Strike Follow

Hundreds of medical secretaries in the north east of England are set to strike for three days from next Tuesday. The women workers are some of the lowest paid in the National Health Service. Most of them earn less than £13,000 a year. For years they have put up with low pay, working in an underfunded NHS without any reward for their work.

Thousands of workers at the Longbridge MG Rover car plant in Birmingham are balloting on strike action. Both the TGWU and Amicus unions have agreed to ballot their members in a fight over bosses' attempts to get workers to accept more "flexible" working arrangements.

At a packed meeting last week 300 council workers in Tower Hamlets, east London, voted unanimously to go ahead with strike action, starting with a one-day strike across the borough on Thursday of this week.

The mood for strikes is back. One group of workers after another are voting for action over pay, the impact of privatisation, aggressive managers and New Labour's insults. But they also face pressure from many of their own union leaders to hold back from battle. Rail workers on Arriva Northern were set to strike over pay for 48 hours on Friday and Saturday of this week.

Huge street protests and a two-week general strike have shut banks and businesses in many parts of Madagascar.

The national strike of tens of thousands of civil servants in the PCS union working in job centres and benefits offices is reaching a crucial point. We are striking over the removal of safety screens in the newly merged Jobcentre Plus offices.

"This is the first strike in this office's history. It tells you something. This office isn't militant-people have just had enough." That's what one of the 40 civil service strikers in London told Socialist Worker outside London's Millbank Tower, home to New Labour, on Wednesday of last week.

A national postal strike could begin a week next Wednesday, 6 March, union leaders announced last week. Talks are still continuing, but the union says that if there is no agreement then strike dates have been "pencilled in".

Two more NUJ journalists union chapels (workplace branches) on local newspapers have voted to ballot for strike action in a new campaign to end low pay. After victory in the first strike over pay for more than a decade at the Bradford Telegraph and Argus group, journalists at the Wakefield Express and Yorkshire Post and Leeds Evening Post have voted for strike ballots.

Teachers in London are to ballot for strike action over pay. Ballot papers will go out to over 40,000 members of the NUT union the week after next. Teachers will vote on a one-day strike over the allowances paid for working in London and neighbouring areas.

Civil Servants working in job centres and benefits agencies are set to hold their next strike on 6 and 7 March. The workers, members of the PCS union, have held two-day strikes on two occasions since mid-December.

Some 40 Lambeth council workers in special housing services held a second day of strike action on Tuesday of last week in protest at the sacking of Unison steward Alex Owalade.