Ferry workers vote on strike
9 January 2015
Unite members working on the Woolwich Ferry crossing in London are balloting for strike action over sick pay and the company’s use of agency staff.
News/Views
Arts: National Gallery strike [updated]
8 January 2015
Staff at the National Gallery in London are fighting low pay and privatisation, which is putting 400 jobs at risk. PCS members held a 24-hour strike in October and will ballot for more action.
Barbour workers on four-week strike
8 January 2015
Warehouse workers at Barbour’s Gateshead site have begun four weeks of strike action in a dispute over new contracts proposed by the clothing firm
Special school site handed over to religious academy
4 January 2015
The government has ordered Leeds City Council to hand over a £1 million former primary school site where it had been looking to build a special school – gratis and without compensation – to a Sikh academy.
A happy new year to all
Welcome to the first bimonthly Workers – 24 pages in full colour, replacing a 16-page monthly in black and white.
Take housing off the market
Estimates put the value of Britain’s housing stock at more than £5 trillion – that’s five thousand billion. Yet the shortage of housing remains a pressing requirement for millions of workers.
How to house Britain
Housing has become a case of satisfying the greed of a tiny minority of capitalist speculators. And “build more houses” is not the answer to the housing shortage. Here are some alternatives…
And Johnson is calling us economically illiterate!
If you don’t agree that foreign investors should buy up swathes of London you are “economically illiterate”, says London Mayor Boris Johnson.
G20: the drive to war
The G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, in November made good TV: Russian President Putin as the naughty boy isolated by the other 19 countries, which took it in turns to call him names, forcing him to leave early. But it wasn't like that at all.
City pressures hit Britain’s aero engine maker
In November Rolls-Royce announced proposals to reduce its Aerospace Division workforce by 2,600 jobs worldwide over the next 18 months.
The holy freedoms of capitalism
The EU is built on the “free movements” of capital, labour, goods and services, that is, on uncontrolled movements of all four. Capital needs these “freedoms” in order to maximise its profits, and for no other reason.
TTIP: a dagger aimed at Britain’s sovereignty
At last, a sea change is taking place in the thinking of the unions on TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership treaty being negotiated between the European Union and the US.