National News
Numbers crunched
by New Worker correspondent
Perhaps surprisingly unpaid overtime is more common in the public sector than the private sector with teachers doing more than any other job. No less than 40 per cent of the profession work an average of 4.4 unpaid hours weekly. The report also points out that chief executives, managers and directors do a great deal of “unpaid” work, but many contracts for senior staff allow for this and their enormous pay reflects this. In many cases the extra hours of “work” involves endless discussions lubricated by strong spirits in expensive hotels, so they are perhaps not the most urgent priorities for the labour movement. According to the TUC’s figures CEOs and senior officers lost £28,177, but that will be small change to many.
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What Is To Be Done?
by New Worker correspondent
While the TUC makes some useful points about the extent of the problem it is less than helpful about solutions. The TUC moans about the weakness of British law which only requires bosses to keep “adequate” recording hours. It points out that European law is stricter, but that did nothing to prevent workers from working for nothing when these laws applied in Britain.
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Steel Battles
by New Worker correspondent
At the risk of adding to the gloom caused by unpaid overtime it seems that many recent industrial struggles are defensive ones which are seeking to save not only jobs but whole industries.
This is most notable in the steel industry. On Wednesday protests took place at Scunthorpe and Port Talbot which seemed to suggest it was already a lost cause. Unite held rallies in both the northeast and south Wales towns. These were held outside both town’s jobcentres in conjunction with PCS, the main civil service union.
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Hitchens blasts Britain’s support for Ukraine conflict
by Ekaterina Blinova, Sputnik
Ten years after the Euromaidan coup in Ukraine, a mainstream media outlet has published an op-ed questioning why the West supported violent mobs against elected president Viktor Yanukovich, stressing that the roots of today’s Ukraine conflict lie in the February 2014 regime change operation
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
The simmering row over the handling of the Gaza debate in the London parliament is not going away and it’s spreading beyond the Westminster bubble despite the best efforts of Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer to sweep it under the carpet. Edinburgh students have occupied a building in protest against the university’s “investment in Israeli arms and apartheid”. The SNP have accused the Westminster system of “failing the people of Gaza” after the Speaker denied the party an emergency debate on calls for an immediate ceasefire. Their leader, First Minister Humza Yousaf, is demanding an investigation into Islamophobia in the Tory party and his party is calling on the Speaker of the House of Commons to allow them a second substantive and binding debate and vote on a Gaza ceasefire.
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International News
Stop NATO’s war in Ukraine!
by New Worker correspondent
Simultaneous protests were held in London, Berlin and Paris on Saturday to draw attention to the links between NATO aggression in Ukraine, Gaza and Yemen. The London protest took place in Parliament Square and attracted support from many passers-by and international tourists, several of whom actually joined the protestors.
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China’s path for peace and socialism
by New Worker correspondent
NCP leader Andy Brooks took part in a seminar with other communists, academics and businessmen at the Chinese embassy in London last week to celebrate the Chinese New Year and engage in in-depth discussions on China’s socialist path and the global significance of building a community with a shared future for humanity.
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There Is No Place for the Palestinians of Gaza to Go
by Vijay Prashad , People’s Democracy
On 9th February 2024, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his army would advance into Rafah, the last remaining city in Gaza not occupied by the Israelis. Most of the 2.3 million Palestinians who live in Gaza had fled to its southern border with Egypt after being told by the Israelis on 13th October 2023, that the north had to be abandoned and that the south would be a “safe zone”.
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Russia advances on all fronts
South Front
The third year of the full-scale war in Ukraine has begun with a Russian offensive in all directions along the Ukrainian front.
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A date with vultures
by Guillermo Alvarado
A few days ago, the Conservative Action Political Conference was held in the United States, one of the largest assemblies in the world of the forces of the international extreme right characterised by hatred of migrants and absolute contempt for progressive ideas.
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American soldier sets himself on fire by Israeli embassy
Radio Havana Cuba
A member of the US Air Force set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington this week, saying he could no longer be complicit in genocide .
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Features
A Global call to honour
by Ed Newman , Radio Havana Cuba
Almost five months since Israel launched its war on Palestinians in Gaza; at least 132 journalists have been killed in the line of duty while many others continue to live on the edge.
To pay tribute to the fallen journalists and extend solidarity to those who continue to report from the besieged territory under extremely challenging conditions, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) marked 26th February as the International Day in support of Palestinian Journalists. The day has been endorsed by many other international journalist bodies, including the Federation of Arab Journalists (FAJ) and other affiliates.
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Yemen: A history of struggle
by Sergio Rodriguez Gelfenstein , Workers World
In 2015 Yemen, a country unknown to many in the West, began a war in defence of its sovereignty, which was being threatened by an interventionist alliance led by Saudi Arabia. The Yemenis had to pay with the lives of almost 400,000 of their people to maintain their independence. Many people have wondered how it was possible that a country considered the poorest in the Middle East has been able to resist and defeat a coalition made up of some of the richest countries on the planet.
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