"THIS IS a historic day for us," said Unison union steward Joe Kaperas he stood on a picket line outside Scunthorpe General Hospital on Friday of last week. Around 400 porters, domestics and caterers at Scunthorpe, Goole and Grimsby hospitals were on the first of a series of one-day strikes. They are also refusing to work overtime.
CHANCELLOR Gordon Brown announced in his budget that he wants to move towards regional pay deals for public sector workers - a move which could smash up national pay agreements. He said, "In future, remits for pay review bodies and for public sector workers will include a stronger local and regional dimension."
SOME 140 nursery nurses in the Unison union in Kirklees, West Yorkshire, struck on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of last week. The action is in support of a regrading claim. The strikers got support from parents, colleagues and members of the public.
THOUSANDS OF workers at the Longbridge MG Rover car plant in Birmingham rejected a measly 2.2 percent pay offer and voted overwhelmingly for industrial action this week. TGWU union members voted three to one for industrial action and three to two for strike action.
THE NEW Labour government hopes to stick the boot into firefighters and control room staff following the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) conference on Tuesday of this week. Union leaders drove a terrible, demoralising retreat through the conference. The offensive and vibrant pay campaign of last year has become a scramble to stave off capitulation to the employers and the government.
ANTI-NAZI campaigners in Britain have issued an urgent call - take to the streets against the Nazi British National Party (BNP). The BNP is standing a record number of candidates across 219 wards in the 1 May elections. They hope to feed off people's bitterness with the mainstream parties. The BNP's politics of racism and scapegoating have been fuelled by press and politicians' hysteria against asylum seekers.
THE DEAD and dying overwhelmed hospitals in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities as US forces bombed and blasted their way into civilian areas. The pictures don't make it to the BBC and Western news channels. The descriptions are buried in acres of triumphalist media coverage of US advances. But the cluster bombs, artillery barrages and tank attacks have shredded the lives of thousands of Iraqi people.
BUSH AND Blair say their war will bring liberation to the Iraqi people. The death and destruction they have brought to Iraq shows what a hollow claim this is. But people who once questioned the war, like New Labour's Mo Mowlam, say they now support it, arguing the situation in Iraq can't get any worse. Both of these claims are wrong. And the US plans for a post war Iraq show precisely why.
SOME 120 students at City and Islington College, north London, turned up to the Camden Road site to hear a dance, rap and song performance for peace last week. The programme ranged from rap to a recital of Harold Pinter's "New World Order" and a performance of a song by Bertolt Brecht.
