lightning strikes twice in greece

by David Broder

On 12th February the Evening Standard boards in London proclaimed “Brown: we won’t pay for Greece bailout”, almost as if darkly parodying the left’s slogan “we won’t pay for their crisis”. But much as the Greek government plans harsh austerity measures to appease its European counterparts, millions of workers are refusing to capitulate.

Yesterday a general strike brought Greece’s planes, trains and buses to a standstill; left schools quiet and government offices empty; and brought thousands of raucous demonstrators into the streets of Athens. Not only was this the second nationwide strike against the budget cuts plan in two weeks, but also marked continued defiance against the new social-democratic PASOK government, just over a year after the December 2008 struggle against the right-wing New Democracy administration.

british airways staff voting again on strike action

Today came the news that the Unite union has lost its High Court action to try and overturn British Airways’ attacks on staff. Yet after BA’s court injunction stopping a Christmas strike, a new ballot for action continues, as Gregor Gall reports.

Unite, and its cabin crew branch, BASSA, are currently locked in a truly titanic battle with BA. Unite is reballoting for strike action, with the result due on 22nd February.

The litany of what BA has engaged in to break the cabin crew’s will to resist has got longer and longer. Since the New Year, this has included recruiting strike-breakers from existing employees, threatening to end benefits of strikers and encouraging the establishment of a yellow union, the Professional Cabin Crew Council.

what ‘went wrong’ with the winter of discontent?

Often portrayed as responsible for bringing down a Labour government and ‘letting in’ Thatcher’s Tories, the 1978-79 ‘Winter of Discontent’ remains a high point in the history of the class struggle in Britain.

by Sheila Cohen

The Winter of Discontent (WoD) has not had a good press – either from the right or, less predictably, from the left. The most recent diatribe against this historic wave of struggle comes in a relatively recent publication whose author claims that “The Winter of Discontent marked the democratisation of greed…It was like the spirit of the Blitz in reverse”. A former Labour minister’s comment on the WoD that “it was as though every separate group in the country had no feeling and no sense of community, but was simply out to get for itself what it could” is used to illustrate “the callous spirit which characterise[d] the disputes”.

migrant workers’ strike in france

by Antoine Boulangé

6,000 undocumented migrant workers, on strike since 12th October 2009, are bravely continuing their unprecedented struggle against the government in spite of very difficult circumstances.

Their determination is exemplary, faced with a government on the assault – propagating racism and Islamophobia – and a right-wing adding to their list of racist and ‘pro-security’ provocations such as the law against the burqa, the denial of asylum rights to 123 Kurds arrested in Corsica, and racist statements by the ministers for immigration and families.

strike victory in north devon nhs

by Mark Harper

The strike conducted at North Devon District Hospital on  5th-6th January has resulted in a victory for the UNISON members there.

Amid plans for further strike action, the North Devon Healthcare NHS Trust and private contractor, Sodexo eventually gave in to our demands for NHS terms and conditions for the outsourced porters, cleaners and catering staff. This has resulted in 7 days extra annual leave, sick pay, NHS pay levels with increments, increased Maternity pay and back pay worth up to £3,600 for each member of staff. Though most staff will only move to band 1 of the pay structure which is still too low, the improvement is a significant step forward.

issue 11 of the commune

The February issue of our monthly paper The Commune is now available. Click the image below to see the PDF, or see articles as they are posted online in the list below.

To purchase a printed copy for £1 + 50p postage, use the ‘donate’ feature here. You can also subscribe (£12 a year UK/£16 EU/£20 international) or order 5 copies a month to sell (£4) online here. If you want to pay by cheque, contact uncaptiveminds@gmail.com.

north devon hospital strike

by a UNISON branch official
(personal capacity)

On 5th-6th January over 200 UNISON low paid porters, domestics and catering staff working for Sodexo took strike action.  This dispute arose after Sodexo and the North Devon Healthcare NHS Trust, which contracts Sodexo to provide hotel services, refused to honour a government agreement aimed at achieving NHS terms and conditions for these staff. In 2005 the Labour government had signed this agreement with NHS employers, private contractors and trade unions with the intention of bringing the two tier workforce within the NHS to an end by October 2006. NHS trusts were given a total of £75 million to pass on to private contractor “soft facility” staff working in hospitals.

british airways injunction flies in the face of democracy

by Gregor Gall
professor of industrial relations at the University of Hertfordshire

The High Court decision to grant British Airways an injunction against Unite’s 12-day strike, was as Unite said, “a disgraceful day for democracy”. The will of 92.5% on an 80% turnout of 12,000 workers was struck down in a single moment by a solitary judge.

mass meeting of BA staff: their collective decision was trampled on by the courts

Although employer applications for injunctions are well down on the mid- to late 1980s, in 2009, there were 10 other injunctions applied for by employers, with another 14 in the previous three years to this.

