Solidarity 100, 20 October 2006

Can a Teaching Assistant carry out her job in the classroom whilst wearing a niqab? Being prepared to take it off when no male is present does not resolve the issue. Men work in schools. A TA can quell unruly behaviour with a raised eyebrow or a pursed lip. A student gets a clear message from facial expressions. They get reassurance that, though we don’t approve of what they just did, we don’t think they are nasty people. You can’t do that without showing your face. Children learn with their whole bodies. We are role models. We must not teach students that women’s bodies are shameful, or that...

By Sofie Buckland, National Union of Students National Executive On Sunday 29 October, NUS is holding a national demonstration in London under the slogan “Admission impossible”. This is something student activists should welcome. After last year’s decision to cancel the national demo, and the 2004 decision to move it to Cardiff with the result that no one turned up, a well-planned and publicised protest in London is a big step forward. The current NUS leaders are essentially the same people who betrayed the struggle against top-up fees at the crucial moment in 2005; they are organising a...

By Mike Fenwick The growing numbers of local demonstrations, lobbies and meetings about the crisis in the NHS has pushed the issue to the front of the national political debate. Every party conference had a debate on the issue. David Cameron even tried to claim the NHS was safe in the Tories hands. If only because of the record of the Tories in government on the NHS — vicious cuts and starting the privatisation ball rolling — the claim is incredible. Besides the Tory policy is no different from that of Blair — no limits on privatisation and full speed ahead with foundation trusts and PFI. The...

Whipps Cross victory by a unison member After a ten year struggle, involving three rounds of strike action, a significant victory has been won for contracted out workers at Whipps Cross Hospital in East London. The group of mainly low paid ancillary workers involved are employed by Initial and include domestics, porters and switchboard staff at the hospital. Their low pay and poor conditions typified what has been called the two tier workforce. Outside of national agreements and bargaining they are amongst the staff who have been the victims of privatisation. As the private sector contractors...

Cleaners in PFI schools work for private companies, as do the premises staff. However, many premises staff were TUPE’d over from the local authority when their employer changed. This means that they took their local authority wages and conditions with them. Cleaners come and go very quickly, which means that those who date back to local authority employment are fewer. Those that joined the staff under the private employer work under different and worse conditions than the rest. There are twenty seven PFI schools in Tower Hamlets in East London. Until recently the cleaners in those schools were...

Council workers in Coventry have stepped up their action against the imposition of a Single Status scheme which will see many workers' wages cut by up to 33%. Single Status comes in the name of equal and fair pay, but in practice penalises some of the worst-off workers. The indefinite selective strike has in recent weeks picked up with the involvement of school admissions staff, refuse collectors and even workers in Exchequer Banking at the council, who are mobilising in solidarity with fellow Unison members despite not being affected by the scheme themselves. The Unison website comments: "We...

On 7 September, Tony Blair and Education Secretary Alan Johnson visited Quinton Kynaston school in North London to announce the rolling out of their "trust schools" programme - including to QK itself. They were met by a protest of school students and some staff, whose organiser, QK learning support assistant and AWL member Robin Sivapalan, has been suspended from his job on charges of "breaching confidentiality" and "insubordination". Robin's hearing is on 9 November; in the run up to it, we must apply the maximum possible pressure for the charges to be dropped. This is an issue of defending...

Several thousands workers in the Identity and Passport Service took a day of strike action on 12 October over their employer's refusal to settle last year's pay claim. Following strike action last November, the employer was supposed to settle by 1 August but has refused to do so. The strike was well-supported at the seven IPS offices across the country. At the Victoria office, where 700 of the IPS's 3,300 employees work, only about thirty went in - and there were probably that many on the picket line. The dispute has to be seen in the context of the civil service's crazy pay bargaining system...

by Bruce Robinson I spent five days as a free-floating activist at Labour Party conference, leafleting delegates, taking part in protest demonstrations and attending fringe meetings. At times I felt that I was existing in two parallel universes. On the one hand, there were protesters really angry at what the Blair government has done. About 300 students from Manchester and other local universities protested against fees; there was the all purpose “Stop the warmongers” protest; and about 60 disabled people protesting about changes to the Incapacity Benefit rules which may mean them being forced...

From the October edition of Hackney Socialist Unity John McDonnell’s campaign for Labour Party leader is not only a fight against the fake-labour leaders of ‘New Labour’; it is a challenge for the entire labour movement. 100 years ago, Labour was founded as the political party of the working class. Today the middle-class politicians who hijacked Labour are governing in the interests of capital not the working class. Since 1997, ‘New Labour’ has lost millions of voters and 200,000 members. They have kept the anti-union laws and attacked the welfare state. They have privatised more than the...