. The Hutton report has obviously bent the BBC's judgement. The kindest thing you can say is that the BBC has "sexed up" the results of the poll that it commissioned.
PROTESTS BY staff and students at the London School of Economics (LSE) have forced pro-business director Howard Davies to turn down a directorship at the TotalFinaElf oil multinational.
