Union elections

On 28 October, ballot papers go out to elect two vice-presidents for the National Union of Teachers (NUT). Only LANAC candidates, Bridget Chapman and Jane Nellist, have anything to say about the strategy needed to beat the Tories′ attacks. This year there are four other candidates for Vice-President. Two from Broadly Speaking, the old right-wing, and two from the Socialist Teachers Alliance/Campaign for a Democratic Union, the current leadership who responsible for our ″action″ campaign since 2010, a campaign that resulted in major defeats on pay and pensions. These four candidates have one...

Strikers at the National Gallery, London, returned to work on Monday 5 October after 111 days on strike. They have secured a deal which protects members’ terms and conditions and sees their sacked PCS rep reinstated. The deal, which was made on Friday 2 October, does not stop the privatisation of gallery services but is a big climb down by gallery management in most areas, and the gallery has agreed to review the private contract after one year Sacked PCS rep Candy Udwin will be reinstated. Staff will be paid the living wage, which will also be uprated on basic pay in future years. Guarantees...

The Unison General Secretary election nomination process has begun. There are five candidates, including incumbent General Secretary Dave Prentis. Workers’ Liberty members and supporters in Unison are backing John Burgess, and so is the majority of the Unison Left NEC caucus. John is Barnet Local Government Branch Secretary; he has an impressive record of leading a series of fights against the so called “easycouncil” in Barnet and in defence of public services. We encourage all Unison members to nominate John to ensure he reaches the 25 branch nominations needed to get on the ballot (he has 12...

Workers’ Liberty supporter Bob Carnegie has been elected to the Queensland Branch Secretary position of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) in this year’s Quadrennial elections. Bob assumes office for a four year term on 1 July. Bob was one of four challengers for the position vacated by retiring incumbent Mick Carr. Bob was defeated at the last MUA Quadrennial elections of 2011 by Carr by only two votes (504 to 506). This time around, Bob won easily with a margin of fifty votes. The final tally was Bob with 315 votes, former Queensland Deputy Secretary Trevor Munday with 265 votes, seafarer...

Workers’ Liberty supporter Bob Carnegie is again standing for the position of Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) Queensland Branch Secretary in this year’s Quadrennial elections. In what will hopefully be a case of “the early bird catches the worm”, Bob began his campaign on March 7, just one day after nominations had opened, by visiting job sites in the north of Queensland. This is not Carnegie’s first crack at the Queensland Branch Secretary spot. In the last MUA Quadrennial elections of 2011, Bob was defeated by only two votes (504 to 506) by incumbent Mick Carr. As Carr is retiring this...

The election of Dave Ward as General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union is a step backwards. Liberalisation of the postal sector and privatisation of Royal Mail should mean the priority for the CWU is building the union across the communication industry, but this has happened very slowly. In telecoms, where privatisation and competition arrived 30 years ago, workers with union recognition are a minority. More focus and resources need to be put into this work to take the Union into unrecognised areas. Though under Hayes the union could have done more, he at least recognised the need...

Seventy Unison members who work with the homeless in Glasgow Council started an indefinite strike on Tuesday 31 March. The strike is to win recognition of their work reflected in their pay grading. Unison says workers doing similar jobs are paid a pay grade higher than the homeless support workers. Workers have been taking action short of strike action since January. Send messages of support to: Glasgow City Unison Lewisham academies fight wins extension Two school reps involved in the fight against academies in Lewisham attended NUT conference this weekend and spoke at the Lanac organised...

On 26 February 500 demonstrators marched in Athens denouncing the Syriza-led government’s deal with the Eurogroup finance ministers and demanding that Greece repudiate its debt and quit the EU. Some of the demonstrators — not on the initiative of the organisers, it seems — smashed up shops, set cars on fire, and threw molotov cocktails. The organisers were Antarsya, the left coalition in Greece in which SEK, by far the most important group outside Britain linked to the SWP here, is a leading force. Antarsya, in coalition with a left-reformist pro-EU-exit group, scored 0.64% in Greece’s January...

On Tuesday the 13 January the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) branch of the PCS union voted by an overwhelming majority to call strikes over pay. The ICO has been lagging behind civil service pay for some time, with members’ salaries a grade behind what the rest of the civil service receive. This year’s pay offer was limited to a 3% rise for workers who have been in the job longer, and bumping newer workers up the pay scale. Whilst this allows management to bribe newer staff with superficially large increases in pay this is money they are contractually obliged to over time. It does...

According to an National Union of Teachers (NUT) survey, 30% of teachers have been denied pay progression this year under new performance related pay rules brought in from September 2013. The survey also found that denial of pay progression was higher in primary schools that in secondary schools, and was higher for black and minority ethnic teachers. 90% of those denied progression reported that there was no indication in the year that this was a possibility. More than three quarters said they were not planning on appealing the decision, despite NUT advice to do so. Appealing pay decisions is...