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Labour MP John McDonnell today welcomed the candidacy of leading
Yorkshire trade unionist, Paul Holmes, to replace Dave Prentis as
General Secretary of UNISON, the largest public sector trade union.
Last Friday February 5th members of the CYWU Unite trade union in
Coventry staged another one-day strike to defend jobs and conditions
and to try and stop the savage cuts being imposed on the Children and
Youth Services budget.
General Motors, implementing its restructuring programme has commenced a brutal
campaign of plant closures and job cuts in Europe. The first to go is
the plant in Antwerp, Belgium where 2,600 are employed at the
Vauxhall/Opel plant. The plant, producing the Vectra and Astra models,
will be closing down over the next few weeks and the production of
those models will be allocated to other plants across Europe.
The post of UNISON General Secretary is one of the most important jobs
in the whole of the Labour and trade union movement in Britain and the
north of Ireland. UNISON is a decisive force in the public sector and
is potentially extremely powerful. UNISON is also one of the biggest
unions affiliated to the Labour Party and the leadership of the union
is intimately tied up with the Labour Party. As such this election is
as important as the UNITE General Secretary Election, and in the public
sector perhaps more so.
Ireland: While
the public sector workers might not be all out on the streets or on all
out strike, it would be a big mistake to think that the government is
out of the woods on the question of the wage cuts and the attacks on
the public sector. 70,000 SIPTU workers joined the work to rule
yesterday and the CPSU have escalated their action and are balloting
for full strike action.
January 26th saw ‘Glasgow Uni Left Society’ hold a successful first
meeting of the year. More than twenty people came to hear Scottish
Socialist Party National Spokesperson Colin Fox and Sherry Shamasi of
The Struggle, the Pakistani section of the International Marxist
Tendency, speak about the war in Afghanistan.
Long
discussions into the small hours, shuttle diplomacy and the combined
weight of Gordon Brown and Brian Cowen and still the deadlock continues
over the devolution of policing and justice in the North. The process
is meant to have been agreed years ago, but the deep contradictions in
the North mean that every issue and every syllable has to be fought
over. The “peace process”, far from solving the problems of the working
class has enshrined sectarian division and entombed the leadership of
Sinn Féin and the DUP in Stormont, presiding over the minutiae of what
is more or less an overblown County Council.
Jerry Hicks adds his support to the Futjitsu workers.
On Saturday 23rd Jan, the Northern Region LRC (Labour Representation Committee) met in Gateshead to hear a speech from Ronnie Campbell MP for Blyth Valley in Northumberland. Ronnie, who is a well known life long
socialist and former NUM activist, addressed the 17 strong gathering of LP and
TU activists and laid out his view of the Labour Movement, a view of its
history and the perspectives for the coming election.
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