University workers in UNISON, UCU, Unite and EIS are on strike on Thursday, February 6th.
Workers in higher education are lucky to have students who are willing to support us when we’re on strike, and it would be pretty foolish not to welcome them on our picket lines.
All entrances to the large Mile End campus were picketed by members of the participating unions, UNISON, UCU and UNITE, from 7am.
There is a strike in higher education on Thursday 31st October. All three big unions are walking out in fight foe decent pay.
A higher education worker and member of North London SolFed wrote a lealfet explaining what the strike is about and why solidarity both from workers and students is important.
If you work in higher education, or if you are a student, don't cross a picket line this Thursday. Stand on it. ALL OUT FOR THE 31 OCTOBER!
On Monday 24th June Conductors and Station Staff from Northern Ireland Railways who are members of the GMB union staged a 24 hour stoppage over managements proposed pay deal, sick pay, new working arrangements and a history of steadily worsening industrial relations. The management proposals would see only one Conductor working longer trains where there are presently two, which is a threat to future job retention and creation. The proposed changes to sick pay would mean than staff with 'unacceptable' absence levels go on to Statutory Sick Pay.
Bin men in Brighton today voted overwhelmingly to strike over attempts by the Green led council to slash pay.
The bin men (a self-adopted title, although they include many non male workers) voted 96% in favour of strike action. This follows an unofficial walkout on the 8th and 9th May and a fiercely enforced work to rule since which has left rubbish piled up across Brighton and streets unswept.
The first strike action is due to start on the 14th June and to last for a week. Further action is likely to follow if the council does not ditch the proposed pay cuts.
Classroom assistants were out on strike on Tuesday 26th at Horizon and Downsview special schools in Hackney, over a regrading issue which would see low paid staff lose out by around £200 a month.
All the permanent classroom assistants were out on strike. Classroom assistants on probation and agency staff went in but held up messages of support at the windows.
The classroom assistants, who do a lot of the frontline work with special needs children, told us how they felt the management didn’t value their work or care about their wellbeing at all, even when they get hurt at work. They said they stayed in the job due to love of working with children, but they felt totally undervalued.
Members of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT union and CGT union have gone on indefinite strike and occupied their workplace at the IMESAPI lighting plant in Granollers, Catalunya, Spain, demanding an end to the redundancy package which would see four of the 21 workers let go.
The workers – now 23 days into their strike – are responsible for maintaining the street lights throughout the small Catalan town, and therefore are of critical importance to the town council. IMESAPI itself is a part of the huge ACS conglomerate owned by Florentino Pérez, the multibillionaire engineering tycoon known internationally as the owner of Real Madrid FC.
Workers are taking action against privatisation plans in a wave of occupations of hospitals and clinics across Madrid, with massive support from patients and from the population of Madrid. Today a 48 hour strike in health care in Madrid saw 80% of workers on strike. This is just the first of four planned walkouts. Huge demonstrations in support of public health care carried banners like “Health care, we don’t sell it, we defend it.” and “100% free and public.” There have been other occupations outside Madrid, such as the hospital occupation in Zaragoza just before the general strike. A grassroots mobilisation called marea blanca, “white tide” has been building in health care for several months. The privatisation reforms would mean patients paying upfront to see a GP and to have essential treatment.
Farm workers in South Africa are currently on strike to demand higher wages and the right to organise in the face of a programme of suppression and intimidation by the predominantly white farm owners and in defiance of the political and Trade Union establishment.
Friday the 23rd of November will see Wal-Mart, which owns UK chain ASDA and which has an entirely non-union workforce, hit with coordinated strikes and protests. The date of these strikes is not arbitrary. It's “Black Friday”, the busiest shopping day of the year in the US.
This article, written by a American-born SolFedder who's worked retail in the past, seeks to explore the strikes: their roots and their implications for the American working class.