Solidarity 146, 12 February 2009

Alan Fraser is a GMB union official involved in helping migrant workers organise. He spoke to Solidarity. Recent events — and not just recent events, the last few years — demonstrate that we need stronger links with European unions and other unions internationally. We need an international union card that is transferrable and can be used wherever you are working. As regards the “Posted Workers' Directive”, I understand that some of the union leaders made some quite serious points about it around the Warwick Agreement [of 2004, between the union leaders and the Labour Party leaders]. But the...

The heavy snowfall at the beginning of February prevented many people from attending work. While a few employers did the decent thing and paid them anyway, many workers have found themselves losing pay or leave. The small minority included Epsom and St Helier NHS Trust and Croydon Council, which not only paid staff who could not attend, but gave staff who did make it to work an extra day’s leave entitlement to thank them! Union reps in other workplaces should demand that their employers do the same. Some other employers allowed staff to work from home, or at locations other than their normal...

As Solidarity went to press, students at the University of East Anglia, Edinburgh University and Goldsmiths College in London had just gone into occupation in solidarity with Gaza — bringing the total number of colleges that have now occupied to 29. Koos Couvée reports from the meeting to coordinate the occupations called by the Stop the War Coalition on 7 February. The meeting started with a number of high profile speakers. Jeremy Corbyn praised the student movement rising again after years of apathy. Students involved in the LSE and Manchester occupations spoke about the disgraceful attitude...

Faryal Velmi visted Karachi, Pakistan in December 2008. In the first of two articles about Pakistan’s politics and history she describes the events leading up to the change of government in Pakistan and her conversations with Pakistani socialists about the prospects for political change under the new Pakistan People’s Party government. Driving from the airport through the streets of Karachi, the first thing that catches your eye are huge billboards depicting the assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto; a garish reminder of another bloody chapter in the country’s short history. Bhutto...

Iraq’s provincial elections on 1 February confirmed the picture that the Maliki government is gaining strength, though also the fact that the foundations of that strength are fragile. Prime minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Dawa party did best in the elections. Maliki used the occasion to rebuff the new US vice-president Joe Biden, who had called for more US pressure on the Iraqi government for political reform. “The time for [US] pressure is past”, declared Maliki, who last year negotiated a deal under which US troops are supposed to quit Iraq’s cities by June this year, and the whole country by 2011...

The USA’s new vice-president, Joe Biden, has announced that Washington is conducting a “strategic review” on Afghanistan with a view to setting “clear and achievable” goals. The Guardian reports a senior Nato official present at Biden’s briefing as saying Washington’s emphasis on Afghanistan was shifting to “being much more realistic”, adding: “It doesn’t need to be a democracy, just secure.” In his election campaign, Barack Obama pledged to withdraw US troops from Iraq (something that the Bush administration had already committed the USA to, in the deal it signed last year with the Baghdad...

Workers’ Liberty activists report from the Isle of Grain power station construction project, in Kent. Sixty to eighty construction workers gathered here on Wednesday 11 February for a demonstration organised by the unions, GMB and Unite. The political issues were posed most sharply when a team arrived from the Daily Star to try to give out printed “British Jobs For British Workers” posters and get a photo-shoot of workers holding them. The union banners and flags had no such slogan, instead calling for “fairness” or “a chance” for local workers. Many of the workers on the demonstration were...

“We want to be careful with the nationalism, lads, so that things don’t turn nasty. I’ve got nothing against the Italian workers as such, they’re just doing a job, putting food on the table for their families. “They’re not Without Papers, as they are EU citizens and are legally allowed to work here. Besides, this is racist. Many of us have worked abroad - Germany, Spain, Middle East - did we think or care about jobs in those countries? Getting at the workers is just going to give us a bad reputation, and turn the public against us. “The problem is with the tenders, Total management and...

Dear Alan Rusbridger, The Guardian is the “house organ” of most of the non-Muslim people who took part in the two big demonstrations during the Gaza war. A vigorous campaign by the Guardian against anti-semitism on the “left” might do much good. On Saturday 7 February, the Guardian carried an editorial, “Language and History”, denouncing anti-semitism and specifically the “anti-Zionist” anti-semitism that is now commonplace, remarking on the growth of anti-semitic incidents in Britain (now on average, one per day, and increasing). Unfortunately, the editorial seriously misdefined the realities...

As Solidarity goes to press, workers’ demonstrations over union-agreement coverage on construction projects had just been held at the power-station sites at Staythorpe in Nottinghamshire and the Isle of Grain in Kent. These actions follow a week-long wave of unofficial strikes at power-station and refinery sites across Britain which defied the anti-union laws in a way not seen for decades. The campaign started with demonstrations at Staythorppe, stepped up with a strike from 28 January at Lindsey Oil Refinery in North Lincolnshire, and exploded across the country with strikes from 30 January...