Wales Follow

Strike action at Reality call centres across the north of England and Mid Wales has been called off after management was forced to offer the workforce a new deal.

HUGE NUMBERS of council workers across England and Wales are up in arms over the pay deal agreed by their negotiators last week. It is now out for consultation among council worker members of the Unison, GMB and TGWU unions. Consultation will last six weeks.

UNISON UNION members in further education colleges are to ballot on strikes over pay. The 25,000 support staff have rejected a 2.3 percent pay rise, worth as little as 13p extra an hour for some workers. They are demanding a "substantial" increase that would see all support staff in England and Wales on at least £11,000 a year.

ABOUT 60 campaigners lobbied councillors in Caerphilly in Wales last week against a proposed waste recycling plant being built on their doorstep. Over 2,500 local residents have signed a petition against the plant planned for the Risca quarry.

THE KEY myths about refugees in Britain have been trashed in a recent report that was commissioned by the Home Office. Vaughan Robinson and Jeremy Segrott from the University of Wales produced the report that investigates why asylum seekers end up in Britain. The report takes on the arguments poured out by press and politicians that refugees flock to Britain because it is a "soft touch".

HAVE YOU ever given a future Archbishop of Canterbury a lift home from an anti-war event? Perhaps not-unless you were in South Wales some five years ago. There you could have seen bishop Rowan Williams leave a meeting against the bombing of Iraq and calmly accept sharing a car with several Socialist Workers Party members.

LEADERS OF the three council workers' unions-Unison, the TGWU and the GMB-walked out of talks with management in disgust last week. Council bosses had widely hinted in the press that they were putting a new deal on the table, including offering £5 an hour to some low paid staff, to end another strike across England and Wales scheduled for Wednesday 14 August.

TRADE UNIONISTS on Merseyside held a benefit night for the sacked Friction Dynamics workers last week. It raised over £5,000. The workers, members of the TGWU union, were sacked by the boss of their factory in Gwynedd, North Wales, over 15 months ago.

A MILLION striking council workers spearheaded the revolt against low pay this week. No wonder they are fighting. Over 275,000 council workers in England and Wales get less than £5 an hour and two thirds are on £13,000 a year or less before tax.

UP TO 1.2 million workers plan to strike next Wednesday in what will be the biggest strike action since Tony Blair was first elected in 1997. The strike is by workers in almost 500 local councils across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The workers are fighting against low pay. It is a battle everyone should support.

ADMINISTRATION staff at Oakwood School in South Wales are in dispute over attacks on their jobs. The school is £150,000 in the red. Management are making admin staff reapply for their own jobs, but with reduced rights and benefits.

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.