VICTORY. That's the verdict of low paid health workers in Scotland after they took nine days of unofficial strike action. "We are over the moon with the outcome. This is a victory for all low paid workers in the NHS," said hospital porter and Unison union shop steward Bobby Reed.
CAMPAIGNERS in east London have stepped up their fight to defend trade union rights and to stop a massive privatisation scheme. Over 40 people met on Thursday of last week to plan the campaign for the full reinstatement of Unison branch secretary Phil Billows (pictured right) at the Barts and Royal London NHS Trust.
SOME 150 people from across the area around Halifax turned out to a public meeting of Calderdale Against the War on Wednesday of last week. They heard Alice Mahon MP, John Rees of the Stop the War Coalition, and local Labour councillor Mohammed Najib declare their opposition to war on Iraq and their support for Palestine.
PRESSURE FROM tenants, trade unionists, councillors and MPs is rattling the government in the fight for the future of council housing. Deputy prime minister John Prescott has announced a review on "the way forward for housing capital finance". Campaign organisation Defend Council Housing says:
DRIVERS ON First North Western (FNW) trains are due to strike for 48 hours next week after management broke off negotiations. FNW boss Vernon Barker had the cheek to tell negotiators from the Aslef train drivers' union that "the dispute would not be settled until Christmas" if union district secretary Colin Smith continued to take part in the talks. Aslef general secretary Mick Rix said:
THE RESULT of an appeal hearing into the sacking of Jim O'Donovan from his lecturing job at Glasgow's Central College of Commerce will be heard this week. The college has targeted Jim, who is the national president of the EIS-CLA lecturers' union, and other union activists.
WORKERS AT the Massey Ferguson tractor plant in Coventry have voted by four to one in favour of strike action to stop the closure of the plant. Members of both trade unions at the plant, the TGWU and Amicus-AEEU, have voted by four to one in favour of action.
PEIMAN BAHMANI, a 29 year old Iranian refugee, was stabbed to death on Wednesday of last week. It happened on the street where he lived in Sunderland. Peiman Bahmani arrived in Britain around two years ago after fleeing from persecution in Iran. Under New Labour's refugee dispersal scheme he was forced to live in the run-down area of Hendon in Sunderland.
AMJID RASHID, aged 22, has received an outrageously long sentence of eight and a half years after pleading not guilty to taking part in last year's confrontations with the police in Bradford. It is the longest sentence yet handed out by Bradford Crown Court to young Asian men who protected themselves from a threatened march by the National Front, and from the police.
A GHANAIAN man has died after being arrested by police and taken to Stoke Newington police station in Hackney, east London. Kwame Wirdue was a 23 year old student in Britain. Police picked him up at a Sainsbury's in Dalston on Friday of last week.
"PEOPLE ARE on the streets here because the process since the Rio Earth Summit has clearly failed. We don't need more promises to tackle poverty and environmental destruction. We need action - action to regulate polluting multinational corporations - and we need redistribution of wealth.
"WE ARE inspired by Seattle and Genoa, and we hope our protest turns into something like Seattle." That's how South Africa's Anti-Privatisation Forum summed up its aim and hope for the mass protest it planned at the Earth Summit on Saturday. The forum is an umbrella group uniting a wide range of people campaigning for social justice.
