Gearing up for Action

By New Worker correspondent

In Greenwich around 120 housing repair workers at are taking strike action for two days later this month after bosses reneged on a settlement over a new pay structure.

In October, Unite called off industrial action after a deal was hammered out with the Royal Borough for the carpenters, electricians and plumbers working from the Birchmere depot.

On Tuesday the union accused the council’s management of “backsliding” in failing to implement the new pay structure. Last autumn’s deal promised that the instances when Unite members’ pay can drop will be minimised. There will also be “pay protection” and, most importantly, no imposition of any changes unilaterally.

Unite regional officer Onay Kasab said: “Unite negotiated a settlement in good faith last October, but the management have been foot dragging and backsliding ever since.

“We thought we had a deal, but apparently that has turned out to be a mirage. As a result, we are calling two 24-hour strikes later this month which will severely disrupt repairs and renovations to the council’s properties.”

  Meanwhile in the Wirral on Merseyside, 180 binmen are voting for strike action against their employer Biffa Waste Services, which pays one of its directors £1 million per year.

The dispute is over a pay claim and over attempting to move the workforce on to monthly pay, without meaningful consultation or agreement on safeguards being put in place to ensure that members are paid correctly when pay day arrives.

Unite the union says that talks to resolve the dispute, involving conciliation service ACAS, have failed to find a resolution.

Unite regional officer Steve Gerrard said: “Biffa’s failure to meet the pay claim, and its high-handed manner in trying to force through monthly pay, has left workers with no option but to ballot for strike action.

“If strikes go ahead it will cause considerable disruption and rubbish will quickly start to pile up on the streets of the Wirral.

“Biffa claims it can’t afford to meet the pay claim of our members, despite paying a director a telephone number salary. Wirral residents need to ask if Biffa has got its priorities right.”

Across the country, Wilko, one of the discount chain store which has replaced Woolworths, is planning to slash the sick pay of its tens of thousands of staff in both its stores and distribution centres. The GMB union says there will be no company sick pay after the first occasion of sickness and that those with less than a year of service will have no rights whatsoever. The present dispute comes hard on the heels of drastic changes to the weekend working rota.

Gary Carter, the union’s national officer for the retail sector, said: “GMB members are furious that Wilko would turn on its dedicated workforce and slash company sick pay. What has Wilko become? Picking a fight with your workforce by imposing draconian cuts to sick pay is no way for a modern employer to act” he said optimistically – but capitalism is all about increasing profits for the shareholders.

He went on to say: “This will have a negative impact on the business, while hard-working employees will be pushed into poverty because they won’t be able to pay their bills if they are sick.

“Other workers will be forced to come into stores when sick because Wilko has taken away their sick pay.

“GMB members are rightly going to fight this and their union will support them.”

Let’s hope so.

Farewell to Ken Ruddock

  By New Worker correspondent

  

Friends and comrades gathered on a sad Friday morning at Guildford crematorium to pay their last respects to Ken Ruddock a life-long trade unionist and communist, who passed away at the age of 93 last month. Ken, a militant engineering worker, was a founder member of the New Communist Party. He was national vice-chair during the turbulent times of 1990s when the very existence of the Party was at stake and he remained a leading member of the NCP until ill-health forced him to ease up a few years. The Party was represented by Theo Russell from the Central Committee and Richard Bos, who had known Ken for over 40 years.

• Ken's National Service Days

MH17 Call for Justice!

by New Worker correspondent 

In July 2014 a Malaysian airliner was shot down over eastern Ukraine during the fighting between the Donbas partisans and the fascist militias loyal to the US puppet regime in Kiev.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur and all 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed. A Dutch-led investigation said the plane had been downed by a missile fired by the Donbas resistance or the Russians – a claim that the imperialist media has unquestioningly repeated in its efforts to demonise Russia and the anti-fascist Ukrainian resistance movements. 

            Three Russians and one Ukrainian are going to be tried in their absence on 9th March in The Hague. But there’s another side to the story and that was heard at the Conway Hall in London on Tuesday when Bonanza Media and the Global Rights for Peaceful People movement screened a documentary that challenges the whole Western narrative on the tragedy.

The film presents massive evidence that the Dutch-led investigation into the crash was a total fraud which had already decided that Russia or the Donbas partisans were to blame. A tech expert showed that phone intercepts by Kiev regime intelligence officers purporting to record Donbas partisan commanders talking about the event on the day were spliced together from unconnected conversations. Huge pieces of crash site debris were not picked up by the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) which refused to include Malaysia in the JIT for six months.

MH17: Call for Justice is the first detailed documentary to challenge the Dutch-NATO version of events about the tragedy. It includes wide-reaching and exclusive interviews, including the Malaysian prime minister, one of the suspects accused of shooting down the MH17, and the Malaysian colonel who travelled to Ukraine to collect the black boxes. There are also testimonies from witnesses, evidence from experts, and previously unseen footage from the crash site in Ukraine.

• MH17 Call for Justice video