POSTAL WORKERS are on course to begin a national strike ballot over a proposed joint venture with Balfour Beatty. The workers directly affected are in the Romec maintenance and cleaning section. But the plan has implications for all 180,000 postal staff. A strike ballot was supposed to begin at the start of this month, but was halted for further talks.
TEXTILE WORKERS in the Scottish Borders town of Innerleithen are fighting to beat a pay freeze. The workers have already staged a one-day strike, and plan further action. Workers' anger at being refused a pay rise was boosted when they discovered their boss at the Ballantyne Cashmere plant was grabbing an £87,000 bonus.
JOHN TYNDALL, the Nazi British National Party ex-FŸhrer, wants to come to Burnley to spread his lies. He has been invited by the local BNP, which conned its way into securing three seats on the local council in the May elections. The BNP Nazis in Burnley pretend that they aren't racist.
ARRIVA RAIL workers in the north of England marched to join the annual Miners' Gala in Durham last Saturday as they staged their fifteenth one-day strike.
ANGRY HEALTH workers demonstrated outside the Royal London Hospital in east London on Friday last week. They were demanding the reinstatement of their Unison union branch secretary, Phil Billows.
A MILLION striking council workers spearheaded the revolt against low pay this week. No wonder they are fighting. Over 275,000 council workers in England and Wales get less than £5 an hour and two thirds are on £13,000 a year or less before tax.
A "SPENDING spree" which will transform public services. That's how most of the media cheered chancellor Gordon Brown's spending review this week. They hailed education as the big winner, along with the NHS where extra money had been announced in the budget earlier this year. Housing and transport, they told us, will get extra too.
"THIS COULD lead to the biggest pensions rip-off in history." That was the reaction last week of GMB union leader John Edmonds to the report on pensions prepared for the government by Alan Pickering. It says workers will face either a cut in pension income or benefits or both unless they pour even more of their wages into company schemes. Pickering says this move is justified because such benefits are "bells and whistles".
"I AM 51 and a GMB union shop steward in Manchester. I work on the Benchill estate in Wythenshawe as a family service worker. My job involves working with and helping people, teaching basic parenting skills, helping their children get access to services, and so on. I'm based in a childcare centre with places for 50 children.
THOUSANDS OF anti-capitalists, socialists and trade unionists from Britain and across the world gathered in central London last week for Marxism 2002. Marxism is an annual event hosted by the Socialist Workers Party. It includes a wide variety of meetings and speakers discussing the alternative to capitalism and the kind of movement we need.
Success school closure threat THE Labour-controlled education authority in Hackney, east London, has decided to shut Kingsland Secondary School in what can only be described as a spiteful move. The authority itself is due to be wound up at the end of this month. Closing Kingsland is its parting gift. Parents received a letter at the end of last week informing them of the closure in July of next year. It suggested they remove their children from this September. That leaves parents just a days to find alternatives.
