Nominations have closed for the Unite-Amicus General Secretary election and the four candidates are Derek Simpson, Jerry Hicks, Kevin Coyne and Paul Reuter. The fifth candidate who was nominated, Laurence Faircloth, has withdrawn from the contest and is now recommending support for Derek Simpson! Faircloth was selected last November at a meeting of the Amicus Unity Gazette to be the official Broad Left candidate.

In the last week of January 2009, industrial action began at the Lindsey refinery in Lincolnshire. Swiftly the strikes spread to Grangemouth in Scotland, Wilton in Cleveland and all over the country. By Friday January 30th 3,000 skilled workers were out from 11 plants. On Monday February 2nd thousands more joined the action. Sellafield workers at the nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria, Didcot power station, Longannet, Staythorpe, Milford Haven, Selby, Warrington and Aberthaw have all walked out. The Times headlined it as the “Dawn of new age of industrial unrest.” This is a well-organised, co-ordinated movement, which is unofficial and completely illegal under UK anti trade union laws.

We don’t accept that management can just push these people around and treat them like dirt. Calls for Mary Oboakye to be reinstated will be backed up with an action at Metronet offices at lunchtime on Wednesday January 28th.

UCU (the University and College Union – the main union for lecturers) and UNISON are battling to save London Metropolitan University from management plans to cut at least 330 jobs. ‘Times Higher Education’ puts it higher, estimating it “could mean up to 500 individuals (between one in seven and one in five of the current staff)" losing their jobs(22.01.09)

South West Trains has declared its intention to slash 480 jobs on its operations. SWT’s parent company is Stagecoach, which is owned by the fabulously wealthy Brian Souter.For years winning a franchise to run one of the train operating companies has been a license to print money. Profit really comes from the fares paid by passengers and the government subsidies, handouts from taxpayers. Now that recession is here, passenger numbers are set to fall. The railway companies are feeling the pinch. They have decided to make their staff take the burden of the fall in revenues

Unite Amicus General Secretary Election.

On Friday January  16th Jerry Hicks learned that he had enough nominations to stand as candidate in the election . Jerry spoke of his great pleasure and pride at having received official notification.

The Tories on the Council of the London Borough of Barnet intend to set up a “joint venture company” with the private sector, transfer 4,000 workers out of local authority employment and leave a skeleton staff of commissioners and auditors. They are proposing to privatise the Council!

  Jerry Hicks is standing for general secretary of the Amicus section of Unite. Jerry speaks to 'Socialist Appeal: "Workers rights, trade union freedoms, decent state pensions, pay and conditions, public ownership of utilities is the way forward especially now during the chaos that the free market has created. Our arguments have never made more sense. The last thing I’d like to say on this is I’m not afraid of the ‘S’ word – socialism."