Health & safety

Industrial news in brief

Anti-privatisation campaigners and Unite the union in the London borough of Bromley are calling for a referendum on the planned privatisation of the learning disabilities service, due to be privatised on 1 October. Adult services staff, members of Unite, struck for 48 hours from 00.01 on Thursday 27 August. Their strike is part of ongoing strikes across council services facing privatisation. Library staff will strike for five days starting from 00.01 on 1 September, as the council goes ahead with its plans to privatise 14 of the borough's libraries. In a separate dispute in Bromley's already...

Yes to automation, under workers' control

Bruce Robinson replies to me on automation ( Solidarity 372) that he opposes, not all automation or sidelining of traditional skills, but automation of complex and skilled processes (as in the chemical industry) and driverless vehicles. I’ve spent most of the last week or so at a picket line outside a container terminal in the port of Brisbane. The terminal we’ve been picketing has driverless vehicles (automated stacking cranes) which run on rails; the next-door terminal, just over a fence, has driverless vehicles without rails (automated straddle carriers). I’ve heard from miners on the...

Industrial news in brief

UCU members at seven London colleges struck today as Solidarity went to press (Tuesday 23 June) in disputes over job losses. Strikes will happen at College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London, South Thames College, College of North West London, Croydon College, Greenwhich Community College, Hackney Community College, and Lewisham Southwark College (LeSoCo). Today's strike is the fourth for workers at LeSoCo, who struck on Thursday 18 and Friday 19 June. Management plan to cut as many as 175 jobs at the college and close the Camberwell site, severely reducing the quality of education for...

Workers' direct action gets the goods: sacked Crossrail worker reinstated

Construction workers scored a big win against contractors operating on the Crossrail transport project in central London, after a sacked worker was reinstated within hours of a demo at Crossrail's Oxford Street site. The worker, who began work on Monday 9 February, raised concerns over safety standards on the site. Despite being told he would have work for three years, he was summarily sacked on Friday 13 February. A demonstration organised by the Blacklist Support Group (which was instrumental to winning the reinstatement of electrician Frank Morris, sacked from another Crossrail site in 2012...

Construction workers' sit-down safety strike

Nearly 1,000 construction workers at a gas plant in Shetland staged a sit-down strike in their workplace canteen on Monday 21 July, over safety concerns. The sit-in also raised a number of long-running grievances, including some workers being deprived travel allowance, inadequate accommodation for non-Shetland-resident workers, and Total and Petrofac’s (the companies which run the plant) refusal to pay workers for a previous 2.5 hour safety stoppage, which workers are legally entitled to undertake if working conditions are unsafe. A further sit-in on 23 July drew in greater numbers, and the...

Campaigning for safety at work

Our Turkish comrades in UID-DER have recently sent us two copies of a new DVD. The DVD, "Forward to struggle and solidarity against work accidents!" is a documentation of a campaign they are running. This video footage offers insight into important and vibrant campaign that aims to educate workers about why workplace accidents happen and why they are not inevitable. It encourages workers to pressure governments into legislating for health and safety in work places. The video details the concrete actions of the campaign and the conference UID-DER held afterwards. It never shies away from the...

Soma mining massacre: the terrible cost of capitalist exploitation

On 13 May, the capitalist system of exploitation took the lives of around 300 workers in a coal mine “accident” in Soma, a town in western Turkey. This is the biggest massacre of workers in the form of a “work accident” in the history of Turkey. The technical reason for the incident is still unknown. But for some reason a fire erupted in the mine, producing carbon monoxide with the fatal effect of poisoning the miners. What happened in Soma cannot be downplayed as a “work accident”. What happened was a mass murder at a workplace perpetrated by the boss of Soma Holdings and its accomplice, i.e...

Crossrail worker killed

A 43-year-old worker on the Crossrail construction project in London has died after being struck by a piece of falling concrete. Although this is the first worker to die because of a work-related incident on a Crossrail site, it is far from the first accident. In October 2012, part of the excavation infrastructure at Crossrail’s Paddingon site collapsed, and in December 2012, a Crossrail worker suffered 70% burns after coming into contact with a live cable. The project has been the target of sustained trade union campaigning after unions accused construction conglomerate BFK of operating a...

Tube unions resist driverless trains

A London Underground “Employee Bulletin” of 19 February announced Tube bosses’ plans to commission driverless trains on several lines. The Rail, Maritime, and Transport workers’ union (RMT) and drivers’ union ASLEF have launched a dispute over the issue. The announcement, in the midst of an ongoing RMT and TSSA fight against job cuts and closures on stations, is an extraordinarily belligerent act by management and an indication of the extent of their plans to automate and destaff the network. An RMT statement said: “We reaffirm our position that every train must have a driver to ensure the...

University cleaners set for more strikes

Cleaning workers at the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) in London are balloting for strikes to win an improved pay offer and better sick pay after they rejected a deal from their employer, ISS, which they called “insulting”. ISS and SOAS are engaging in the kind of buck-passing typical of outsourced working, with both claiming that it is the other’s responsibility to guarantee decent terms and conditions for the employees. The kind of exploitation to which outsourced cleaning workers are subject was highlighted over the Christmas period, with SOAS cleaners being forced to work in...

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