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Monthly Archives: October 2009

THE reality of the situation facing postal workers is that after two series of mass strike actions during which they have shown they are prepared to fight to the finish to defend their jobs, wages, pensions and their union, Royal Mail and the Brown Mandelson government are not...
‘THE BBC says it subscribes to “BBC values”, but it would appear BBC Values do not apply to contractors such as Aramark.’ BECTU General Secretary Tony Lennon was talking outside Bush House in central London yesterday lunchtime, where 100 BBC workers came out to demonstrate in support of 10 sacked...
The Unite trade union yesterday announced it is to take legal action to stop British Airways imposing its disputed new work contracts on 14,000 cabin crew. Unite said it will apply for a High Court injunction to bar BA from introducing new pay and conditions for the cabin crew, which...
THE second series of strikes in the national postal dispute commenced yesterday morning, with Mail Centres walking out at the start of three days of action. This was after Royal Mail did not reply to a CWU proposition for ending the dispute during negotiations on Wednesday. Dave Ward, CWU deputy-general secretary,...
THE Chief of the Taleban movement in Pakistan Hakimullah Mehsud yesterday blamed the US firm Blackwater, that had an army of mercenaries operating in Iraq, for the bomb blast in Peshawar which killed 108 men, women and children and injured 150. The Taleban leader said that since the Taleban is...
HOME SECRETARY Alan Johnson is introducing new police state powers for councils next week. These will not be discussed in the House of Commons since the change to the Proceeds of Crime Act is set out in a Statutory Instrument that will not be debated by MPs. Local councils are...
THE following is a dramatic letter of resignation from senior US diplomat – America’s Senior Civilian Representative for Zabul Province in Afghanistan – addressed to the US State Department. While Obama dithers about whether to advance, retreat or remain stationery, leading American soldiers and diplomats are beginning to decide that...
FIFTY-NINE sacked workers from the 2 Sisters poultry processing factory in Birmingham travelled to London yesterday, determined to win their jobs back. They demonstrated outside the Marks and Spencer store in Marble Arch and delivered a letter to M&S boss, Rose, demanding he intervene and ‘pressure’ the supplier to reinstate...
‘Everyone has to come out now, all the unions have to,’ Communication Workers Union (CWU) Hampstead Delivery Office deputy unit rep John Taylor told News Line yesterday. ‘We have to keep hitting Royal Mail hard, coming out every week on different days. ‘We don’t want seven day breaks. ‘They want a war,...
WHILE President Obama remains undecided and continues to dither about what the US strategy should be in Afghanistan, his diplomats are making their minds up. With some of his generals screaming for at least 40,000 more troops for Afghanistan, Matthew Hoh however, who fought in Iraq and joined the...
‘Unless there is a substantial breakthrough the strikes are going ahead on Thursday, Friday and Saturday,’ CWU London District Chairman John Denton told News Line yesterday. ‘We don’t agree to lifting the strike action until there is something that is concrete and tangible in our hands,’ Denton continued. Talks between...
‘WE are having a good response to our picket today,’ North-East London Council of Action Secretary Bill Rogers told News Line at Chase Farm Hospital yesterday. He added: ‘We’re getting good support for our policy of occupation in the fight against cuts and closures at Chase Farm and the...
RUSSIAN experts on Afghanistan take a dim view of US ‘achievements’ in their military operations there. Experts believe that Central Asian countries as well as China benefited the most from the operation, and the US presence in Afghanistan helps to counterbalance Russian influence in the region. The following is an...
The Unite trade union yesterday announced it is to ballot 14,000 British Airways cabin crew for strike action after weeks of talks over BA’s plan to impose savage wage, pension and job cuts from November 16th. Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of Unite, said: ‘Unite is going to ballot our...
THE ‘New Local Government Network’ was warning yesterday of a ‘tsunami of a public sector recession’ after the next general election when the just elected government carries out ‘savage cuts’ in government expenditure, leaving local government with little option but to cut or close its services and impose steep...
