NLSF members out to support Victimized Pret a Manger worker
Members of North London Solidarity Federation today joined with other activists, trade unionists, and members of the public to demand reinstatement of a victimized Pret a Manger worker.
Oct 20: The View from Embankment
On the day some of us met up at Charing Cross station, in every corner you could see union branches and anti-cuts groups from up and down the country meeting up in the concourse.
We arrived at the Embankment to a sea of banner and as wemarched we met both people we knew from round London and people from all across the UK. We met Welsh comrades who'd come over night or on the 5am coach which made us feel pretty lazy.
October 20: The view from Oxford Circus
It has to be said today went well. An anarchist contingent several hundred strong gathered at Harmsworth for the big march into central London, with more red and black flags than ever and plans to totally ignore Hyde Park's selection of crusty bureaucrats telling us that we (ie. they) are "being heard" to ask nicely for slightly less austerity, please? Oh go on, pretty please?
Bad Mayapples: the UKBA boasts about deportations
The UK Border Agency (UKBA) has been busy of late. Following the Heathrow passports checks scandal of November last year – in which the agency was accused of ‘relaxing’ passports checks on incoming passengers from the European Economic Area, prompting convulsions of anti-immigrant rage across the political and media spectra – the UKBA has invested its time in presenting an image of a robust, strong and uncompromising deportation specialists.
Education round up 12 July 2012
Bournville School on strike next week. Worthing High out this week. Noel Park School, Haringey out.
Bournville School Strike
Bournville School in south Birmingham is set to face two days of strike action next week over plans to convert the school to 'foundation' school status. Workers at the school had successfully defeated plans to force an academy conversion less than a year ago after threats of joint strike action and a community campaign.
The latest action is set for Wednesday 18th and Thursday 19th July in "protest at the failure of the school to enter into meaningful consultation regarding proposed conversion to Foundation status and in protest at the change of employer with resultant threat to terms and conditions."
Solidarity with the London John Lewis Cleaners Strike
The North London Solidarity Federation would like to extend our deepest solidarity to the John Lewis cleaners engaged in a struggle to secure the London Living Wage. By exposing John Lewis' overt failure to live up to its proclaimed co-operative model, the cleaners have shown that company schemes are not the way to secure a decent wage. Instead, only collective struggle can force bosses to provide us with decent working conditions and respect on the job.
Members of North London SolFed will make every effort to turn out to support the cleaners at their upcoming strike and will encourage all our friends and contacts to do the same.
London Living Wage for All Cleaners! No Cuts to Hours! No Speed Up!
cleaners demonstrate for sick pay and holiday pay at SOAS
About seventy people demonstrated at SOAS on the 6th June, in the continuing battle for better conditions for cleaners in the London universities.
The cleaners at some universities have won the London Living Wage, but they have not given up and are demanding equal conditions of employment for all staff - fair sick pay, holiday pay and pension contributions. Some universities, like UCL, are refusing to make any increase in cleaners’ wages. Others, like at Senate House, have conceded the LLW but are now trying to impose speedup on the cleaners with an increase in workload.
London Solfed on Mayday: "You say Workfare, we say warfare!"
May 1st was, of course, Mayday, International Workers’ Day, held in memory of the six anarchists executed after the Haymarket riot, a protest in Chicago way back in 1886 over the 8 hour working day. Despite it falling on a normal working day this year, both London SF branches called an anti-Workfare roving picket through central London, as well as attending an electricians’ picket and, least interestingly, the official, Trade Union Congress (TUC) march.
The electricians’ picket – called by the Sparks rank and file group – was in response to employers trying to block rank and file activists from even attending the ongoing negotiations over the JIB agreement. We braved the bleak, grey early morning for a couple of hours befire retreating to a
café for a break and a caffeine fix.
Kilburn Anti-Workfare picket a success
Last Saturday, the North London Solidarity Federation was joined by members of the Industrial Workers of the World and Boycott Workfare for a mid-day picket of the Holland and Barrett in Kilburn, North West London.
Picketers numbered over twenty in total and came prepared with flags, hi-vis jackets, and various banners decrying the exploitative nature of the government's various workfare schemes. Nearly 1000 leaflets were handed out over the course of the action and throughout the picket prospective customers were persuaded to do their shopping elsewhere.
Public response was overwhelmingly positive. One member of the public even stopped by for half and hour to help us do some leafleting. Others took the opportunity to go into the store and express their dissatisfaction directly to the Holland and Barrett manager on duty at the time.