Waltham Forest
There was a decent early turnout of support for the Unison strike at Silverbirch House in Walthamstow, east London. Speaking to them it soon became clear why they had come out to protest at 7am.
Rotherham
Gordon Jelley from Rotherham local government Unison said, "It’s been very good here. We’ve shut over half the primary and secondary schools in Rotherham. There are no bin lorries moving and both bin depots have been shut.
I’m sure that National Union of Teachers (NUT) members everywhere will be doing all they can to express solidarity with striking local government workers in Unison, Unite and other unions today and tomorrow.
There was shock and anger in the Unison union this week as it emerged that its leaders plan to proceed with a discplinary hearing into Yunus Bakhsh, the high profile activist who last week was sacked from his job as a psychiatric nurse.
In an important fight over city academies, members of the Unison and NUT unions at the Hayward school in Bolton have voted to strike over plans to transfer the school out of local authority control and transform it into an academy.
Frustration and anger with the government ran through the national delegate conference of the public sector workers’ Unison union in Bournemouth last week.
Workers from the long running battle for workers’ rights at Fremantle, the private firm that runs care homes in Barnet, north London, received rapturous from the conference.
Karen Reissmann, the whistle-blowing nurse and trade union activist who was sacked after more than two decades of service, continues to fight her case.
