Solidarity 122, 22 November 2007

Far from being only a footnote to the French strike, the rail workers’ strike on 14-17 November — about union recognition and pay — is an important struggle. In 1994, the former East German Reichsbahn was merged with the West German Bundesbahn, and the new company, Deutsche Bahn, became a “private” company, albeit owned entirely by the state. Since the fall of the Wall, 400,000 jobs on the German railways have been destroyed, yet the new company has only made a profit since 2005. The major union, Transnet, part of the German TUC, supports a planned sell-off, and Transnet’s leader Norbert...

Even with Labour and the Conservatives outdoing each other to be the party of big business and wealth, some poor people are still popular at Westminster — that is poor people in other countries. Laments for the scale of global poverty and a stern faced insistence on the need to do something about it are becoming the favoured recourse of every politician, most obviously Gordon Brown. Soundbites like “when conscience is joined to conscience, moral force to moral force, think how much our power to do good can achieve” (Brown on his recent trip to America) are lapped up by the press as testimony...

The ballot on whether postal workers will accept the deal brokered between the Communication Workers’ Union and Royal Mail closes on 27 November. Despite the difficulty of restarting action after such a prolonged lull, and the heavy pressure in favour of the deal from both the union leadership and management, CWU activists say the ballot could be close. Activists met last month and launched a “CWU Rank and File” group to campaign against the deal and create the embryo of a rank-and-file network on the post — something that has been sorely missing over the years, with militancy not matched by...

34,000 blue-collar construction workers employed by “Arabtec” in the “United Arab Emirates” are said to have returned to work after a three-week strike (14 November). However, the only sources for this are the company they work for and the UAE regime’s official press agency… Either way this was an extremely important strike by a group of low-paid migrant workers. The workers are working on a variety of construction projects including “Burj Dubai”, the tallest building in the world, being built by a consortium of the Dubai-based “Arabtec” and Belgian and South Korean companies. The low-paid...

I’m a second year university student working part-time in a service-sector job (a nightclub). Having the job means I never have to choose between buying books or buying lunch. Although elements of the job are enjoyable and positive (interaction with customers is sometimes very rewarding, and benefits such as free tickets to events held in the club are worth having as a student) the amount of casual and not-so-casual exploitation that takes place is outrageous. It’s nothing unique, though; it’s endemic right across the service-sector and particularly in workplaces employing high numbers of...

Right to fight back From Lutte Ouvrière, 16 November. By Arlette Laguiller, translated by Darren Bedford Using the pretext that these [public sector] workers were the last to enter into the already-existing pension scheme, the government is calling them “privileged”. But those who call these workers — many of whom have pensions of less than 1,000 euros [per month] — “privileged” are the same people who applauded the 15 million euros in tax breaks handed out to some of the wealthiest families in France. They are the same people who consider it acceptable that the President sanctioned a 172%...

At the time of writing (16 November), six days into their strike, French transport workers are refusing to back down. In spite of constant attacks in the press, and union leaders trying to weasel their way out of a fight, rail workers are keeping up the pressure and the leading the public sector fightback against Sarkozy’s reforms. The strike is being directed by mass meetings in workplaces, who are now electing strike committees to carry out their decisions independently of the big rail unions. Rail workers are going to talk to mass meetings of students, and representatives of other workers...

At the time of writing it is three weeks into General Pervez Musharraf’s full-scale “emergency” military rule in Pakistan. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of lawyers, civil and human rights activists and trade unionists remain in jail. Under new powers these people can be tried in military courts. With sources of political protests battened down, Musharraf has set up a “caretaker” government and replaced uppity supreme court judges with ones loyal to him. Those judges have now rubber-stamped Musharraf’s (illegal) election as President last October. With his continuing political role secure...

On Monday November 5, the Writers’ Guild of America went on strike for the first time in nearly twenty years. Last minute negotiations with the employers’ organisation, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) failed to reach a deal. The WGA (which for perverse historical reasons is actually two unions, the WGA west and the WGA east) “downed pencils”. This followed, for example, a mass meeting of the WGA west in which 3,000 writers voted 90% in favour of strike action. It’s a strike of writers who work in television and film production — including the staff of major TV...