NHS London has ordered PCTs and NHS trusts to draw up plans for cuts worth billions. NHS London (London’s Strategic Health Authority) produced a report in June 2009 laying out their strategy for the next five years in the light of the Department of Health’s (DH’s) proposed funding cuts of...
Communication Workers Union (CWU) branch officials yesterday warned CWU general secretary Billy Hayes and deputy general secretary Dave Ward against selling out postal workers at talks at the TUC today. They were responding to TUC general secretary Brendan Barber’s invitation to the CWU and Royal Mail for talks at Congress...
OVER 10,000 people marched from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square in central London on Saturday demanding the withdrawal of the British Army from Afghanistan. At the front of the march was British Army soldier L/Cpl Joe Glenton, from York, who faces a court martial in November for alleged desertion after going absent without...
THE TUC announced on Saturday that ‘Royal Mail and the CWU have in recent days been in contact with the TUC over the current dispute and have sought the TUC’s assistance in resolving any outstanding issues around the draft document discussed last Tuesday to avoid further industrial action and...
THOUSANDS of striking delivery staff took to picket lines in London and across the country yesterday, on the second day of the national postal strike in defence of jobs and basic rights. CWU members were on picket duty in Amersham and Great Missenden. Tony from Amersham said ‘I think we...
THE bourgeois propaganda machine was all set yesterday to spin an expected 0.04 per cent increase in GDP into a ‘the slump is over’ celebration, when the absolute opposite happened, a fall in production of 0.4 per cent over the last three months to September. They are...
‘ROYAL MAIL is misleading the public,’ the Communication Workers Union (CWU) said yesterday at the start of the national postal strike in defence of jobs and basic trade union rights. ‘Royal Mail bosses hide behind the word “modernisation’’ – what they really mean is unprecedented cuts in jobs, services, pay...
Workers attending the morning shift at the GM van plant in Luton yesterday were presented with a Unite union leaflet, informing them of a ‘gate meeting’ to be held during the lunchtime change-over period between the two shifts. According to this leaflet, the purpose of the meeting was ‘a report...
THE News Line is opposed to the BNP or any fascist party being given time to spread its propaganda in any of the media outlets in the UK or in any other outlet. The fact that the state broadcasting medium is giving this fascist organisation encouragement and recognition says it...
At 5.20pm yesterday CWU leaders Dave Ward and Billy Hayes declared that the two days’ strike action today and tomorrow were going ahead and new strike dates will be fixed later this week. Both leaders accused Peter Mandelson, Adam Crozier and Mark Higson of sabotaging an agreement that had been...
TamilNet reports that 1191 members of 385 Internally Displaced families among the hundreds of thousands detained in Vavuniyaa internment camps after the fall of Vanni region to the government forces were brought to Eastern province Sunday and Monday in two batches. They were transported to Batticaloa and Ampaa’rai in Sri...
THE horrific future under capitalism for workers and youth is being revealed on a daily basis, as the price of the government’s £1.3 trillion attempted rescue of the banks and capitalism begins to emerge. The latest information of the pain that ‘is to be shared’ by the workers comes...
BUSINESS Secretary Peter Mandelson yesterday afternoon attacked London postal workers in particular for not accepting the government and Royal Mail plans to casualise the industry. He said that it would mean the end of the industry if postal workers did not accept what Royal Mail and the government...
WORKERS at Opel’s factory in Zaragossa, Spain, have announced four days of strikes starting next week, after failing to reach an agreement with Magna over the massive job cuts that it plans to make at the Spanish plant. They have given an example to the Opel-GM workers in the rest...
Despite the October chill, over 30,000 British Tamils and supporters took to the streets on Saturday, to highlight the desperate situation faced by Tamils in Sri Lanka who remain detained in ‘concentration camps’, and in protest against UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s failure to protect these innocent civilians. As the...
