A RALLY has been called in defence of Phil Billows. He is the Unison union branch secretary at Barts and the Royal London Hospital Trust in east London. Trust bosses suspended Phil from his job over one month ago. Phil has been at the forefront of the fight against the PFI scheme at the hospital trust.
WESTMINSTER council workers are continuing their fight against plans by their Tory council to privatise up to 80 percent of council services. National union officials of their Unison union were due to meet this week to discuss possible escalation of the action. This is a crucial strike which has bosses worried.
AROUND 100 GMB union members are taking strike action at Lupton & Place's two die-casting factories in Burnley. They have already struck for three days and planned a further three-day strike this week. The workers have not had a pay rise for years.
A NATIONAL strike ballot involving all 180,000 postal staff in Britain begins next Tuesday. It has been called by the CWU union in opposition to management plans to launch a joint venture with one of Britain's nastiest multinationals. Bosses want to transfer 4,000 CWU members in the Romec cleaning and maintenance section to a new company 49 percent owned by construction group Balfour Beatty.
AROUND 6,000 workers in Reality call centres, part of the Great Universal Stores (GUS) empire, will be balloted from next Wednesday for strike action over a threat to their jobs. The workers fear their jobs will go as Reality, a home shopping company, is transferring work to call centres in India.
THE COLLEGE lecturers' Natfhe union is pushing the government to fund a 5.5 percent pay rise. That is the average pay rise civil servants have won at the Department for Education and Skills.
DRIVERS ON First North Western trains struck solidly on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, forcing management to seek talks over pay. The action brought services to a standstill across the north west of England. It also boosted drivers on Arriva Trains Merseyside, who have voted overwhelmingly to strike over pay.
ABOUT 1,000 firefighters and their families joined a march in Swansea on Saturday as part of the accelerating national pay campaign. Two days later 400 marched on the Isle of Wight. It was the perfect answer to the chief officer there, who had boasted to local Fire Brigades Union (FBU) officials that they would "never get anyone to turn out for a march on the Isle of Wight".
ANTI-NAZIS scored a victory last weekend in the battle against the British National Party (BNP) and its Red, White and Blue "festival" outside Burnley in Lancashire. The Nazis hoped the police's five-kilometre exclusion zone around the event would prevent them from facing any opposition. But anti-Nazis broke the police ban and gathered opposite the entrance to the Nazis' "festival".
A nurse, a mechanic, a four year old and a six year old. They fled to Britain from the horror of Afghanistan. Blunkett tells them to get out.
NEW LABOUR is preparing a scab force to try to break strikes planned in the public sector in the next two months. It has drawn up secret plans against firefighters and postal workers who are fighting for decent pay and against privatisation. Ministers have agreed that the private firm Deya, which delivers Yellow Pages, could handle mail like utility bills during a post strike.
HUGE NUMBERS of council workers across England and Wales are up in arms over the pay deal agreed by their negotiators last week. It is now out for consultation among council worker members of the Unison, GMB and TGWU unions. Consultation will last six weeks.
