Strike Follow

NEARLY 200 postal workers in Peterborough walked out on strike unofficially last week in a dispute over the interpretation of the MTSF (Managing the Surplus Framework) pay and conditions agreement. Workers had just realised the implications of the deal, which was part of the package accepted in a national ballot earlier this year. It means that the seniority principle (that workers who have been in the job longest get first pick of duties) will be abandoned in some cases.

Defend Farringdon Six TUBE WORKERS on a privatised part of London Underground were set to strike on Friday this week over the sacking of six colleagues. Metronet, the private company now responsible for two thirds of the tube track, sacked the six infrastructure workers after it found empty beer cans in a cabin near Farringdon station.

WORKERS AT Mid Kent Water have started a strike ballot over a maintenance contract for raw sewage work. A GMB spokesperson says, "The ballot comes after harassment of staff who have refused the work."

BUS WORKERS employed by RoadCar in Lincolnshire held a fourth one-day strike on Monday in a battle over pay and union rights. Some 150 workers are members of the TGWU union. They voted by 89 votes to 39 to reject RoadCar's latest pay offer. The company, the biggest in Lincolnshire, is part of the Yorkshire Traction Group.

A MAGNIFICENT 4,500-strong demonstration through Glasgow has kept the nursery nurses' all-out strike in the headlines across Scotland. The demo also blew a hole in employers' propaganda that the strike is losing public support and crumbling. Mary McIntyre from West Dunbartonshire, a nursery nurse for 20 years, told Socialist Worker on last Friday's march:

LOW PAID education workers have begun the biggest indefinite strike in Britain for many years. The 5,000 nursery nurses walked out in three quarters of Scotland's local authorities on Monday. Liz McCulloch, a nursery nurse and Unison union steward in East Ayrshire, explains why:

THE SOCIALIST Worker special issue produced to mark 20 years since the miners' strike is going down a storm. Ken Capstick, who was the NUM union branch delegate at Stillingfleet colliery during the strike and is a former Yorkshire NUM vice-chair, says, "I am pleased that Socialist Worker has produced this special edition to celebrate the struggle of the miners. We were right to fight the brutal Thatcher government. We have to learn the lessons from the strike-that the state will be used to crush workers' resistance and we need to stand together as a class."

STRIKING NURSERY nurses were greeted with a wave of support from parents and the public. But they received staggering contempt from their employers, COSLA-the Labour-dominated Confederation of Scottish Local Authorities. "We are in a decisive dispute," says Carol Ball, the Unison union convenor of the nursery nurses' campaign. "All we want is for COSLA to talk to us about a national deal. Yet it's come to an all-out strike. We are calling for support from across the movement."

THE 20th anniversary of the 1984-5 miners' strike has reunited the miners in the Nottinghamshire area who dared to support the NUM union throughout the bitter dispute. After all these years the focus by some of the media is on why the NUM would not hold a national ballot. Over 80 percent of miners were already out on strike. They had voted with their feet.

THREE MILLION Indian workers struck for the day on Tuesday of last week against plans to cut pensions and other benefits to government workers and introduce flexible working. "This is the 11th strike in the last ten years against neo-liberalism," says Rakesh, leader of the Lucknow banking workers' union federation.

AROUND HALF a million trade unionists in Zambia went on strike recently against wage cuts and tax rises forced through by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. JOYCE NONDE is the general secretary of a union allied to the Federation of Free Trade Unions of Zambia. She was in London last weekend addressing the War on Want conference and spoke to Socialist Worker.

Liverpool strike solid "THIS IS about bullying." Those were the words of one social worker who joined around 145 colleagues on strike on Friday of last week. The social workers, who work in childcare in Liverpool, were out on the first day of a three-day strike over management bullying, excessive workloads and lack of staffing.