coca-cola: it’s the real sting…

From Practical Solidarity (info@practical-solidarity.org.uk)

Workers at Coca-Cola bottling plant in Edmonton, London N18 came out on strike on 15 & 16 Sept. They have been offered an absurd, below-inflation 2 per cent pay rise, while conditions have generally been eroded in the factory. The pension scheme has also become a lot worse – despite the fact the company made £620m last year! Workers are bitter about the non negotiating management, saying this is a dictatorship.

Coca Cola workers on strike last month in Bremerton, Washington State

On both days there has been a noisy picket with around 35 workers present, one half outside the factory, the other under the flyover opposite. There were flags aplenty and placards too – also saying “Fair play, not foul play for Coca Cola workers”. Chants and shouts echo the site. Section reps and senior stewards were on the picket, with most workers coming off shift onto the line. It’s always a full picket.

impressions from the sandwell bin strike – 8 september 2010

by two (wasted?) workers from The Commune

We went to Sandwell near Birmingham for the second of a series of one day strike at the local waste depot. The strike is officially called for by Unite and GMB. Like the bin strike in Leeds this year, it is about the single status policy. Due to loss of bonuses and down-grading a loader with 20 years seniority would have to face a significant wage loss: from £21,000 to £17,900. Looming in the background of the dispute is the fact that the council will outsource the waste collection to the private company Serco in November this year. The take-over in Sandwell – waste management for around 125,000 households – is Serco’s biggest single job in the UK: a £650 million contract, running for 25 years. The company and council officially guarantee 12 months terms and conditions to the council workers. The take-over and single status effects around 130 council bin men.

Since July this year workers had been on work-to-rule. In response the council hired 15 extra trucks and engaged around 100 extra temp workers for clearing up unfinished rounds – before the dispute started temp workers accounted for only 15 per cent of the work-force. Currently the new temp workers work from a different depot in nearby Cradley Heath, around 10 kilometers from Sandwell. In August the work-to-rule has been lifted and a series of one day strikes has been announced. Normally around 35 trucks do the rounds in Sandwell. After the first one-day-strike in the previous week some of the council permanent workers decided not to join the second strike. They and temp workers hired by the council-run temp agency manage to staff 15 trucks. Currently 15 trucks leave the depot in Sandwell and 15 more trucks are run from the depot in nearby Cradley.

support the tube strikes!

by Joe Thorne

See here for a full list of RMT picket times and locations – go down and visit from 22:00 Monday night or Tuesday morning!

Many of us will have been defending the tube strikes that begin on Monday evening, and continue – amongst different groups of workers – until the end of Tuesday to friends and fellow workers.  Many will be grumpy about their journey being disrupted; susceptible to TFL and government propaganda; and – perhaps without admitting it – somewhat jealous of the leverage, organisation, and (at least what they imagine to be) the superior terms and conditions of RMT members.  RMT General Secretary Bob Crow may be a figure of particular annoyance.

a spectre of communism haunts china’s rulers…

Adam Ford reports on recent upheavals in China

With the US empire in terminal decline, the Chinese economy has become essential to the globally integrated capitalist economy. China is now the world’s second largest economy, having officially overtaken its neighbour Japan, with a gross domestic product of over a trillion US dollars in the second quarter of 2010. It has long enjoyed gargantuan economic growth, and even weathered the storm of the global economic crisis up to this point.

But its status as “sweatshop of the world” now seems extremely vulnerable to both internal and external shocks, and a period of huge social upheaval is on the horizon.

poltava miners’ strike

A major dispute is underway between mineworkers in Poltava in West Ukraine and Ferrexpo Plc, a major player on the global market mainly engaged in mining of iron ore.   All three shifts in the open cast in the town of Komsomolsk, of more than 300 workers each are now involved in industrial action. Some railway locomotive drivers and workers on the iron ore concentrating factory have joined in solidarity.

The action started on 1st August at 10am when the workers at the ore-dressing open cast pit started at first with a go-slow and work-to-rule.   The action began when haul trucks drivers on their way down to the 305 meter deep quarry reduce speed of the vehicles from normal 40-45 km/h to the more safe 10-15 km/h.  Excavator and bulldozer operators, as well as drilling technicians then joined the action in solidarity.   Within 24 hours of the workers’ action total rock production had fallen by less than 60% of normal volume.  This impact of the workers resistance is continuing.

light at the end of the tunnel

by Alix Arnold, from ILA no. 333, March 2010 – translation by friends of The Commune

Underground Rail Transport in Buenos Aires:
Successful Struggles against the consequences of privatisation

At the peak of the economic crisis in Argentina, workers demanded – and secured – a six-hour day, citing the hazardous nature of the work. In 2005 they fired the starting gun to a wave of wage strikes in Argentina by enforcing a 44 per cent wage increase. After that the workers of the Subte (short for subterraneo: underground trains) made sure that their casualised work-mates in the cleaning and security services would also benefit from these gains. All these struggles would not have been possible with the old union apparatus. After years of underground organising efforts the Metrodelgados have established a new union.

dutch cleaners win nine week strike

Dutch cleaners campaigned for six months for higher wages and went on strike for another nine weeks. It was the longest strike since 1933 and they won, ‘bread and roses’.

