Solidarity 529, 18 December 2019

PCS plans new drive

Like all workers, civil servants are now facing at least five years of an extremely reactionary government. Workers’ rights and trade unionism will come under renewed assault, and as government workers we expect PCS will be in the frontline of that. We even had members on strike on election day, with our members at Ealing tax office striking for half a day to demand the office remains open. They also struck on 5 December, and have now struck five times in total. Further strikes are planned in January if necessary. The union will be launching a new organising and recruitment drive in 2020. We...

A national contract for all school workers

By Tracy McGuire I’ve just been elected to the support-staff place on the Executive of the National Education Union, in a by-election. My first priority is unionising as many school support staff as possible into the NEU. Especially with the election, there are going to be cuts to schools and job losses for support staff. We need campaigns. We need more support-staff reps, and not just as reps for support staff. At present the NEU has a support staff conference, but it is entitled only to put one motion to the national union conference. [The system was inherited from the ATL, the union that...

"Get out of jail free” for bullying bosses?

On 5 December, a slightly revised version of an agreement between the National Education Union (NEU) and the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) was put to the NEU National Executive for approval. That agreement had been used in June, as I’ll describe, to sink an NEU dispute at Harbinger primary school in East London. Kirstie Paton, one of the four Executive members representing Inner London, where the strike took place, moved an objection to reject the agreement and I seconded it. We reminded the Executive of the Harbinger story and emphasised the flat-out contradiction between the...

New university strikes from 20 February

A sectoral conference for University and College Union (UCU) members working in universities in the USS pension scheme, where workers struck in November and December, has voted for an escalation of the strike, passing a proposal to strike for two weeks from 20 February. The Higher Education Committee of the union will now ratify that proposal. That does leave a big gap between the end of the last strike and the next, but many universities have exams through January, so striking then wouldn’t have any impact on teaching. Negotiations are ongoing; the fact of a further planned strike will...

Industrial news in brief

Lewisham members of the National Education Union (NEU) in primary schools are to take part in an indicative ballot over boycotting high stakes testing. The ballot will run from 6 January for two weeks. There will be two questions on the ballot, one about “action short of strike” (i.e. the question about the boycott) and a second asking members if they will strike in the event of victimisation of members who take part. The ballot information summarises the boycott as follows: “Leadership and teacher members will refuse to administer the year 2 SATs, the year 6 SATs, the phonics test and the...

"Labour Transformed" meets

The "Labour Transformed" conference on 14 December attracted over 100 people despite being held two days after an election defeat. The event was called by a group of people around some organisers of The World Transformed (a fringe festival run at Labour conferences since 2016), and has been given soft support by John McDonnell and part of the Momentum leadership. (TWT was originally sponsored by Momentum). The room was much younger than your average Labour meeting, largely I think activists from London who had been attracted to Labour by Corbyn. The first session saw a comradely discussion...

Why Labour slumped in Scotland

In the 2019 general election the SNP won more seats, more votes, and a higher share of the vote on a higher turnout than it did in 2017. The number of SNP MPs increased from 35 to 48. It picked up a million and a quarter votes (as against a million in 2017), representing 45% of the popular vote (37% in 2017). And whereas voter turnout in the rest of the country fell, in Scotland it increased by 1.5%. With only one exception, seats held by the SNP in 2017 with majorities of just a couple of hundred saw SNP MPs returned in 2019 with majorities of between 5,000 and 6,000. Seats won by the SNP...

Regroup! Fight the Tories every inch of the way!

Workers' Liberty activists worked hard, with our local Labour Parties and with Labour for a Socialist Europe, to win the 12 December election for Labour. Like hundreds of thousands of other labour-movement people, we are dismayed by the victory for the Tories, especially for a Tory party which has been sharply ratcheted to the right twice in recent years, once when May took over and then again, more so, after Boris Johnson became leader. We argue that the labour movement must: • Fight the Tories every inch of the way • Renovate our movement. Argue openly for socialism. Turn the Labour Party...

Mass strikes in France

There have been mass strikes and a wave of working class protests since Thursday 5 December in France. According to the police there were over 800,000 demonstrators on Thursday. The marches of strikers on 10 December – attended by 339,000 according to the Interior, or 885,000 in the unions’ estimation – is a show of continuing determination. The CGT, FO, FSU, Solidaires, MNL, UNEF and UNL have jointly appealed for further strikes on 12 December and on Tuesday 17. By any measure, there have been powerful strikes in key sectors. The overall mobilisation in workplaces is of a depth and dynamism...

Scientific testing should decide

Scientific testing should decide By Martin H Goodman Richard Shield's response to my very brief presentation of the facts relating to the deadly and entirely fraudulent "alternative medical discipline" of homeopathy is a remarkably dense collection of the most common responses both by those who are sincere truebelievers in this malignant quackery, and those who cynically promote it for their own profit. His response reflects a profound ignorance of how scientific and medical truth is established. He is unable to distinguish between what is and isn't intellectually honestly conducted scientific...

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