Strike Follow

ABOUT 1,000 baggage handlers and check-in staff at Heathrow were due to strike this weekend. Some 90 percent of the workers at Swissport UK and Swissport Cargo, who handle baggage for several major airlines, have voted for action. The workers, who are in the TGWU union, planned their first strike for this Sunday, 2 November.

STUDENTS AT King's College, Cambridge, have started a rent strike. Students at the college, which is part of Cambridge University, voted last week by 201 to 65 in favour of direct action in protest at the rising cost of living in the college.

THOUSANDS OF postal workers were forced to take unofficial strike action across London and Essex this week in a battle against their brutal bosses. They know their union, the CWU, and the whole way postal workers are treated at work is at stake.

We are not going to let racism divide our workforce I AM so proud of what we did as Wolverhampton postal workers to strike back against racism. We have shown that we are not going to allow racism to become "normal" or to be used to divide the workforce.

THE POSTAL workers' strike was a brilliant success and it shocked management. They are bitterly disappointed that last week's strike was such a success. Bosses had tried their usual mix of intimidation and bribery to get workers to break ranks. There were threats against workers, especially young, new and limited-contract staff, that their jobs could be at risk.

THOUSANDS OF nursery nurses across Scotland were taking strike action this week. They began a strike, set to last five days, on Monday of this week. The action, called by the Unison public sector workers' union, was part of the Scottish nursery nurses' ongoing fight against low pay, which has so far lasted for six months.

A SOLID STRIKE was held by council house repair workers in the TGWU union over the axing of 63 jobs at their Liverpool depot on Friday of last week. Their employer, private firm Interserve, which made £49.1 million profits last year, wants to scrap the jobs through a mixture of compulsory and voluntary redundancies, despite a repairs backlog in the city.

CIVIL SERVANTS in the PCS union are gearing up for a pay battle with the government. A number of government departments have given unacceptable pay offers to their workers. Union members in the Home Office are set to ballot soon on rejecting their pay offer and taking strike action to win a better deal.

WORKERS AT insurer Direct Line are on the verge of striking just weeks after many of them joined the union for the first time. If they go ahead this will be the first strike in the history of Direct Line, which is owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland.

PAUL AND Caroline Medhurst are two of the workers on strike for a living wage this week in London.

Police join strikes TENS OF thousands of public sector workers are in the middle of a major strike wave over pay in Greece. Prime minister Costas Simitis said there is no money for pay rises, in part because of the spiralling cost of next year's Athens Olympics.

The Sun's owner, Rupert Murdoch, is notorious for, among other things, smashing the print unions at his Wapping headquarters in London in the 1980s. So you may be surprised to learn that the Sun's origins can be traced back to a bulletin produced to support a London printers' strike.