Unison Follow

FRIDAY 5 July was the 54th anniversary of the NHS. To mark the anniversary Newcastle Unison petitioned against fat cat pay and creeping privatisation. They got a great response, with several hundred signatures collectedRAY SMITH

AROUND 800 council workers are gearing up for a major battle against privatisation. They will be standing up against plans by Tory-controlled Westminster council to privatise the bulk of council services. If the council gets away with its plan every council will be encouraged to press ahead with similar privatisation plans.

MEMBERS OF the National Union of Teachers (NUT) at St Paul's Way School in east London face an outrageous attack from their own union leaders for standing in solidarity with other workers at the school. NUT members refused to cross Unison union picket lines set up by support staff during a recent London-wide two-day strike.

THE NATIONAL conference of the giant public sector union Unison took place in Bournemouth last week, as 800,000 of the union's members in local councils in England and Wales balloted on strikes over pay. If that ballot, and similar ballots in the GMB and TGWU unions, are successful a massive one-day national strike of council workers could take place on Wednesday 17 July.

Solidarity at the chalk face THE UNISON union strike made last week one of the most exciting I have ever experienced. I called a NUT union meeting on Tuesday, and 40 people turned up to decide our action. There was a fantastic discussion, and an emergency staff meeting was held on Thursday.

THE MOOD for a fight for decent pay for public sector workers marked the conference of Britain's biggest trade union this week. So too did the growing feeling for united action over pay across the public sector. The main conference of the Unison union took place in Bournemouth after Socialist Worker went to press on Tuesday.

IN A disgraceful attempt at union busting, Glasgow's Labour council has hired scab labour to break an official strike. Last weekend council officials hired the private firm Scotia Security. Along with senior managers, they were used to break the strike by 140 low paid Unison staff who work for the city's leisure and recreation service. The strikers asked council workers in other unions to respect their picket lines on Saturday and Sunday.

OVER 100 elected reps from branches of the Unison union in the south west of England met in Gloucester last week at the union's regional council. They voted overwhelmingly to support the European Social Forum. Representatives at the the regional council also agreed to send a delegation to Florence in Italy from 7 to 10 November.

DELEGATES AT this year's conference for Unison members in higher education sent a clear message to their leadership over pay. A motion of no confidence in the executive was only narrowly lost on a card vote.

Debbie was a central member of Wolverhampton Socialist Workers Party for many years. She was also an active trade unionist and campaigner for women's rights. Until recently she was deputy branch secretary of the Wolverhampton Unison union.

OVER 100 people attended a public meeting on Monday of this week commemorating the Holocaust. The meeting was jointly organised by the Sefton Unison union branch on Merseyside and the Holocause Memorial Project. Two Holocaust survivors addressed the meeting about their experiences.

LIBRARY AND computing workers at Kings College London held a successful one-day strike on Thursday of last week. The workers, members of the Unison union, were protesting against a cost-cutting restructuring of the department.