By Willem Dekker, organizer of the cleaners’ union

a six-day sit-in at Utrecht station

The cleaning sector was fully privatized at the end of the nineties. Since then competition has been driving wages down and work pressure up. In the summer of 2009 cleaners, of whom most come from a migrant background, launched a campaign for higher wages, better working conditions and more respect from management. In times of austerity and a government drive for a wage freeze for public workers, this campaign raised the stakes of industrial conflict. If the cleaners could get a raise – why couldn’t other workers? The campaign turned into a model for multicultural resistance against the cut-backs.

royal mail deal: a post mortem

After 18 days’ strike action in London in 2009 the Communication Workers’ Union leadership voted for a return to work. As one reader of The Commune explains, the subsequent outcome has demoralised many:

by ‘Postman Pat’

I work at the West End Delivery Office in west London. After all the voluntary early retirements there’s along the lines of 300 workers on the floor, of those just 40-50 on nights.

The nightshift is sorting-only but because of the cuts in recent years they hardly ever manage to finish the sorting of letters so that’s usually left for the dayshift: so day staff do sorting and delivery. Some days my district doesn’t manage to finish delivery on time because of a cut from 5 to 2 men on sorting, so we don’t leave the office til 1pm.

the ‘spring of discontent’ and beyond

by Adam Ford

The UK general election is just five weeks away, and though all major parties are committed to massive cuts in spending to cover the bankers’ debts – the figure of 25% is being bandied about – it’s still not clear whether the reds, blues or even the yellows will hold the balance of power.

British Airways cabin crew and civil servants have recently taken strike action, and a rail stoppage had been planned for Easter. Meanwhile, right wing commentators such as Melanie Phillips – as well as the Conservative Party itself – are claiming that Labour’s reliance on the union’s political levy will stop them imposing the post-election cuts demanded by the ruling class. This is despite Gordon Brown labelling the BA strike “deplorable”.

struggle as a second language – interview with tower hamlets college strikers

From Mute: An interview with two workers involved in the open-ended strike against cuts at Tower Hamlets College last year

They describe their criticisms of the union, the ongoing problems since the partial victory at the college, and the state of the sector in the face of government austerity cuts.

BA strike: against the race to the bottom

by Gregor Gall
Professor of Industrial Relations, University of Hertfordshire

The BA dispute in shaping up to be the key union battle of 2010, being on a par with strikes in the engineering construction industry and Royal Mail last year in terms of their significance for the wider labour movement. This is maybe a little odd in that a relatively small number of workers are involved compared to those in the engineering construction industry and Royal Mail. This is a dispute about accommodating to or resisting the ‘race to the bottom’ under the neo-liberalism.

That said the dispute with BA as a employer and organisation has a significance way beyond the number of staff employed – the profile of the dispute is based on BA still being seen as the national flag carrier despite privatisation and the union being able to benefit from exerting leverage because travel cannot be physically offshored and strike action has an immediate and demonstrable impact upon the business’ operations.

civil servants strike on budget day

Striking civil servants have set up pickets in Westminster to embarrass the Government on Budget Day. Steve Ryan reports.

Despite the excellent support for the two day PCS strike on 8th-9th March, it seems the government are refusing to negotiate on the changes to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme.

As such the union’s National Executive have called a further one day strike on 24th March – Budget Day.

mass turnout on pcs civil service pickets

by Steve Ryan

Despite the usual bosses’ claims to the contrary the PCS two day strike looks to have been solid and successful.

Offices were closed services disrupted all over the UK. Significant also was the size of the picket lines, full of ordinary workers not just the usual activists. This clearly unsettled the bosses as many lines were challenged – with no success! The mood was very determined and angry.

all out in pcs!

by Steve Ryan

Readers of The Commune may be aware that PCS members have voted to take action over the threats to the Civil Service Compensation scheme. This in essence means that 250,000 public sector workers will be out on strike on 8th and 9th March.

The strike is hugely important. The issue is about making it cheaper to sack civil servants. Whilst it is always unacceptable to sack workers, the relentless purge of the public sector makes no sense at all in a recession, with services suffering billions uncollected in tax. Indeed even the London Evening Standard ran an article on public sector pensions, pointing out how low they were and that any attempt to reduce them would simply mean an increase in benefit claims and hence no saving to the exchequer.