BA strike: on a wing and a prayer?

by Gregor Gall

It seems like the ultimate kamikaze action: mutually assured destruction. The company you work for is already in a huge amount of trouble, posting a £401m loss last year, a lot more this year, running a massive pension deficit and you decide to press the nuclear button by going on strike for 12 days at the busiest time of the year.

If you wanted to engineer the bankruptcy of your employer, put yourself on the dole early in the New Year and without much in the way of a redundancy deal, this seems to be the perfect way to do it. In a monopoly service this would not necessarily matter but we know passengers will choose another airline in order to get to their destination. And they won’t always come back either.

So the decision by 92% of those who voted “yes” for strike action on an 80% turnout is completely crazy, right?

british airways strike: a million christmases ruined?

by David Broder

Don’t ruin a million Christmases: BA chief’s appeal as he goes to court to halt strike (Daily Mail, 16th December)

Cartoon in today's Times

The proposed British Airways strike has brought down an avalanche of media attacks on the airline’s employees and the Unite union. Much as propaganda about “old ladies not receiving their Christmas cards” blighted the Royal Mail dispute last month, again the corporate press and the BBC are blaming Scrooge-ish “union barons” for their lack of festive cheer. But does the wintry weather really excuse a two year pay freeze, cuts in crew numbers and 4,900 redundancies? Not so, said a thumping 92% majority of BA workers on an 80% turnout, a ballot result showing both the level of anger and the desire to fight on to a victorious conclusion, given that the action will go on for a whole 12 days beginning on December 22nd.

recession and the rank-and-file

Sheila Cohen explores the relation of capitalist crisis to upturns in working-class struggle

Clearly, it’s difficult in the midst of the current “double dip” recession to predict whether further key struggles will follow the Vestas and Visteon occupations, or indeed the less obviously recession-related struggles of engineering construction workers, Leeds refuse collectors and postal workers – not to mention current disputes affecting airline employees, tube workers and bus drivers. The list could go on, and indeed has spurred recent thoughts of a “mini-upsurge” – but are these struggles symptomatic of recession or simply of the general (and grim) rigours of an unrelenting neo-liberal capitalism?

It has never been straightforward, historically, to work out whether recessions spark resistance or dampen it. The arguments are obvious on both sides of the coin – capitalist crisis, with its persistent tendency to dump the effects on the working class, can spur struggle through anger and desperation (the nothing-to-lose syndrome) or suppress it through the terrible fear of job loss, a disaster for working-class families. To use a wise old footballing adage, “It could go either way” – but which way will it go?

strike solid at hackney community transport

by Joe Thorne

More than 40 pickets were stood at the gates of the Hackney Community Transport (HCT) bus depot this morning.  Playing football, waving flags and milling about on Ash Grove, off Mare St, the strikers are amongst the worst treated workers on London buses.

Union members try to persuade a fellow worker not to scab

Contrary to what some may assume, not all London bus drivers are on the same terms and conditions.  HCT drivers are on £11.52 an hour, lower than most bus drivers.  And they get no extra pay for overtime or unsociable hours.  The company is offering a derisory 2.25%, while union members want to see wages and conditions brought more into line with those of other bus drivers in the capital.

paris undocumented workers on strike: so where next?

from Où va la CGT: see here for an interview with migrant worker reps and report on the occupation of the Pompidou centre’s restaurant

A month on strike for 5,000 undocumented workers in the Paris region: a month of mobilising people, strikes, pickets in the cold and in the rain. Their determination is unfailing, even if some are starting to tire.

But there is a problem with the direction of this massive, multi-site strike. Many reps are starting to question the manner in which the CGT union federation is guiding it.

mixed reactions to cwu-royal mail deal

Interview with a communist post worker

How strong was the national post strike?

At a national level I would say the strike was very strong. It is hard to say the whole picture from the one location where I work, but judging by Royal Mail Chat [a web forum] — even if the people on there are more militant than average — there were no signs that it was losing momentum. In London there was perhaps a certain tiredness after eighteen weeks of strike action but not such that it was close to exhaustion. At no time did the union claim that they were calling off the action because they were losing people – Royal Mail management claimed that 25% of people were not on strike, but those were fiddled figures given that in that number they included managers and people on holiday, rest day or sick…