Privatisation Follow

A MAJOR demonstration and rally are planned in Newcastle upon Tyne in suppport of public services and against privatisation. GMB union general secretary John Edmonds and CWU union general secretary Billy Hayes are among the speakers.

AROUND 350 people attended the Socialist Alliance conference on the euro last Saturday. There were four different motions put to the conference. Most of the speakers in the debate agreed that the euro project was not about a convenient currency but was about making privatisation and attacks on workers easier.

POSTAL WORKERS across Britain will soon start a strike ballot over their bosses' plans to privatise the Cash Handling and Distribution (CHD) section. The Post Office wants to sell CHD to Securicor, a full privatisation that will affect 3,000 workers.

HUNDREDS OF thousands of workers went on strike across South Africa against the policies of the ANC government last week. Bosses and the government claimed the strike was a flop but the Cosatu union federation, which called the action, disputed their figures. Cosatu leaders said that up to 60 percent of their members had taken part in the strike.

TONY BLAIR last week declared war on workers fighting for better pay. He laid into tube workers for daring to be in the forefront of a growing revolt over pay and for standing up to a management that is hell-bent on privatisation. On the same day, he said the pay claim put forward by firefighters and emergency fire control operators was "unrealistic" and would "damage the economy".

LABOUR conference delegates inflicted a serious defeat on Tony Blair's privatisation policies on Monday. By a vote of 67 percent to 33 percent they called for an independent review of the use of private finance in public services - the government's PFI and PPP schemes.

STRIKES ARE back in the Post Office. The anger against management last week burst through the union leaders' efforts to hold it back. A quarter of the Post Office's cash handling network was closed by unofficial walkouts at the beginning of last week as CWU union members reacted angrily to a management briefing.

Will the last privatisation fiasco please turn off the lights?

The postal executive of the Communication Workers Union has narrowly voted in favour of a deal to end the dispute over the privatisation of the Romec cleaning and maintenance section of the Post Office. After a long debate the executive voted by ten votes to six to accept management's offer. The minority who wanted to throw out the deal and push hard for action against the joint venture were absolutely right.

WESTMINSTER Unison members are very angry and hurt by the decision by our union, both regionally and nationally, to instruct us to return to work. Union leaders called the return to work after a seven-week strike by nearly 300 Unison members against Westminster Tory council's plans for wholesale privatisation of services. This decision came after the council initiated legal action against the strike, using the anti trade union laws. But if the national and regional union had followed the strategy of the local branch, this legal action would not have happened.

TORY-CONTROLLED Westminster council has thrown down a major challenge to the Unison public sector workers' union. It was trying to use anti-union laws, introduced by Margaret Thatcher's Tory governments but kept by New Labour, to stop our strike action against privatisation.

"ANOTHER WORLD is possible" was the feeling in the air last Saturday as a festival against privatisation, racism and war gathered on the grassy slopes by the sea in Whitstable, Kent. Hundreds came to listen to music from local bands and performers.