Civil Servants working in job centres and benefits agencies are set to hold their next strike on 6 and 7 March. The workers, members of the PCS union, have held two-day strikes on two occasions since mid-December.
Trade Unionists in Cardiff last week lined up to attack Tony Blair for branding them as "wreckers". They were in the same venue that Blair had used to make that speech. This time it was filled with 500 women members of the Unison public sector union.
Over 200 striking security workers in the TGWU union at Manchester airport joined picket lines in a series of one-hour stoppages last week. The picket lines were very lively and confident. The strikers stopped traffic around the airport and received a very supportive response from the public and other airport workers.
Three pillar boxes on each street corner (and each one owned by a different company under crazy plan to sell off the Post Office) New Labour is poised to drive through Post Office privatisation in just seven weeks time. The government's regulator announced last week that it wants to see the Post Office (Consignia) totally sold off. This is the privatisation from hell, the maddest of the mad. It offers the crazy prospect of competing pillar boxes on street corners. Even Margaret Thatcher shied away from it.
Over 650 guards and conductors on Arriva Northern struck for 48 hours on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. Their action brought trains across the north of England to a halt and led to big, angry picket lines.
Tony Blair is relying on disgraced accountants Arthur Andersen and similar companies to push through privatisation schemes. Andersen did auditing and consultancy work for Enron, the bankrupt energy giant. It shredded documents showing how Enron hid its losses to appear to be making a profit.
Lord Birt, Tony Blair's new special transport adviser, is tied up in a £100 million business deal with Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Trains. Birt operates from luxury offices where a life-sized cardboard cutout of Branson greets visitors. At the same time he has a direct line to Tony Blair. Birt is chairman of the Lynx New Media company.
The newspapers have been full of Tony Blair's forthcoming visit to Africa. A new report from the Campaign Against the Arms Trade has found that the value of British arms sales to Africa is set to quadruple over the next year. African nations spent £52 million on arms deals with British firms in 1999.
