National News
Rail battles
by New Worker correspondent
RAIL UNION RMT has risen to the challenge of the pay policy imposed on rail workers by Tory Transport Secretary Chris Grayling last August.
Then the minister announced that he would restrict future pay rises to the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rather than the higher Retail Prices Index (RPI) that includes housing costs.
RMT has won a two-year pay deal for the biggest single group of rail staff, nearly 20,000 members on Network Rail, which will match the RPI figure for the next two years alongside a continuation of job protection measures.
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Assange calls for help in prison
JULIAN Assange, the jailed WikiLeaks founder, has called on people of the world to stand in his defence because he has been stripped of all means to defend himself in court.
Now imprisoned in Belmarsh prison in London, Assange has sent letters to several independent journalists, one of whom shared the letter with The Canary, the Bristol-based news website
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1972 Revisited
by New Worker correspondent
THE SHREWSBURY 24, building workers who took part in a successful national strike in 1972, are near to concluding a long-running struggle for justice. After the National Federation of Building Employers (NFBTE) rejected the unions’ claims a long strike began in May resulting in a settlement in mid-September, when the employers conceded pay rises of £5 and £6 per week. These were important increases at a time when the ‘going rate’ in construction was around £20 per week.
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A mixed deal
by New Worker correspondent
ROYAL MAIL Fleet members are presently being balloted on a substantial 11.8 per cent pay deal secured by their union, the Communication Workers Union (CWU).
The 750 Royal Mail (RM) vehicle repair and maintenance workers, who look after the vehicles which deliver the New Worker, are being urged to accept the substantial wage increase that comes on top of the Royal Mail Group-wide two per cent and is the largest ever offered to RM Motor transport grades. It has the drawback however, that Saturday will become a rostered duty day rather than a voluntary overtime day.
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No fair work
by New Worker correspondent
IN SCOTTISH National Party (SNP)-controlled Dundee thousands of council workers are being balloted for strike action in response to the council’s slashing of terms and conditions announced in February.
These include reductions in flexible retirement, cutting pay protection from three years to one year for anyone displaced from their job through service redesign, and abandoning a long-standing policy of no compulsory redundancies.
Members of Unison, Unite and GMB have, on a large turnout, voted overwhelmingly in consultative ballots for industrial action.
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Ecclesiastical News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
General Assembly week has come and gone. The annual general meetings of Scotland’s Presbyterian churches are an occasion to take stock of the spiritual state of Scotland. Sadly this year there were no burning issues to keep us on tenterhooks. Instead, this year a common theme of the meetings of these warring sects was to lament their decline.
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Down with the BBC lie-machine
by New Worker correspondent
THEO Russell joined other Korean solidarity campaigners outside Broadcasting House on Saturday to condemn the BBC’s blatant bias against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The NCP London Organiser was taking part in a picket outside the BBC’s London HQ, called by the Korean Friendship Association (KFA), to highlight the BBC’s ongoing demonisation of Democratic Korea in its home and overseas broadcasts.
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Giant replica of Earth goes on display in Britain
by Xuxin
BRITAIN’S biggest church, Liverpool Cathedral, became the latest landing place for a seven metre replica of the Earth on Saturday.
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TV REVIEW
The Looming Tower
by Ben Soton
The Looming Tower (2018). Creators: Dan Futterman, Alex Gibney, Lawrence Wright. Stars: Jeff Daniels, Tahar Rahim, Wrenn Schmidt
THIS 10-episode mini-series shown on BBC2 covers the events leading up to the attack on the World Trade Centre on 11th September 2001. It begins with a series of bombings on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and the subsequent investigation.
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International News
Huge anti-Netanyahu protest in Tel Aviv
by Ed Newman
THOUSANDS of Israelis protested this weekend against legislative steps that could grant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immunity from prosecution and limit the power of the country’s Supreme Court.
The demonstration in Tel Aviv was attended by nearly all opposition parties, a rare show of unity for Israel’s splintered political system. Police did not say how many people attended but organisers put the figure at 80,000.
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Italian dockers black Saudi arms ship
Radio Havana Cuba
ITALIAN dockers have refused to load electricity generators onto a Saudi Arabian ship with weapons consignments on board in protest against the Wahhabi regime’s aggression on Yemen that has left thousands of innocent people dead or injured over the last four years.
Union workers in the Italian port city of Genoa refused to load two generators aboard the Bahri Yanbu last week, saying that the weapons on the Saudi ship contravened a United Nations treaty and might be used against civilians in Yemen.
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Arab teens look to Russia
Sputnik
THE FOUNDER of the Algeria Youth Ambassadors movement says that the results of a recent survey revealed that the majority of teenagers in the Arab world considered Russia, not the USA, as their ally because the USA offers nothing besides internship or training programmes, whilst Russia organises forums and events.
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Tibet: New life for former serf
Tibet.cn
DAGARBADRO, male, born in 1934, 85 years old. He currently lives in Baiding Village, Caigungtang Township, Chengguan District, Lhasa. Before the democratic reform was implemented in Tibet in 1959, Dagar Badro was a household slave on the Namo Estate. After the democratic reform, Dagar Badro was given land and a house. Today, he lives with his oldest son, Juedan, and his family; the family of four generations enjoy a happy life.
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Cuba through an English lens
by Cosset Lazo PÉrez
JOHN HARDEN is a British photographer who is inspired by Cuba — the country’s architectural diversity, its immense natural spaces and its cultural traditions. Through his camera he captures the Caribbean island’s past, present and future.
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Features
Forty Years of Privatisation
by Neil Clark
Director of the Campaign for Public Ownership
MRS THATCHER’S great sell-off of publicly owned services and assets, continued by successive governments, started exactly 40 years ago to a fanfare of positive publicity.
Small shareholders own only a tiny proportion of the billions of pounds worth of assets that were sold off. Many of these assets are now owned by hedge funds. A large number are in foreign ownership, including quite ironically the state ownership of other countries.
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American threats intensify on Iran
by Sara Flounders
ANOTHER US-initiated crisis reached an ominous level this last week with President Trump’s announcement that Iran suddenly presented a new, unspecified threat, serious enough to send a US naval aircraft carrier battle group churning towards the Persian Gulf, along with US B-52 Stratofortress bombers and plans for 120,000 troops to the surrounding region. No evidence or information was provided regarding the supposed looming threat.
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Why the Australian Labor Party lost
An Australian communist view on the recent victory of the conservative Liberal—National Coalition in the Australian federal elections.
THE LAST 35 years have seen a huge transformation for the worse in working hours and conditions, in types of employment, the level of trade union organisation and distribution of wealth. This process commenced under the Prices and Incomes Accord between the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and Bob Hawke’s newly elected Labor Government in 1983.
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