Postal workers at a Royal Mail delivery office in Wigan, Greater Manchester, staged an unofficial strike on Monday in defence of a sacked colleague.
Some 180 members of the CWU union walked out after the worker was dismissed on Saturday.
“We think he was treated unfairly,” one Wigan postal worker told Socialist Worker.
“He’s been here for 36 years.” The walkout is the latest unofficial strike to hit Royal Mail workplaces—many of them over bullying and harassment.
Royal Mail workers often face increasing pressure from managers to take on increasing workloads.
Workers in Wigan also staged an unofficial strike in November last year after one of them was disciplined for refusing to work overtime.
The families of five migrant workers who were crushed to death are appealing for money to begin proceedings against the company.
A 15-foot high wall of concrete blocks and used metal fell on top of them at recycling company Hawkeswood Metal in Birmingham on 7 July 2016.
They were Ousmane Kaba Diaby, Saibo Sumbundu Sillah, Bangally Tunkara Dukuray, Almamo Kinteh Jammeh and Mahamadou Jagana Jagana.
There have been a number of serious incidents in recent years at Hawkeswood Metal.
The families of the people killed are appealing for £2,500.
workers with precarious employment contracts across Britain are preparing to rise up on the evening before Halloween, 30 October.
“They have killed our rights, but together, we are going to bring them back from the dead,” said one event organiser.
The demonstration coincides with the next step in the Independent Workers of Great Britain union’s legal case against taxi firm Uber.
Speakers include Guardian columnist Owen Jones and CWU union general secretary Dave Ward.
Go to Facebook event Rise of the Precarious Workers—National Demo
Campaign groups Generation Rent and End Unfair Evictions have organised a meeting next month to discuss issues facing private renters.
End Unfair Evictions is campaigning to scrap no fault evictions.
These allow landlords to kick out tenants with just two months’ notice, and give no reason.
Unite union members at Cammell Laird shipyard could strike against bosses’ plans to slash almost 300 jobs.
Bosses at the shipyard in Birkenhead, near Liverpool, announced plans to slash 291 jobs last week. This is around 40 percent of the workforce,
Workers unanimously backed resistance at a mass meeting. The GMB union could now move towards a ballot for industrial action.
Unite union members at Street Cranes in Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, returned to the picket line again on Monday.
It was the crane manufacturing workers’ second walkout in a series of planned strikes over bosses’ refusal to negotiate over wages and terms and conditions.
Support for the strike is rock solid among the shop floor workers at the factory.
Unite Community branches from High Peak and Chesterfield visited the picket line.
Workers were set to strike again next Monday.
Jeannie Robinson
NEU union members at the John Roan school struck on Thursday of last week.
Workers are fighting a plan to turn the school in Greenwich, south east London, into a privately-run academy.
NEU and GMB union members staged several strikes against the plan last term.
The John Roan NEU group wrote a letter to parents.
“The academisation of schools is failing thousands of children,” it said.
“It’s happening through exclusions, the off-rolling of students especially SEND students, who may not ‘make the grade’ and an ‘exam factory’ approach.
“Staff turnover is much higher in many
Multi-Academy Trusts as compared to local authority schools.” The school is subject to a forced academy order. But the union pointed to figures that showed 16 examples of schools where such orders had been revoked.
Strikers are optimistic that they can keep John Roan as an inclusive, community school.
NEU members plan a further strike on 7 November.
Cops fined Karen Reissman for a protest during lockdown
But rejects clear anti-Nato position
Tens of thousands could walk out
