Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Reminder - Unison United Left National AGM Saturday 17th May
Sent from Yahoo! Mail.
A Smarter Email.
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marshajane
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5/13/2008 09:46:00 AM
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Monday, May 12, 2008
Breaking News - UNISON Ballot for Strike Action
UNISON's NJC Committee have voted to reject the offer of 2.45% in Local Government and ballot for strike action.
The vote to do so was close apparently but no details as yet - i'll blog them when we have them.
54% of people voted to reject the offer in UNISON's consultative ballot.
Timetable
ballot starts 27th May and ends 13th June with the possible first day of strike 8th July.
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marshajane
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5/12/2008 02:02:00 PM
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National Rail Strike
The RMT have annouced that it is balloting 17,000 workers for industrial action. :)
From Press Assoc. - Monday, May 12 08:34 am
The action would cripple train services across Britain.
The Rail Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) said maintenance and signalling staff will vote over the next week on whether to launch a campaign of industrial action in two separate disputes.
The result of both ballots will be known on May 22 and strikes could start a week later, right at the beginning of the holiday season.
The union warned that if the strikes go ahead the railway system would be paralysed.
Ballot papers will be sent to more than 12,000 infrastructure workers after they rejected an "unacceptable" offer from Network Rail on harmonising terms and conditions.
In another row, 5,000 signal workers and other operational staff will be asked if they want to strike over pay and conditions after turning down an improved offer the union said was worth just 0.1% in the first year of a two-year pay deal.
The harmonisation dispute follows months of talks aimed at achieving a single set of terms and conditions for maintenance staff, many of whom have transferred to Network Rail from private firms.
Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT, said: "The company has been using the talks to drive down our members' conditions and they can hardly be surprised that their pathetic offer was thrown out by a margin of more than 100 to one.
"The company is now saying that our members can stay on their existing terms but they are already moving to sneak inferior conditions in through the back door. We know that means an attack on everyone's terms and conditions, not least because the company is looking to cut its maintenance budget by up to 12% year on year."
Sent from Yahoo! Mail.
A Smarter Email.
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marshajane
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5/12/2008 11:57:00 AM
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LEAP Conference
Heres a reminder of the LRC's Left Economicas Advisory Panel that I have blogged about previously http://unionfutures.blogspot.com/2008/02/press-release-on-nationalisation-rock.html
For a bit more info here is Andrew Fisher's article from last months Briefing
Making that LEAP
Andrew Fisher, LEAP co-ordinator looks ahead to the 'Beyond the Market Economy' conference on Saturday 24th May.
It was Thatcher who said "There is No Alternative", but it was New Labour that made that statement a reality. In the
It is against this backdrop that the LRC established the Left Economics Advisory Panel (LEAP) to challenge the economic hegemony of our age. LEAP is about promoting the economics of co-operation over competition, of democracy over markets, and of the many over the few. Over the past few years, we have published regular publications on economic issues (all free to download from the LRC website www.l-r-c.org.uk) and held a fringe meeting at the November 2007 LRC annual conference.
On Saturday 24th May, LEAP will be hosting its first conference 'Beyond the Market Economy – socialist solutions to the economic crisis'. The event is open to everyone and features platform speeches from LEAP Chair John McDonnell MP (former Chair of Finance at the GLC) and Tony Benn (former Industry Minister). But this is more than just a conference with speeches from the great and the good: this is a participatory conference with four sub-plenaries on housing, global finance, social ownership and workers' rights.
In the last year, the contradictions of the market economy have been exposed, and is high time the Left got its act together and fought for economic policies to benefit the many not the few. In the late 70s and early 80s, the left opposition in the Labour Party developed the Alternative Economic Strategy (AES), which for all its flaws was a broadly debated, coherent, and a programme for socialist change – and was a far better course than that which Callaghan and Healey took: prostration before the IMF, which resulted in eighteen years of Thatcherism.
As Gordon Brown looks increasingly keen to emulate this precedent, the left must not only construct a programme that is coherent, but must also find ways of mobilising for and winning its programme in an era that is politically even less favourable than at the time of AES.
The LEAP conference 'Beyond the Market Economy' will therefore not just be about debating the policies we want on our wishlist, but it will be about a creative debate about how we engage new people in debates on social ownership, industrial democracy, trade union rights, build confidence, build campaigns and, ultimately, achieve our goals.
I believe there is an appetite for change: people know their being screwed on their pensions; they don't trust the banks; they fed up with the state of private sector inefficiency from their rail services to their utilities; they're insecure about rising debt and housing costs; they know they're paying more tax, yet the rich and the corporations evade and avoid it at will; and many know they're not getting fair pay and rights at work.
Marx said the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point however is to changeit. Philosopher or activist, come along to
· To find out more and to register for Beyond the Market Economy, go to www.l-r-c.org.uk
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marshajane
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5/12/2008 08:40:00 AM
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Sunday, May 11, 2008
Labour Briefing AGM
My son Stephen and Jon's son teaching Tony Benn how to play a Nintendo DS :)
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marshajane
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5/11/2008 09:20:00 PM
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Labels: Tony Benn
Katrina makes waves
Just heard excellent news Katrina Murray has been selected as Labour’s Parliamentary candidate for Dundee East. Katrina is chair of UNISON’s National Women’s committee and a member of Campaign for Socialism the sister organisation of the Labour Representation Committee. Dundee East is a marginal between Labour and SNP and has previously been held by John McAllion in Scottish parliament who was then well known supporter of CFS. Although the margin of victory for the SNP was quite large in the last Scottish Parliament election, the SNP victory was less then a 1% in 2005 and 2003. Although Labour is doing badly nationally it is entirely possible that the SNP as the governing party in Scotland could also become unpopular as it fails to deliver on promises. The voters of Dundee East will have a choice to vote for a socialist or for the tartan Tory’s.
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Andrew
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5/11/2008 02:07:00 PM
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