OVER 400 Notts, Hucknall and Linby striking miners and their families celebrated the 20th anniversary of the strike on Friday of last week. Speakers included ex Hucknall miner Les Dennis, who said that the only ballot there should have been was whether to return to work after the strike without the sacked miners from the pits being given their jobs back.
OVER 90,000 civil servants in the PCS union are set to strike again for two days on Tuesday 13 and Wednesday 14 April. The strike will close down job centres, benefits offices, pension centres and the Child Support Agency. This is the next stage of the campaign against poverty pay by workers in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
TWENTY YEARS after the Great Strike, miners at a West Yorkshire pit struck on Monday in a dispute about new working practices. About 350 workers at Kellingley colliery near Pontefract were on a 24-hour stoppage, and were due to strike again on Thursday this week.
NEARLY 200 postal workers in Peterborough walked out on strike unofficially last week in a dispute over the interpretation of the MTSF (Managing the Surplus Framework) pay and conditions agreement. Workers had just realised the implications of the deal, which was part of the package accepted in a national ballot earlier this year. It means that the seniority principle (that workers who have been in the job longest get first pick of duties) will be abandoned in some cases.
Defend Farringdon Six TUBE WORKERS on a privatised part of London Underground were set to strike on Friday this week over the sacking of six colleagues. Metronet, the private company now responsible for two thirds of the tube track, sacked the six infrastructure workers after it found empty beer cans in a cabin near Farringdon station.
NEARLY 1,000 workers at Aerostructures in Hamble, near Southampton, took part in the first of a series of one-day strikes over pay on Monday. The dispute comes after union members rejected an offer of a 3 percent pay rise from Smiths Group, the multinational parent company, and voted by an overwhelming 87 percent majority to take action.
BUS WORKERS employed by RoadCar in Lincolnshire held a fourth one-day strike on Monday in a battle over pay and union rights. Some 150 workers are members of the TGWU union. They voted by 89 votes to 39 to reject RoadCar's latest pay offer. The company, the biggest in Lincolnshire, is part of the Yorkshire Traction Group.
A MAGNIFICENT 4,500-strong demonstration through Glasgow has kept the nursery nurses' all-out strike in the headlines across Scotland. The demo also blew a hole in employers' propaganda that the strike is losing public support and crumbling. Mary McIntyre from West Dunbartonshire, a nursery nurse for 20 years, told Socialist Worker on last Friday's march:
