Wednesday, 29 July 2009
Monday, 6 October 2008
Saturday, 2 August 2008
Friday, 28 March 2008
Scottish Conference
Scottish Conference
12 April, 11am - 3pm, UNISON Offices, Albion St., Trongate, Glasgow
Speakers include: Phil McGarry (RMT Scottish organiser), Sam McCartney (UNISON convenor),Dave Chapple (CWU branch chair), Pauline Bradley (UNISON steward), a Glasgow Day Care striker
For leaflet:
http://www.shopstewards.net/
Monday, 25 February 2008
Egyptian workers step up
Egyptian workers step up
The class struggle in Egypt, rising since 2006, has reached a new pitch in the last week.
On Sunday 16 February, more than 10,000 workers from the Misr (Egypt) Spinning and Weaving Company textile mill in the Nile Delta city of Mahalla el-Kubra, north of Cairo, staged a mass demonstration against prices rices, low wages and the regime of Hosni Mubarak, joined by thousands more working-class people from the town. The Mahalla workers' action was followed by similar, smaller-scale protests across Egypt.
The Mahalla factory, which employs 27,000 people, has been the site of huge workers’ struggles since December 2006, when nearly the entire workforce went on strike over withheld bonuses. In September last year, 15,000 workers were on strike again over profit-sharing, safety and bonuses, leading to a confrontation with riot police; and there have been struggles over issues including services at the company hospital and the provision of free bread to workers.
The difference this time is that the workers’ action has been much more directly political. In previous struggles, there were appeals to Mubarak’s government to intervene; on Sunday, according to California-based journalist and blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy (one of the very few sources about strikes in Egypt), workers shouted slogans including "Down, down Hosni Mubarak! Your rule is shit!"
The spark for this protest was the convening, in the context of big increases in the price of basic commodities, of the National Council of Wages, which sets Egypt’s minimum wage. The minimum wage has been held at not much more than £3 a month since 1984, despite soaring inflation; the Mahalla workers have demanded £112 a month, while the representatives of Egypt’s official trade unions on the Council have been calling for £55. Including profit sharing, a Mahalla worker currently makes about £40 a month. The government has now announced that the rate will be raised to about £25, making further protests very likely.
When protests began in the factory last Sunday, the bosses once again called in riot police, but the workers stormed the gates and drove them off before marching into town. Their slogans on the march also included "We are sick of eating beans while the rich eat chickens and pigeons" and "Gamal Mubarak, tell your dad we hate him!" (a reference to Mubarak’s son and heir apparent).
This inspiring class struggle has enormous significance. The textile workers are in many ways the vanguard of the Egyptian working class. The December 2006 strike was followed by action in many other sectors – including rail workers, nurses, cement workers, binmen and tax collectors. Cairo’s leading independent and broadly liberal newspaper, al-Masri al-Youm, estimates that 226 sit-ins, strikes, hunger strikes and workers’ demonstrations took place in 2006; Hamalawy estimates 387 actions in the first six months of 2007.
This time, the Mahalla struggle was followed within the next few days with action by other textile workers, by Suez Canal workers, electricity company lawyers and nurses, as well as by working-class protests against housing costs.
Moreover, this is the first time that large-scale workers’ demonstrations have raised clear anti-government slogans since the bread riots against the regime of Anwar Sadat in 1977. And the entry of the working class onto the political stage means that Mubarak is being challenged from the left, and not just by the deeply reactionary Muslim Brotherhood. According to Hamalawy, last week’s action was fomented by left activists inside Mahalla (which is not to say that the Muslim Brotherhood has no influence among the workers, of course).
All this signifies a clash between by far the biggest Arab working class and a deeply oppressive regime which is one of the US’s key allies, receiving $1.3 billion dollars a year in military aid, for instance. It means that both Egypt and Iran, the largest economies in the Middle East, are wracked by class struggle – holding out the prospect, distant but real, of workers’ revolution to sweep away all the region’s ruling classes, whether pro or anti-US.
