Issues Follow Follow

THE RELATIONSHIP between Unison and the Labour Party will be a key theme at the conference of the union's United Left in London on Saturday 6 December. The United Left is the grouping which pulls together a broad spectrum of socialists and left wingers within Unison. A measure of the feelings over government policy within Unison came at a meeting of the union's official national Health Service Group Executive last week.

STRIKERS FROM a number of Unison union branches packed out a rally organised in Newham, east London, last week. It was to mark the second week of the latest phase of selective action to win improved London weighting for council workers. The Newham branch has come under attack from the New Labour council.

HUNDREDS OF workers at Lloyds TSB are balloting for industrial action in its central Newcastle call centre in a bid to stop the company shifting its 960 jobs to India. The ballot is scheduled to run from Monday of next week for seven days. It is part of the Unifi union's Stop the Closure campaign. It will also see a petition launched at six other sites.

THE TREASURY has given the clearest signal yet that it wants to introduce regional pay bargaining as a way of depressing workers' earnings. A "guidance note" issued this week from Gordon Brown's department says the policy could produce a few cases of higher pay in a small number of areas in London and the south east to overcome recruitment and retention difficulties. But it could also produce pay reductions "where there is currently too high a premium relative to the rest of the labour market".

VOTING PAPERS for the elections to the new national executive council for the Amicus union are now out. Amicus was created by the merger of the AEEU and MSF unions. The left is standing on a slate for the Amicus Unity Gazette. Election campaigning is well under way. The ballot closes on Friday of next week.

A DETERMINED campaign and the threat of industrial action has defeated an attempted partial privatisation of services at Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive. Unison branch chair Tony Wilson told Socialist Worker that the important campaign had lasted two and a half years.

HUNDREDS OF workers at Sunderland University held a one-day strike last week against compulsory redundancies. Nine lecturers' jobs are under threat. "Lecturers have worked against the odds to keep standards high and deliver good results for students," said one Natfhe union member. "But university management seems to regard cost-cutting as more important that the quality of education provision."

THE FERRY company P&O announced last week that it wants to sack more than 600 workers on its Dover to Calais route. The news has sent waves of shock and anger through the workforce. Many only knew of the plan through reports in the media.

SOLIDARITY WITH workers in Colombia will be the focus of a series of meetings and conferences across Britain. On Saturday the TUC hosts a conference on "Conflict in Colombia: Britain's secret war", jointly sponsored with the Justice for Colombia organisation and the War on Want charity.

LIFELONG socialist Jimmy Kerr sadly passed away on Wednesday of last week. Jimmy was an early member of the International Socialists, the forerunner of the Socialist Workers Party.

TUBE WORKERS across all grades are to begin taking industrial action in a battle to restore safety standards following the imposition of the PPP privatisation scheme. The RMT union last week announced that 81 percent of its members had voted for industrial action and 55 percent for strikes over safety.

AN UNOFFICIAL walkout by over 200 postal workers in Oldham, Greater Manchester, won a victory last week. Members of the CWU union walked out at 7am on Tuesday of last week in a dispute over the handling of a backlog of mail that built up during other recent industrial action.