Solidarity to Tower Hamlets Council Workers and Teachers striking tomorrow

I have just sent a solidarity message to Tower Hamlets Council staff and teachers and would encourage others to do so as well - it is vital that we support activists fighting back particularly when they are able to coordinate unified action between different trade unions. Just shows it can be done :) Congrats and good luck! More info below... MJ No to cuts and redundancies...Support Tower Hamlets teachers and council workers' strike 30 March Teachers and Council workers in Tower Hamlets are striking together on Wednesday 30 March.They are building a united fight against compulsory redundancies and cuts. Teachers in Camden will also strike on that day. Tower Hamlets is one of Britain's poorest boroughs with the highest levels of child deprivation. These cuts hurt all our community. The Con-Dem government are intent on destroying public services and jobs – affecting areas like Tower Hamlets the worst. Over 100,000 jobs are being slashed from councils with 500 in Tower Hamlets this year alone. Nurses are being made redundant at Barts and the London, while 1,000 jobs are set to go at the East London Mail Centre. Next door in the City the bankers who created the crisis continue to pay themselves billions in bonuses. We can't afford to let the Tories make ordinary people pay for an economic mess we did not create. Hundreds of thousands will take part in the TUC demonstration on 26 March against the cuts. Support the fight against cuts and redundancies in Tower Hamlets Send messages of support to East London Teachers,c/o NUT Office,Shadwell Centre, 455 The Highway, London E1W 3HP alex@elta.demon.co.uk Tower Hamlets Unison,5th Floor Annexe, Mulberry Place, 5 Clove Crescent, London E14 2BG 0207 364 5302 07944 389 261 alexis.chase@towerhamlets.gov.uk

Libya - no more imperialist aggression

Sad day watching the news with our forces being involved in yet more imperialist

aggression.
This "Odyssey Dawn" has started with 112 Tomahawk missiles on top of 4
airstrikes earlier and a promise of "this is only the beginning"

Other posts against military intervention below

http://jonrogers1963.blogspot.com/2011/03/no-to-military-intervention.html

http://harpymarx.wordpress.com/

and
http://l-r-c.org.uk/news/story/libya-north-africa-and-the-middle-east-we-need-less-western-intervention-no/

Stop the war have called on everyone to demonstrate tomorrow.

"The United Nations resolution authorising a no-fly zone begins as it will
continue, with a full-scale military attack on the country.

Stop the War condemns this barbarous attack which will result, not in
protecting the people of Libya, but in enslaving them under the domination of
the West. We know only too well the death and destruction that imperialism has
brought to the peoples of the region.

We call on all those who oppose these attacks to demonstrate at Downing Street
at 3pm on Sunday 20 March."

Guardian " It's corporate directors' pensions that our society really can't afford"

I see UNISON's George Binette roaring like a lion again in today's Guardian. Excellent piece :)

It's corporate directors' pensions that our society can't really afford.

In pressing for an end to current public sector pension schemes, the CBI's director general, John Cridland, writes: "Pension reforms will also help the prime minister's 'big society' programme to really get off the ground. Public sector pensions remain the biggest barrier to the private and third sectors providing public services" (End this block over pensions, 10 March).

In essence, Cridland gives the game away. However dubious his claims of "a £10bn gap between the amount that public sector employees contribute to their pensions and the value of benefits they are paid or promised", the real problem for Britain's biggest employers' lobby is that surviving final-salary schemes deter companies from swooping for an even greater share of public services.

Even as Cridland calls for "more transparency about the amount of benefits people will get", he conveniently ignores the fact that public sector pension funds invest billions in FTSE 100 giants, among them arms manufacturers and agents of environmental degradation. Such decisions are all but immune from democratic scrutiny, with union representatives allowed no more than observer status on local authority pension subcommittees.

Cridland writes: "In the private sector ... nearly all employers have undergone a painful process of bringing their pension liabilities back under control." But painful for whom? Undoubtedly, millions of ordinary workers have suffered the closure or dramatic erosion of defined-benefit schemes, yet the same can hardly be said for their top bosses. While nearly two-thirds of private sector workers now lack an occupational scheme, most big corporate directors' pension pots have grown, even in recession.

A TUC Pensions Watch report highlighted that between 2007 and 2009 the average value of a FTSE-100 director's total pension shot up from £3m to £3.4m. In 2007 the average annual payout received by a FTSE 100 chief executive was £147,000. By 2009 this had risen to £179,540, a 22% increase, and £70,000 more than the projected pension for Camden council's chief executive. The champions of the "painful process" have figured prominently among the 1% of the population who have reaped 60% of all pension tax relief, worth some £10bn last year.

Theirs are the pension schemes that society really cannot afford, and these figures reveal the truly grotesque pensions inequality – which the mainstream media largely ignores as it seeks to stoke anger at public sector workers.

Along with thousands of other union members, I shall be joining the TUC's 26 March demonstration. We shall march for many reasons: in our London borough alone, the threat of 700 redundancies before March 2012, the closure of day resource centres for vulnerable older people, a 65% cut to play services. But we shall also be marching to defend our pensions and oppose Lord Hutton's call for a 50% hike in our pension contributions as our real pay falls by 4%-5%.

Workers facing pensions below £8,000 a year after a quarter-century's service are heartily sick of Cridland's pensions hypocrisy. The coalition's attack on our pensions could be the moment we say: "We will not take this any more."

LGBT Trade Unionists statement on East End Gay Pride

Please find the following statement from LGBT Trade Unionists on the issue of homophobic stickers that have appeared in LB Hackney and LB Tower Hamlets statement from these Trade Unionists and community bodies issued in

Greater London Association of Trade Union Councils name

 

Statement

 

We deplore the recent homophobic stickers that have appeared in LB Hackney and LB Tower Hamlets.

 

We understand local LGBTQ concern about these stickers – the authorship unknown.

 

Although we support LGBTQ expressions of Pride we do not support any involvement of the EDL or the politics of division and hate. We reject EDL attempts to piggyback on LGBTQ pride.

 

We call on the organisers of East End Gay Pride to reject the politics of the EDL and far right.

 

We welcome the approach of local LGBTQ groups such as OUT East and Rainbow Tower Hamlets to bring people together.

 

We therefore as LGBTQ Trade Unionists call on all Progressive groups in the two boroughs to come together to oppose homophobia and racism - to build for community unity and harmony.

 

signed: -

 

Maria Exall (CWU)

TUC LGBT Committee, Chair


MarshaJane

March on March 26th

"How the f@x! did I end up in a pic with him" said....