DELEGATES gathered in Blackpool for the last AEEU engineers' and electricians' union conference last week. The union is to officially merge with the MSF union to form Britain's second biggest union, Amicus.
DELEGATES gathered in Blackpool for the last AEEU engineers' and electricians' union conference last week. The union is to officially merge with the MSF union to form Britain's second biggest union, Amicus.
TONY WOODLEY, the newly elected general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), laid into New Labour at the union's conference in Brighton this week. He accused the government of surrendering to big business. He made a devastating criticism of Alan Johnson, former leader of the CWU union, who is now a New Labour minister.
THE RMT rail union took a historic step this week towards building a mass left wing challenge to New Labour. The union which moved the resolution setting up the Labour Party 103 years ago voted overwhelmingly at its conference in Glasgow to allow funding for socialist candidates standing against New Labour.
OVER 400 people attended a union mass meeting in Liverpool on Monday of this week. The workers, members of the Unison union, are employed by the Liberal Democrat run council in Liverpool.
WORKERS AT Goss printers in central Preston were due to start an overtime ban on Friday of this week against management attempts to impose a wage freeze. The workers are members of the TGWU union and Amicus union-both the AEEU and MSF sections.
PEOPLE PACKED into the council chamber in Birmingham last Sunday evening. But this was a very different type of meeting from the usual stuffy, bureaucratic gatherings of councillors. The chamber was filled with over 250 Birmingham residents - young and old, black, white and Asian.
AROUND 120 people recently packed into a local meeting called by the Residents Against Port Expansion group in Harwich. The group has taken on the giant multinational Hutchisin Whampoa, which is planning to build a massive automated container dock. This will be just a few hundred yards from a working class residential area. The meeting had trade unionists, environmentalists and Socialist Alliance members.
FREE TRADE was attacked by thousands of protesters across Britain last Saturday. Events ranged from rallies and marches to fairs. The main focus of the day was to lobby MPs to make them aware of how unfair the present trading system is to poorer countries. Many of the marchers and protesters held "scales of justice" and tugs of war with unequal sides to illustrate the unfairness of the world trade system.
SOME 175 teachers, parents and school governors launched a national campaign against SATs tests at a conference in London last Saturday. John Illingworth, a primary school head teacher from Nottinghamshire and a former president of the NUT union, summed up the confident mood of the day. He told the conference, "I have never felt as optimistic as I do now that we can get rid of these national damaging tests imposed on children. "East Midlands TV did a phone poll and found 95 percent of respondents against the SATs. We know the government will hit back hard to maintain SATs. But we should be confident that this is a campaign we can win."
THE RMT rail union delegates at their conference on Monday signalled an uncompromising struggle against the British National Party (BNP) and other Nazis.
Hackney AROUND 200 people came to hear George Galloway speak against the occupation of Iraq in Hackney, east London, on Saturday of last week. The meeting was part of the Turkish and Kurdish Day Mer Festival for Peace. Mustafa Yalciner, from the Turkish Labour Party, joined Galloway on the platform.
SOME 59 NUT union members at Crofton School in Lewisham, south London, took strike action on Thursday of last week. They are fighting against the redundancies of three teachers on annual contracts at the school.
