WORKERS ON the Channel Tunnel Rail Link threatened to walk off the job last week. Their wages have been cut in half. The 70 workers are building the tunnel from Stratford in east London to King's Cross.
AROUND 1,200 workers downed tools at BAe Systems after a workmate was sacked. The walkout involved shopfloor workers on the Eurofighter project at the Samlesbury plant near Preston. They held a mass meeting to demand the colleague's reinstatement and then walked out on Monday of last week.
THE SCOTTISH National Party tacked rightwards at its conference in Inverness last week. The message from party leader John Swinney was that the SNP has evolved from a party of protest to one capable of taking power. With just seven months to go before the Scottish Parliament elections, Swinney wants to "do a Tony Blair" on the SNP.
CONFUSION AND bitterness spread through the ranks of 1,300 bus drivers in the Edinburgh region on Friday of last week. The drivers, who work for the Lothian bus company, were set to begin an all-out strike that day against a new pay deal. Their TGWU union leaders called the strike off at the last minute on Thursday evening after they received a new offer from management.
FIREFIGHTERS AND control staff across Britain are already returning a big yes vote in their strike ballot, which began last week, according to Fire Brigades Union regional reps. Documents from the Ministry of Defence have revealed that the government is to ship 3,000 of the troops it had trained to scab on any strike to the Gulf. Last weekend also saw a taste of the kind of propaganda New Labour is prepared to put out in an effort to undermine high levels of public support for the FBU union's campaign.
VOTING STARTS this Saturday in the election for mayor of the east London borough of Hackney. The campaign for the Socialist Alliance candidate, journalist Paul Foot, is gathering pace. Last Sunday campaigners were out across all areas of Hackney delivering a special eight-page newspaper. Paul has recently addressed groups of campaigners fighting for disability rights and against nursery closures.
THE NATIONAL Union of Teachers (NUT) is to hold a second ballot for a one-day London-wide strike over allowances for working in the capital. Ballot papers will go out on Friday of next week to be returned by 29 October, for a strike on Thursday 14 November. The second largest teachers' union, the NASUWT, is consulting reps in London before moving to a ballot for a strike on the same day.
AS TONY Blair talks of the new "post-comprehensive" education system, the reality of what that means is hitting home in Hackney, east London. The new Learning Trust, which took over the running of education in August, is pressing ahead with plans to close Kingsland School in July 2003. Some 140 students hadn't found a place in a local secondary school this summer. Kingsland has a long history of campaigning in defence of comprehensive education in Hackney.
HUNDREDS OF college workers, members of the Unison union in 11 pre-1992 London universities, took strike action last Thursday as the first step in their campaign to win an increase in London weighting to £4,000. Faced with a freeze on London weighting for the eleventh consecutive year, workers demonstrated that they had had enough.
HAIDI GIULIANI, the mother of Carlo - who was killed by police on the Genoa protest last year - is doing a speaking tour in Britain to raise support for the European Social Forum. The tour starts next Monday, 7 October, at Venturers Building, Bristol University, at 7pm.
NOT A single London tube train ran on Wednesday of last week as RMT and Aslef union members staged the most effective strike anyone can remember. It was a humiliation for London Underground management, which had claimed there was little support for the unions' fight over pay.
