Britain
NHS pay disgrace: Unions should fight for the 15% now!
The pitiful submission by the Tories of a 1% increase for all NHS staff to the Pay Review Board is a huge kick in the teeth to all those frontline workers. The government’s hypocritical excuse for the award is that they cannot afford it. This jaw dropping assertion has left even media commentators agog at the Tories’ complete underestimation of the mood in the workplace and the wider public. As soon as the information was made public on March 6th, nurses’ social media posts began to hum with fury and rage, as well as understandable despair. Sunak had just delivered a budget which had committed to spend another £65bn in the next 4 months and then claimed there was no money left!
Tory budget kicks can down the road
The main reasons for this are two-fold. On the one hand, because of the still devastating situation in which most working people still find themselves. In the midst of a third lockdown, with rising unemployment, millions are relying on furlough, Universal Credit and other schemes to make ends meet. For these millions, the run up to Sunak’s budget brought constant reminders of the potential cliff-edge facing them and their families.
British Gas strike against ‘fire & rehire’ continues
GMB’s industrial dispute at British Gas continues with engineers braving all weather in their fight to protect hard won terms and conditions. With massive public support, thousands of members have already taken 16 strike days against their bullying employer Centrica. The next round of industrial action began this morning with the launch of a four-day strike, and more are in the pipeline.
Brexit: A deal without winners
Four and a half years after the vote to leave the EU, a trade deal was finally agreed at the eleventh hour before Boris Johnson’s deadline of 31st December 2020. Parliament had just days to look at the deal before ratifying it, making a mockery of the idea that for the right-wing Tories’ Brexit was all about ‘taking back control’.
Education workers show trade union action gets results
Boris Johnson’s announcement that schools will close until February half term is yet another U-turn from this shambolic Tory government – one which has been forced by the huge pressure from below by education workers.
Brexit on a knife edge: Deal or no deal?
After four years of extremely painful and sometimes tedious negotiations, the ‘deal’ to leave the EU now looms. The pendulum has swung backwards and forwards between a likely deal and then the prospect of a ‘no deal’. Within days, we will know the outcome but it is once again necessary to go over the likely prospects for the working class, whatever the outcome.
The bitter legacy of Margaret Thatcher
Thatcher’s reputation and legacy has left a deep scar across the whole face of British society which is still very keenly felt today by successive generations.
Corbyn suspension: Time for a new left party to fight the Tories
Jeremy Corbyn is not anti-Semitic. He has a lifelong history of fighting racism in all its forms. It is a disgrace that he has been suspended for saying that the report into antisemitism inside the Labour Party by the Equality and Human Rights Commission ‘overstated’ the problem. In reality, this was a typically mild understatement from Corbyn!
BT Group workers to vote on industrial action
The Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) has announced a national consultative ballot of members in the BT Group (BT, EE and Openreach) for industrial action against compulsory redundancies.
Starmer shifts Labour to the right – what next?
Britain is now officially in recession, as the economy shrinks under the hammer-blows of a world economic crisis and the Covid pandemic. Working class people in Britain are facing the deepest economic crisis since the 1930s. It is clear to millions that the Tory government has made the effects for ordinary people far worse than they needed to have been.