A PACKED town hall meeting in Camden on Tuesday of last week gave a major boost to the campaign to win direct government investment in the borough's council homes. The meeting followed the no vote by Camden tenants to the government's plan to set up an Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO) to take over the borough's council housing.
BUS DRIVERS with First Bus in the Lothians in Scotland struck for the day on Saturday. Workers at garages in Musselburgh, Dalkeith and Livingston were all out after a ballot in which more than two thirds of the 400-strong workforce voted for action.
OVER 70 people attended a conference on the "war on terror" last Sunday, hosted by Leeds Coalition Against the War.
OVER 4,500 nursery nurses across Scotland have returned a magnificent 81 percent vote for indefinite strike action to win better pay through regrading. The ballot result, on a 68 percent turnout, comes after a campaign of one-day strikes stretching back to last summer.
THE CAMPAIGN to win the reinstatement of sacked Cambridge postal worker Paul Turnbull had a massive boost last week. A court case against him has been discontinued by the prosecution due to lack of evidence. Paul had been charged with using threatening words and/or behaviour as a result of the incident which led to his sacking by Royal Mail.
SACKED firefighter Steve Godward has won his appeal against dismissal from West Midlands fire service. He was suspended during last year's pay dispute following allegations of sabotaging equipment and organising an illegal picket.
THERE ARE red, angry faces at the RMT union. There are red, humiliated faces at Metronet. Tube workers are angry at Metronet's recent sacking of six Farringdon track workers.
EVERY MEMBER of the journalists' NUJ union will receive a ballot paper this week over whether it should have a separate fund for political campaigns. It is important to say yes. The events of the past three weeks-Lord Hutton's attack on the BBC and, by implication, investigative journalism in general, along with the magnificent walkouts of BBC staff in defence of the corporation-show just how high the political atmosphere can get around the NUJ.
WORKERS AT a glass factory in County Durham have walked out in a dispute over pay and conditions.
"PEOPLE ARE raging," says civil servant Margaret Rose Garrity from Glasgow. "They want more action. We want to bring management to its knees." She summed up the spirit of the strike against poverty pay by 90,000 civil servants on Monday and Tuesday of this week.
LABOUR LEADERS have expelled a trade union because it refuses to back Blair's Thatcherite policies. RMT union conference delegates bravely stood up for their members and against New Labour's diktat last Friday.
