Health & safety

Grenfell: Capitalism kills

Around 1am on Wednesday 13 June a fire tore through 24-storey Grenfell Tower in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, killing a currently unknown number of people. Firefighters have told people the number will be in triple figures. Many hundreds of people have had family members, friends, neighbours, and homes taken from them. Survivors and local residents are angry. ″This symbolises the divide between rich and poor in this area″. ″They don′t care″. ″They put human beings in pigeon holes. Just because you can′t afford anything doesn′t mean you should be dumped in somewhere like that″....

Industrial news in brief

Cinema workers at East Dulwich Picturehouse in south London will strike on Saturday 27 May to coincide with the opening of the new Pirates of the Caribbean film. Workers at the other cinemas involved in the dispute have just voted for further strikes, and will be on strike on 3-4 June to coincide with the Sundance Film Festival, which Picturehouse hosts. Cineworld held its Annual General Meeting on 18 May and Picturehouse strikers bought some shares in order to go along and embarrass Cineworld bosses. Three Picturehouse workers asked company chair Tony Bloom for Cineworld to start paying the...

Industrial news in brief

RMT members on Northern rail struck again on 28 April. The strike was every bit as solid as the previous two days’ action, reducing the company’s service to 40% of its usual level, with scab labour being provided by managers. The union is yet to announce its next move. It will need to think carefully about what to do next, taking into account the various different situations at different Train Operating Companies around the country. At Southern, talks have been held between RMT and the employer but no resolution is yet forthcoming. This is against a backdrop of RMT members starting to come...

Industrial news in brief

On Tuesday 25 and Wednesday 26 April, National Union of Teachers’ (NUT) members at Forest Hill school in Lewisham struck for the fifth time in their on-going dispute against a management proposed restructuring to deal with a £1.3 million deficit. The management’s proposal sheds 15 teaching jobs, significantly increases teachers’ workload, radically reduces the depth of the creative aspects of the curriculum, ends any specialist English as an Additional Language (EAL) support, and massively diminishes the support for students with Special Educational Needs. In addition to the strikes, there was...

Industrial news in brief

National Union of Teachers (NUT) members at Forest Hill School in Lewisham will strike again on 20, 25 and 26 April in their campaign against vicious cuts being imposed by management to fulfil conditions of repayment of loan to Lewisham council. There is a demonstration on Saturday 22 April. The proposed restructure at the school is in response to a £1.3m deficit. Lewisham council has given the school a “loan” however they are demanding that the school cuts £800,000 from their wage bill. This would mean a loss of 15 teaching jobs, an escalation in teachers’ workload and a greatly diminished...

DOO strikes spread

On Monday 13 March, RMT guards and drivers on Southern Railways struck and were joined for the first time by RMT guards and drivers on Northern and Merseyrail. RMT continues its fight against the extension of driver-only operation on Southern, while the leadership of drivers’ union Aslef seems desperate to surrender. Two days after the latest RMT strike, Aslef announced to its members the result of the latest secret round of talks. The result? The same deal, with some very minor improvements. The Financial Times was open in describing it as the same deal rewritten and talks about this whole...

Guard Martin Zee wins court case

RMT member Martin Zee has won an important legal battle concerning his actions as a train guard. Martin was working as a guard on a Merseyrail train in 2015 when an elderly passenger tried to board a train after the door closure procedure had started and the door alarms were sounding. She fell between the platform and the train and was injured. Martin carried out his role properly, ensuring the train and track were made safe and climbing down to support and reassure the passenger until the emergency services arrived. Merseyrail's investigation into the incident identified improvements to...

Industrial news in brief

Monday 13 March will see the biggest and most widespread action yet in the fight to maintain the job of guard (conductor) in the UK rail industry. As well as another day of action on Southern Rail, the RMT union is calling its guard and driver members out on the Northern and Merseyrail franchises. This is a very significant in the development of this dispute, as the disruption this is likely to cause at Northern and Merseyrail should be bigger in comparison to that at Southern, where many services already operated under Driver Only Operation (DOO) when the dispute there began. It will become...

Industrial news in brief

Ten employees of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) were sacked with immediate effect on Thursday 9 February by email — whilst they were on strike! They were told to come into work the next day to clear their desks. PCS and Unite members were taking part in the first of five days of strikes in the latest round of action against compulsory redundancies. The stated reason for their dismissals was redundancy — despite the availability of 30 vacancies in the EHRC. In the civil service and government agencies it is unprecedented for employees under notice of redundancy to be dismissed...

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