Solidarity 033, 26 June 2003

By Pete Keenlyside In an era when trade union leaders were household names, Tom Jackson, who died this month aged 78, stood out from the rest. This was partly due to his appearance - the trademark handlebar moustache - partly due to the fact that he appeared regularly on TV panel programmes but mainly because he was general secretary of the postal workers union (then UPW, now CWU) during the 7-week strike in 1971. Tom Jackson joined the Post Office and the union in 1938. After a spell in the services during the war he set about climbing the union ladder and by 1955 got himself elected to the...

By a GPMU member The Graphical Paper and Media Union held its biennial delegate conference last week in Bournemouth. It was totally dominated by a debate on the future of the union in the face of membership loss and impending financial crisis. Despite a long-running feud between a minority of branches and the head office over a merger with another union the conference voted to clear the way to it. The most likely partners are the TGWU and Amicus. A group of branches, alarmed that for the first time an amendment proposed ending the GPMU's involvement in the TUC Organising Academy and the...

By a PCS member The Executive election in the civil service union PCS is now entering its final stages. The votes have to be in by noon on the 3 July. Given that the return envelope is second class, the effective last day to vote is 1 July. Therefore the push is on to maximise the vote. That means active canvassing of branch members; asking them if they have voted; if not, reminding them to vote, telling them what the branch recommendation is; and returning to them in a day or so to see whether they have voted. It is only by this activity that can we increase the size of the vote. Turnouts in...

By Ed Whitby, delegate, Newcastle City Unison Unison conference (17-20 June) was more about promises than policies. General Secretary Dave Prentis spent the run up to conference talking about “reclaiming the Labour Party” and working with others in the “awkward squad” of union leaders. Prentis is under pressure from members in local government, angry that Unison uncritically gives support to Labour councils who attack jobs and members in the NHS, and that PFI and Foundation Hospitals are supported by many Unison-backed MPs. So when two months ago at Affiliated Political Fund conference (which...

The ghost of our former Deputy General Secretary (Postal) John Keggie is still with us. The deal that his successor, Dave Ward, has done on the Tailored Delivery System has all the hallmarks of a classic John Keggie deal - 12,000 job cuts and a "two bob" bonus scheme. Well there's no doubt as to who's being stitched up here. Ward managed to force the deal through CWU Conference (the vote on the job cuts element was carried by just 7,444 votes to 7,394) but getting postalworkers in delivery offices to accept the huge increases in workloads which will come is another matter. The Post Office is...

By a CWU member The productivity bonus scheme for BT Customer Service engineers, "Self Motivated Teams", has been rejected by members of the Communication Workers Union three times this year - at a Special Conference of activists in January, in a consultative ballot of engineers affected in February, and in the mandate given to the Executive in the ballot to take industrial action against SMT in April. When strike action was derailed by management's use of the the anti-union laws, the union has lost ground on the issue among the members. Strike action would have been solid in the vast majority...

Stop the testing torture! By Patrick Yarker Conference against SATs 11.30-3.30, Saturday 28 June South Camden Community School, Charrington Road, London. Nearest Tube: King’s Cross/Euston More: 01727 835554 or secretary@hertfordshire.nut.org.uk See www.teachers.org.uk for NUT anti-SATs material The conference of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) at Easter voted unanimously to ballot members for a boycott of all SATs. That ballot is expected next term. Activists are working now to lay the groundwork for a positive vote and to make the national campaign of opposition to SATs as powerful as...

By Sam Ruby The Government has rejected the recommendations of two Parliamentary Committees that parents should be banned from smacking their children. So it is an outrage for a husband to hit his wife and cruelty when someone kicks a pet dog…- yet it is okay for adults to physically hurt children? On this issue reason and logic have never played a part in the decisions of policy makers. The idea that smacking a child - occasionally or frequently - is a form of child abuse is one that many people, particularly parents, find upsetting. So the Government wants to avoid upset - 50% of parents...

Working in a whorehouse “Best practice”? “Sensitive area” New Labour: widening the poverty gap Working in a whorehouse “Working for the fire service is like working in a whorehouse. The better we perform the more often they screw us!” (from 30k rank and file firefighters’ site). The Treasury plans to strip members of the armed forces, police and fire brigades of their early retirement rights, cutting millions of pounds from their pensions. People in high-risk physical occupations are at present allowed to retire earlier than normal, but Chancellor Gordon Brown is proposing that should end from...

French strikes over: we'll be back 50th anniversary of East German uprising Strike wave in South Korea tests the new president Zimbabwe extends strike bans Demonstration against Lula's government Cambodian police kill demonstrators No jobs for sacked Venezuelan oil workers Celebrate 100 years of the car industry? ICFTU figures for deaths of trade unionists French strikes over: we'll be back The inspiring fight of French workers against the Chirac-Raffarin government's plans to cut their pensions is over. The legislation is going through parliament where the government has a massive majority...