Strike Follow

AROUND 450 workers at the Qaliub ESCO textile factory began their second strike on Sunday 13 February in protest at the privatisation of their company.

LECTURERS AT 39 further education colleges struck solidly on Thursday of last week over the failure of college bosses to honour a national pay deal.

Civil service workers in the Prospect and PCS unions at the National Museum of Science and Industry struck on Wednesday of last week. The strike is over pay and underfunding. Their action closed the Science Museum in London and disrupted the National Railway Museum in York and the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford.

TUBE WORKERS in Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina, have won a 19 percent wage increase after a strike. They struck for five days, after being offered a rise of just 7 percent by their employers, which will barely keep pace with spiralling inflation.

Scabs break rules in airport strike AIRPORT FIREFIGHTERS in Glasgow are going into their third week of indefinite all-out strike. The bosses are breaking all the rules to keep the airport open, using senior fire officers from all the other British Airport Authority airports to scab on their subordinates.

Attacks on the BBC and the union’s low pay campaign were two of the issues discussed at an NUJ Left conference held in Manchester. Union general secretary Jeremy Dear said he thought this was the best chance in a decade for the NUJ to win a ballot over strike action to fight a feared 9,000 job cuts at the BBC.

A three-day strike across Bangladesh came to an end on Monday of this week, as police and strikers fought pitched battles across the country. The strike was called by the main opposition party, the Awami League, after a grenade attack on a party rally in the Sylhet region. The attack on 27 January killed five people — including the former finance minister Shah AMS Kirbria.

The indefinite all-out strike by Glasgow Airport firefighters, who are in the T&G union, entered its second week on Monday.

Lecturers in 82 further education colleges were balloting this week for a strike over pay. The dispute is over the failure by 70 percent of colleges to implement the nationally negotiated 2003/4 pay award.

Some 1.25 million union members could strike on 23 March. The civil service workers’ PCS union and Unison local government members are balloting for discontinuous action — which would allow a series of strikes — so they could join education unions for futher strikes in April without reballoting

Firefighters at Glasgow international airport — all members of the T&G union — began an indefinite, all out strike last Saturday over health and safety.

WE CAN win this fight. If the unions are clear that this is a straight fight to defend pensions, there’s no way we can lose. Having over one million workers striking across the public sector on 23 March is a great start to this fight. New Labour is attacking us all — it’s only natural we fight as one. To win, we need us all out.