Solidarity 550, 3 June 2020

Nominations open for Momentum NCG

Both the main groupings standing candidates for Momentum’s national coordinating group (NCG), Forward Momentum and Momentum Renewal, have now announced their full, 24-strong slates of candidates. Nominations, and sign-ups for Momentum membership to vote in the election, close on 11 June, and voting is 16-30 June. The Momentum Renewal (momentumrenewal.co.uk) slate is far more “celebrity” heavy than the Forward Momentum one, with Labour conference arrangements committee member and London party vice-chair Seema Chandwani; Scottish deputy leadership candidate Matt Kerr; NEC member Huda Elmi; Jon...

Safe and Equal: three fronts

The Safe and Equal campaign safeandequal.org is pressing on three fronts. Firstly: we want to popularise the idea, adopted as Labour Party policy in conference 2019, and recently re-raised by Nadia Whittome MP, that the care sector must be re-organised as a well-funded public service, rather than as the patchwork of small privately-run companies that currently makes it up. Instead of a jigsaw puzzle of frequently inefficient, abusive and despotic private fiefdoms, we want instead to see a democratically-run service offering the same high standards of care and workers’ rights to all users and...

Aviation: a third option

At the end of April, British Airways announced intentions to lay off 12,000 people, up to 30% of its workforce. Heathrow’s Chief Executive has warned that they may decide to follow suit, while on 20 May Rolls Royce — which constructs, among other things, airplane components — announced plans to make redundant 9,000, or 17%, of their global workforce. Airbus is planning redundancies. Easyjet, a UK-based company, plans 4,500 redundancies, 30% of their workforce. In 2018 it was estimated that the UK aviation sector directly employs 341,000 people. Bailouts to the tune of tens of billions have...

The politics and limits of tracing

The government, and many of its critics too, cite “test-trace-isolate” as almost a cure-all to control the virus while still easing the lockdown. The labour movement cannot claim expertise on the details. But we must demand that the operation be accompanied by full isolation pay for all, and run as a public-service operation, by public-sector workers on good public-sector terms, not contracted-out. The idea is people with symptoms like Covid-19 are promptly tested. If they test positive, then they’re asked to list all the people outside their household with whom they’ve been in less-than-two...

Six months on

We’re now six months on from when Covid-19 emerged in Wuhan, China. Eleven weeks from the start of deaths rising exponentially in Europe, then the USA, and lockdowns spreading. About eleven weeks, also, from when the first lockdown-easing started, in China; about 8 weeks from the start of lockdown-easing in Europe. Six weeks from the death peaks worldwide and in the USA, maybe eight from the peak in Europe. Death rates have continued to fall in countries easing lockdowns, with occasional and local blips. We don’t know why, or whether it will last, but that’s been true in the USA and (at least...

Scrap NRPF! For good!

On 27 May Boris Johnson revealed he was unaware of the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) policy that denies social security to migrants and their children. At a committee hearing, Labour MP Stephen Timms raised the plight of a family in his constituency left destitute and without support during the coronavirus crisis, due to NRPF. Johnson appeared surprised that they could not claim Universal Credit, stated that those “who live and work here should have support of one kind or another”, and promised to review the situation. NRPF is a condition applied to most migrants’ visas and Leave To...

Diary of an engineer: Falling over and getting up

Normally the morning shift change is quiet, but Saturday morning is different — everyone is angry and anxious to get out the door. V, the team leader, is nearly bellowing the night’s events at the operator taking over from him; “It was midnight, and then everything just went pitch black. We sat there staring at each other for nine seconds — then the screens blinked back on and everything was red….” J explains “The plant tripped last night. Electrical fault — apparently they’ve called in all the ‘tricians.” When I describe “trip” to my partner, they laugh and say “It’s like the plant’s fallen...

The Doctors Laboratory votes for strikes

Medical couriers transporting Covid-19 samples on behalf of NHS pathology contractor The Doctors Laboratory (TDL) have voted overwhelmingly for strike action, in response to the company’s decision to make redundancies during the pandemic, and its failure to address health and safety concerns. The IWGB union, on behalf of eight of its members who are being targeted for redundancy, has also filed a trade union victimisation and whistleblower victimisation claim. Almost all of the ten targeted workers had been demanding better and safer working conditions. One of them, Alex Marshall, is a key...

Five tests (John Moloney's column)

PCS has communicated our “Five Tests” to the Civil Service. These are: No wider return until communities are safe; workplaces must only be for essential work; workplaces must be safe places; staff must be individually assessed; and outbreaks must be controlled. We need to make these demands, and the details beneath the headlines, known and understood amongst the membership — and, crucially, discuss throughout the union how we respond if the employer fails to meet these tests. A national ballot for industrial action is not a practical proposition in the here and now; it would simply take too...

Protect Night Tube workers’ jobs!

From the Tubeworker blog London Underground has told a meeting of the Trains Functional Council, the negotiating body for drivers, comprised of senior bosses plus reps from the Aslef and RMT unions, that it plans to mothball Night Tube, the 24-hour services which run on certain Tube lines on Fridays and Saturdays, and which have been suspended for months, until March 2021. There’s every reason to continue the suspension. The late-night economy that Night Tube principally serves will not be restarting any time soon, and forcing Night Tube workers to run a service would certainly not be in the...

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