DETERMINED strike action by more than 3,000 train guards has won significant concessions from hard-nosed train operating companies over safety. The success by the RMT union is a blow not only against 12 profit-hungry train companies (and behind them three transport conglomerates), but also against the government.
SOME 140 nursery nurses in the Unison public services union in Kirklees, Yorkshire, are set to start a five-day strike from Monday of next week. They are fighting for pay regrading. They have already taken four days of action.
AROUND 500,000 health workers have started voting on the government's Agenda for Change plans. The proposals will mean insulting annual pay packets of £10,000, performance-related pay and flexible working.
TEACHERS AT one of the government's flagship schools in north London are balloting for strike action over intolerable conditions. The Greig City Academy in Hornsey opened in September 2002. Tony Brockman, an executive committee member of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), says, "City academies were one of the quick fix wheezes dreamt up by the government's spin doctors. They were given extra cash by the government and in return were allowed to opt out of the state sector, becoming 'independent' schools."
AROUND 4,000 workers at the Remploy factories, which mainly employ disabled people, have voted to reject a pay offer by 81 percent. The workers, based across 82 factories, defied their unions' recommendation to accept the pay deal. Most of the workers are in the GMB and TGWU unions. The two-year deal was "self funding", which meant workers had to give up their travel expenses to fund the pay package.
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MEMBERS OF the shop workers' Usdaw union showed anger towards the union's Blairite leadership at its annual conference in Blackpool last week. The leadership faced criticism after trying to put through a motion which would effectively give them control of the union without recourse to the membership. The motion was convincingly defeated.
WHO WRITES the wrongs of journalists? They suffer bad pay and long hours, and it takes around five years of studying to become fully qualified. Now journalists are beginning to take action, utilising the watered-down "Fairness at Work" union legislation, reluctantly brought in by New Labour in 2000.
Some 2,000 Unison union members at pre-1992 universities in London were due to strike on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. It is part of the ongoing campaign to win an increase in London weighting, the allowance for the extra costs of living and working in the capital, to £4,000. After three one-day strikes across all the London colleges employers in the post-1992 universities made an offer. The 6.5 percent increase was narrowly accepted.
IN ONE of the most extraordinary trade union ballots in history, London postal workers have voted by 19,803 to 91 votes for action over pay. This could lead to unofficial action that would stop the post across London. The ballot was a 99.5 percent vote to take on Post Office bosses. It was called unofficially because national CWU union leaders refused to sanction it.
