Up to 16,000 engineers working for ADT, Britain's largest fire and security company, have this week voted to suspend their strike action. The workers have been taking a series of four-day strikes over a pay claim. The strikes have disrupted ADT's out of hours service, and managers have been forced to staff local offices.
Workers in the GMB union at Glasgow airport are to be balloted over strike action in protest over the sacking of a union representative. GMB Scottish secretary Robert Parker said, "GMB Scotland believes that British Airways (BA) set up our member. "BA needs to be aware that we will take whatever action to reinstate the sacked union rep."
"Death Of The Comprehensive." So the Daily Mail greeted Blair's plans for education this week. Scrapping the hated 11-plus and introducing comprehensive schools in the 1960s and 1970s led to the biggest ever increase in educational achievement. The system was so successful that even Tory education secretary Margaret Thatcher went along with it.
"It is time for a second phase of New Labour, defined less by reference to the old Labour Party." That is how Tony Blair spelt out his vision for New Labour's second term in government last week. He said he would move even further from "Old Labour" policies such as redistribution of wealth. Corporate profits are soaring, and the share companies contribute in taxes is falling.
Socialist Worker supporters have been active in three protest movements recently. SWP members were part of the united mobilisation against nuclear weapons at Faslane on Monday, part of the protest at Ariel Sharon's election outside the Israeli embassy and part of building the Globalise Resistance tour. To keep up the resistance, organise more activity and to strengthen the fight for socialism, we want to build the SWP.
Remember Tony Blair's promise to raise health spending to the European average? He's forgotten it! A study by the London School of Economics and the respected Kings Fund shows that New Labour will need to spend an extra £38 billion a year to reach the target that Blair says he aspires to.
Blair and education secretary David Blunkett have announced plans to deal with the chronic shortage of teachers. They are to write off, over ten years, the student debt of university graduates who become maths or language teachers.
Workers in the biggest union at Vauxhall have voted for action to save the Luton car plant from closure. The vote, by workers at Luton and the Ellesmere Port plant on Merseyside, saw members of the TGWU union, the vast bulk of shopfloor workers, back strikes by a 58 percent majority.
Over 2,000 people packed into the continuing Globalise Resistance tour around the country last week. The previous weekend 1,800 people had attended the tour's Glasgow and London legs. "The tour stormed through Birmingham with a lively conference bringing together activists- black and white, old and young, red and green," says Chris Crean from West Midlands Friends of the Earth, one of the 250 people who attended the Birmingham conference.
Pickets were out in force last Friday in Ansty near Coventry as workers struck for a day at plans by the Rolls-Royce aerospace company to axe 1,300 jobs. "A one-day strike won't force the company to back down, but it's our first strike for 20 years," says one worker. "Most of us have never experienced a strike before, let alone a picket line. We are ready to step up the action."
RAGE led the local TV news in Birmingham last week! RAGE is the vibrant local campaign against the Labour council's criminal plan to privatise 30 elderly care homes across Britain's second biggest city. Over 50 people took over the pelican crossing outside the Normanhust home last week. The mood was fantastic. People were chanting "People not profit. Save our homes," and held banners saying, "Labour has betrayed the elderly."
