Strike Follow

Workers at the Fremantle residential and daycare company in Barnet, north London, took their campaign to the bosses’ headquarters during a strike on Thursday of last week.

In a clear case of "If you can’t beat ‘em, close ‘em", Royal Mail announced the proposed closure of Oxford mail centre in 2009 – with the loss of up to 430 jobs – just hours after the CWU union announced further national strike action.

The US’s biggest industrial strike for seven years hit General Motors (GM) on Monday of this week when tens of thousands of UAW union members walked out. The workers are striking over healthcare benefits and job security. The action brought the world’s second biggest car-maker to a virtual standstill.

Around 200 residential and daycare workers employed by Fremantle in Barnet, north London, were set to strike on Thursday of this week.

A strike by more than 10,000 tea pickers in Kenya in East Africa has won an 8 percent pay increase.

The TUC last week passed an NUT-backed motion attacking the government’s public sector pay policies and calling for public sector unions to coordinate strike action. Thousands of teachers have signed petitions calling on the union to step up its pay campaign.

It now looks increasingly likely that the Unison union will be balloting its members in local government for strike action over pay. The ballot is set to start on 3 October.

Adult daycare staff in Glasgow are balloting to take strike action as the centres they work in face closure.

The press coverage of the recent tube strike in London took me back to a different time, a time when union leaders seemed to rank a close third – behind the Moors murderers and cop-killer Harry Roberts – as public enemy number one.

Around 150 nurses from the Morriston hospital in Swansea packed an angry union meeting last week, threatening to strike unless a swathe of job losses are reversed. Feelings are running so high that many felt that they should walk out immediately.

Old headlines have suddenly reappeared over the last few weeks. They refer to the "craziness" of workers going on strike. Sometimes, as with the prison officers, there are suggestions that the workers may have a case, but they are ruining it by "heedless action".