As Hossam el-Hamalawy put it in September: "During my phone conversations with the strikes leaders and activists inside the company, they always ask me if people in America and the world have heard about the strike." We need to make sure the world knows, and that its labour movements mobilise solidarity.
The class struggle in Egypt, rising since 2006, has reached a new pitch in the last week.
On Sunday 16 February, more than 10,000 workers from the Misr (Egypt) Spinning and Weaving Company textile mill in the Nile Delta city of Mahalla el-Kubra, north of Cairo, staged a mass demonstration against prices rices, low wages and the regime of Hosni Mubarak, joined by thousands more working-class people from the town. The Mahalla workers' action was followed by similar, smaller-scale protests across Egypt.
The Mahalla factory, which employs 27,000 people, has been the site of huge workers’ struggles since December 2006, when nearly the entire workforce went on strike over withheld bonuses. In September last year, 15,000 workers were on strike again over profit-sharing, safety and bonuses, leading to a confrontation with riot police; and there have been struggles over issues including services at the company hospital and the provision of free bread to workers.
The difference this time is that the workers’ action has been much more directly political. In previous struggles, there were appeals to Mubarak’s government to intervene; on Sunday, according to California-based journalist and blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy (one of the very few sources about strikes in Egypt), workers shouted slogans including "Down, down Hosni Mubarak! Your rule is shit!"
The spark for this protest was the convening, in the context of big increases in the price of basic commodities, of the National Council of Wages, which sets Egypt’s minimum wage. The minimum wage has been held at not much more than £3 a month since 1984, despite soaring inflation; the Mahalla workers have demanded £112 a month, while the representatives of Egypt’s official trade unions on the Council have been calling for £55. Including profit sharing, a Mahalla worker currently makes about £40 a month. The government has now announced that the rate will be raised to about £25, making further protests very likely.
When protests began in the factory last Sunday, the bosses once again called in riot police, but the workers stormed the gates and drove them off before marching into town. Their slogans on the march also included "We are sick of eating beans while the rich eat chickens and pigeons" and "Gamal Mubarak, tell your dad we hate him!" (a reference to Mubarak’s son and heir apparent).
This inspiring class struggle has enormous significance. The textile workers are in many ways the vanguard of the Egyptian working class. The December 2006 strike was followed by action in many other sectors – including rail workers, nurses, cement workers, binmen and tax collectors. Cairo’s leading independent and broadly liberal newspaper, al-Masri al-Youm, estimates that 226 sit-ins, strikes, hunger strikes and workers’ demonstrations took place in 2006; Hamalawy estimates 387 actions in the first six months of 2007.
This time, the Mahalla struggle was followed within the next few days with action by other textile workers, by Suez Canal workers, electricity company lawyers and nurses, as well as by working-class protests against housing costs.
Moreover, this is the first time that large-scale workers’ demonstrations have raised clear anti-government slogans since the bread riots against the regime of Anwar Sadat in 1977. And the entry of the working class onto the political stage means that Mubarak is being challenged from the left, and not just by the deeply reactionary Muslim Brotherhood. According to Hamalawy, last week’s action was fomented by left activists inside Mahalla (which is not to say that the Muslim Brotherhood has no influence among the workers, of course).
All this signifies a clash between by far the biggest Arab working class and a deeply oppressive regime which is one of the US’s key allies, receiving $1.3 billion dollars a year in military aid, for instance. It means that both Egypt and Iran, the largest economies in the Middle East, are wracked by class struggle – holding out the prospect, distant but real, of workers’ revolution to sweep away all the region’s ruling classes, whether pro or anti-US.
As Hossam el-Hamalawy put it in September: "During my phone conversations with the strikes leaders and activists inside the company, they always ask me if people in America and the world have heard about the strike." We need to make sure the world knows, and that its labour movements mobilise solidarity.
