Solidarity 090, 23 March 2006

A fringe meeting on the Trade Union Freedom Bill was held at Women’s TUC. The concept of a such a Bill has won the support of over 100 Labour MPs since the Trade Union Congress 2005 called for a campaign to free our unions. Its aim is to begin to roll back the long standing restrictions on collective action by trade unions that were brought in under the Tories and continued by this Blair-led Labour Government. If adopted the Bill would give us stronger rights in the workplace and give working women and men a platform to resist the ruthless employers of the 21st century. This Bill has...

From a report by Pauline Bradley About 320 delegates, from all the major unions and some of the smaller ones, attended the Women’s TUC Conference this year. Only a few motions caused any contention. One on “Artistic freedom of expression” proposed by Equity, which raised concerns about the cancellation of the play Behzti, depicting a rape in a Sikh temple, caused a discussion. There were several good motions on pensions and equal pay (which were what we sung about at the social!) and a good one on trafficked women and children too. We were graced with the presence of Tessa Jowell MP, who has...

By an AMICUS member While the TGWU has started a process of consultation on the creation of a new super union, developments in the other two unions (AMICUS and GMB) could well undermine the project. AMICUS is in the middle of a major witch hunt that threatens its already weak democracy. Three officials of the union have been issued with dismissal notices. Des Heemskerk, Jimmy Warne and Cathy Willis. The charges are unclear, but it appears they are accused of being involved in a “plot” to oust General Secretary Derek Simpson. The bitter irony is, all three played an important role in helping to...

Sam Azad is an Iranian born AWL member who was involved in events around the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and its aftermath. His story indicates the need to forge a movement in opposition to both war and Iran’s reactionary regime. To understand the current situation in Iran — the dominance of an Islamic regime and the dynamic of struggle — it’s essential to understand the recent history of the country. This history is indivisible from the development of capitalism in Iran. Iranian capitalism relied mainly on the development of the oil industry in provinces bordering Iraq. This, and the influence...

The people of Iran face two threats simultaneously: the prospect of imperialist American-led military action and sanction and the ongoing but accelerated repression and despotism of the Islamic regime in Iran. The threat of the occupying imperialist forces and their long-term plans for the region and Iran are better known in the west. The occupying capitalist forces know that the prospect of a military action or sanctions against Iran will harm the people of Iran but that has no place in their calculations. The occupying forces ultimately want a change from the above and Iraq are painfully...

By Dan La Botz More than a quarter of a million miners and steelworkers walked off the job between 1-3 March in wildcat strikes at 70 companies in Mexico, virtually paralyzing the mining industry. While the strike has ended, there are reasons to believe that this could be the first act that could challenge Mexican employers, the corrupt “official” unions, and the conservative Mexican government. The strike resulted from an attempt by the government to remove the Mexican Miners’ Union’s top officer, general secretary Napleón Gómez Urrutia, and replace him with Elías Morales Hernández, a union...

David Broder outlines a critical view of Evo Morales’ rise to power in Bolivia and subsequent programme When Morales was elected in December 2005 the mainstream media saw it as the victory of the — workers’ and peasants’ “social movements” whose demonstrations and strikes shook the establishment last summer. This was a crude mischaracterisation. By then it had already become clear that the Movimiento al Socialismo leader will have to be pressurised into making any of his promised reforms. Morales lacks some of the autocratic tendencies of Venezuela’s president Chávez, with whom he has been...

In the New Zealand city of Auckland, more than 1,000 secondary school students walked out of classes in protest at low pay for young workers, explicitly linking their protest to events in France. A rally demanding equal pay with adults ended in scuffles with the police and two arrests after “Radical Youth” student representatives attempted to protect the demonstrators’ safety during a sit down at a major road junction. One of those arrested, 17 year old Omar Hamed, said: “I was going to move from the road as soon as I had accounted for the safety of the other demonstrators. But the officers at...

At the end of the 18 March demonstration in Paris, riot police hospitalised French postal worker Cyril Ferez, who had been sitting peacefully in front of a police line. According to SUD, the militant trade union of whose postal and telecoms division he is a member, Ferez was “violently trampled by a load of the police force”, who then refused to administer first aid or call for medical help, despite the obviousness of his injuries. He is now in a coma and the forecast of his doctors is “serious”.

Solidarity spoke to Nico Dessaux, an activist in Lille. How did the anti-CPE movement begin? The student unions attempted to launch a movement against it a few months ago, but with little success. The left parties in the National Assembly also launched a parliamentary guerrilla war, with thousands of amendments. As a result, our prime minister, De Villepin, used article 49.3 of the constitution, a vote of confidence in the government, to push the full text through without discussion. This is what sparked the strike movement in the universities. The 18 March demonstration in Paris seemed to be...