AROUND 300 medical secretaries across the north of Glasgow planned to strike for three days this week. The action follows a stunning 91.3 percent vote for strikes in a ballot. The workers' UNISON union branch has been pursuing a regrading claim for all medical secretaries for 14 months.
GUARDS AT train operator c2c struck on Wednesday of last week and Monday and Tuesday this week. They are fighting plans to strip them of safety responsibilities. Services between London and Essex were heavily disrupted, with only one in five trains running.
OVER 100 people marched to the Devonport Trident dockyard in Plymouth last Saturday and held a rally outside the main gates.
SOME 300 bus workers in Hampshire employed by multinational transport firm First Group have held two days of strike action in a dispute over pay. Drivers and engineers, members of the TGWU union, went on strike last Friday and Monday after being offered an 18 pence an hour rise.
STRIKING engineering workers hope to win their employment tribunal claims against the William Cook firm in Sheffield. The 60 strikers have stood up to lockouts, closures and redundancies in the long running dispute over union-busting.
OVER 100 people, including former MP Tony Benn, marched in London on Sunday in protest at sanctions on Iraq. The march ended at Downing Street, where a group of protesters camped down for a 72-hour vigil and fast. The protest was organised by campaigning groups Voices in the Wilderness UK, Act Together and Women in Black.
MORE THAN 500 people joined a protest to save the Rankin Maternity Unit in Greenock near Glasgow last Saturday. The new head of the unitary health board, John Mullins, had stated two days earlier that the review of maternity services in Inverclyde was to be "shelved".
THE CIVIL servants' PCS union is balloting over 300 members for all-out strike action in the Brent and Streatham Jobcentre Plus Pathfinder pilots. The mood is excellent, with over 100 members at an evening rally last week headed by general secretary elect Mark Serwotka and Brian Butterworth from Brent UNISON.
EDUCATION campaigners will march in Leicester this Saturday against the scandal of rotten facilities for children. More than 90 children at Heatherbrook Primary School in Leicester are being taught in three mobile classrooms which health and safety officers have deemed potentially hazardous.
"THE GOVERNMENT is determinedly pushing the privatisation of 328,000 homes. It has assembled a taskforce to help overcome tenants' opposition. "Arms Length Companies" are being reworked as an "alternative" which in reality will neatly package our homes ready for a second wave of privatisation. The housing association lobby increasingly echoes the demands of the big lenders and bankers. "Businesslike'' housing associations are failing to house the vulnerable and homeless. Paid board members will displace tenants, and encourage mergers and rationalisation. Housing association chief executives' salaries and payoffs soar into six figures. By introducing "market forces" into counci
CONSTRUCTION workers at several sites across Britain have seized the opportunity to win better pay through industrial action. Electricians, pipe fitters and welders on the South Tees Private Finance Initiative (PFI) hospital in Middlesbrough are the latest to take action. They held a 48-hour sit-in at the end of last month after they found out one of their bosses was secretly photographing the 150 workers during lunch and tea breaks.