PRESIDENT Karzai is refusing to agree to a re-run of the Afghan general election, meaning that Karzai and his master President Obama are at loggerheads, at the same time as the Taleban are approaching the gates of the Afghan capital! Karzai’s spokesman yesterday said that the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission...
ROYAL Mail management and government have a secret plan to smash the Communication Workers Union (CWU) and privatise the Royal Mail. It has been leaked however, and News Line is pleased to be able to publish it. It is titled ‘Dispute: Strategic Overview – Where we are and the next...
‘The talks are a trap to get over Christmas,’ warned Hampstead Delivery Office Communication Workers Union (CWU) deputy unit rep John Taylor yesterday. He was responding to yesterday’s talks between Royal Mail and CWU negotiators taking place at a secret location. Commenting to News Line on Royal Mail’s ‘offer’ to...
Communication Workers Union reps yesterday hit back at Royal Mail’s decision to hire up to 30,000 temporary workers to break the union’s planned 48-hour strike this Thursday and Friday and called on other public sector unions to take action. CWU general secretary Billy Hayes described the mail move as ‘stupid’...
ROYAL Mail, backed by Brown and Mandelson, are making no secret of the fact that they intend to stamp on the CWU, in order to casualise, de-unionise and privatise the Royal Mail, and to intimidate all workers. The latest measure to bring in 30,000 strikebreakers speaks for itself,...
GREEK armed riot police viciously attacked with clubs, smoke and lightning bombs and toxic tear gas grenades about 800 protesting ship repair workers last Thursday morning outside the building of the Ministry for Labour in Athens. Workers had organised a car and motorcycle convoy from the Perama ship repair...
‘THE chaotic scenes during enrolment say it all: we lost over 350 jobs last year and you can already see the difference,’ said the UCU and Unison, as they launched a joint 48-hour strike at London Met University on Thursday. Appealing for support from students and the general public, the...
POSTAL workers are not surprised at the leak which shows that Royal Mail management, with the support of the Brown government, intends to impose its flexibility, casualisation and privatisation plans onto the Royal Mail through smashing the CWU trade union. Royal Mail boss, Crozier’s ‘Strategic Overview’ outlines plans to fight...
WORKERS attending the last night shift at the GM van plant in Luton on Thursday reacted with anger when they were given individual letters to sign agreeing to changes in their contract of employment. Each worker was given just ten minutes to read and sign their acceptance for a whole...
Postal workers yesterday condemned the Labour government and Royal Mail bosses for colluding to smash their union, and casualise and privatise the industry at a cost of tens of thousands of jobs. A leaked Royal Mail document said its objectives are to ‘deliver the necessary 2009 changes with or...
OVER 100 staff, students and lecturers rallied outside London Met University yesterday lunchtime, to vow to halt the wave of hundreds of sackings taking place at the institution. Students eagerly took leaflets from pickets and joined the rally. Two sites of the university were shut down by the support of staff...
New NHS regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), yesterday published its ratings on England’s 392 trusts. From April 2010, the CQC will gain new powers to be able to shut any ‘underachieving’ trusts down. The CQC press statement said: ‘Overall, our ratings for 2008/09 show the NHS: is performing well on...
HEALTH Minister Mike O’Brien has responded to the findings of the government-established Care Quality Commission (CQC). This has just claimed that one in eight of the 392 NHS Trusts, 49 Trusts in all, are failing their patients and face closure on the recommendation of the Commission, next April, under a...
Those who advised Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas to defer the Goldstone report into war crimes in Gaza gave him bad advice, Fatah Central Committee member Nabil Sha’ath told a Paris panel on Wednesday. Sha’ath was speaking at an online panel discussion, organised by the Paris-based Arab European Studies Centre, on...
THE Unite leaders’ policy that workers must share the pain of the capitalist crisis bore more rotten fruit on Tuesday. This was when Unite’s Woodley and Simpson agreed with Magna, that the UK workforce should concede major ‘efficiency changes’. Among the changes are workers working longer hours, having two years...