Thursday, 24 January 2008
Thursday, 13 December 2007
Attack on Chinese Labour activist
Chinese labor activist Huang Qingnan was attacked and stabbed repeatedly, and... (Interlocals.net )
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_7671025?source=email
Wednesday, 7 November 2007
Tuesday, 6 November 2007
Saturday, 3 November 2007
Friday, 2 November 2007
France- University occupations
There's stacks of info on the website of SUD-Etudiant, the student section of the left-wing SUD trade union centre - http://www.sud-etudiant.org/
Sunday, 28 October 2007
Shop stewards conf-Glasgow
Scotland
Saturday 1 December
11am to 5pm
Quality Central Hotel
Hope Street
Glasgow
Speakers include:
Bob Crow (RMT and Janice Godrich (PCS)
http://www.shopstewards.net/NSSNleaflet_Layout%201.pdf
Leaflet at www.shopstewards.net
Saturday 1 December
11am to 5pm
Quality Central Hotel
Hope Street
Glasgow
Speakers include:
Bob Crow (RMT and Janice Godrich (PCS)
http://www.shopstewards.net/NSSNleaflet_Layout%201.pdf
Leaflet at www.shopstewards.net
1891 Introduction by Frederick Engels
Twentieth Anniversary of the Commune
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm
Sunday, 21 October 2007
French Workers Strike Back — 18 October
French Workers Strike Back — 18 October
Author: Ed Maltby
French rail, gas, and electricity workers are striking on 18 October over pensions, privatisation and their right to strike. The new right-wing French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, has bitten off more than he can chew.
So desperate is Sarkozy to prove himself to right-wing voters and his party, the UMP, he plans to destroy as quickly as possible all of the gains won by French workers since the war; gains which the French working class has been able at least partially to defend throughout the 1980s and 90s, while other European workers were suffering a series of defeats.
Sarkozy wants to break the strength of the railway workers’ unions, and strip transport and energy workers of their “special regimes” — a raft of pension benefits won decades ago, which allow workers to retire at 55 on a full pension. The last time a minister tried to do that was in 1995, when Alain Juppé's attacks on these workers resulted in a month of massive strikes and a major victory for the unions. Sarko’s vaulting ambition may be catapulting him straight towards a replay of that battle.
The unions who organise workers on the state rail company (SNCF) and Paris public transport (RATP) haven’t forgotten the lessons they learned in 1995. Although many older workers have retired since then, the new workers who were still at school in 1995 are militant and as organised.
Tensions have been since Sarkozy’s government decided in August to close 268 stations and shift their freight capacity on the rails. Workers were also angered by new “minimum service” legislation, which attacks the right to strike by obliging individual workers to tell their boss 48 hours before a strike whether or not they will be taking part.
Mass meetings have been held at workplaces across France, with very high attendances. At a recent such “general assembly” at the Quatre-Mares depot in Rouen, 450 workers out of a total of 750 were in attendance. The final straw came in September, when Sarkozy announced his intention to break the “special regime”.
Sarkozy is also copying the press strategy of the Brown government and the Metronet bosses, by trying to drive a wedge between passengers and rail workers. He has publicly attacked “privileged railwaymen” who are “taking the rest of us hostage”. French workers and socialists reply that it is the government who are causing the real disruption: by gutting public services and attacking workers’ right to strike, and it is they who are “taking the rest of us hostage”!
The electricity (EDF) and gas (GDF) company workers announced in September that they too would be joining the rail workers in going out on strike on 18 October. They too will be hurt badly by an attack on the special regimes. Moreover, following the part-privatisation of both of these companies, forcing them to compete with each other, hundreds of jobs are being cut, or moved into insecure employment in call centres as the companies “rationalise”. Energy workers have announced that they will strike together to defend public services and employees’ pensions.
One theme which runs throughout the build-up to this strike is grassroots worker self-organisation. It is the workers themselves who are organising general assemblies, making the political arguments about public services and the right to strike; and forcing their union bureaucracies into action. The unions which organise the energy workers, for example, have said nothing about privatisation or public services: their only complaint to the government is that the proposed pension changes have “not been negotiated”.
It is the grassroots militants who are driving this campaign and giving it a political character. They have forced the unions into action, and they have forced the CGT to call a demonstration on 18 October.
We should support these strikes, and learn from them: that the bosses must not be allowed to divide passengers and workers; and that only solid grassroots organisation can create fighting unions and deliver political change — not union bureaucracies
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