Editorial 15 March 2023, No. 401

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt have told their ministers that they can raise their offers to the unions from 3–3.5% to 5% for the coming year and pay a one-off bonus to ‘compensate’ for the devastating loss of income in 2022–23. This would leave millions of public sector workers facing a 15% […]

Workers need to organise against any sell-out of the dispute.

Postal workers have done it again. Forced to reballot by the Tory anti-union laws after six months of strikes and lost pay, they smashed it, with a remarkable 95.9% vote for action on a 77.3% turnout, nearly as high as the previous record ballots. Even after 18 days of strike action last year and lost […]

By KD Tait ON 1 FEBRUARY hundreds of thousands of teachers, lecturers, civil servants and train drivers struck in the biggest coordinated day of action for many years. In London alone, 50,000 strikers marched in the biggest weekday demonstration since the protest against Donald Trump’s visit in 2018. Tens of thousands more marched in towns […]

Editorial February 2023, No. 400

By Jeremy Dewar PRIME MINISTER Rishi Sunak and business secretary Grant Shapps are rushing the Strikes (minimum service levels) Bill through parliament in order to deny workers the right to strike in six named sectors: health, transport, education, fire and rescue, nuclear power decommissioning and border security. Once signed off by King Charles it will […]

IN A historic first, nurses in the RCN union, pushed to breaking point, have joined the strike wave against the cost of living crisis. And despite media attempts to probe for public disapproval, they have massive support. A million patients are treated in the NHS every 36 minutes, and they are overwhelmingly grateful to and […]

By Pete Thompson WORKERS IN Royal Mail and Parcelforce took 18 days of strike action last year against bosses’ plans to hold down pay and rip up terms and conditions in a union-busting campaign to transform the company on the model of its gig-economy parcel courier competitors. Strike action was enough to see some significant […]

THE WORKING class is facing the most serious attack on its living standards since the introduction of austerity after the financial crisis of 2007–8. Workers have responded with the biggest wave of strike action since the 1980s. Millions of workers in the private and public sector have struck for pay rises to keep pace with […]

THE STRIKES that have dominated the headlines for six months represent a decade of pent-up anger.Millions of workers, especially in the public sector, have seen their real take-home pay collapse by 20–25% under the Tories; now they’re asking us to take another 10–15% cut. The dam has burst. Industrial action stands at a 30 year […]

RISHI SUNAK’S new anti-strike Bill aims to make any effective strike on the railways, in hospitals or in schools illegal, by requiring unions to negotiate ‘minimum service levels’ with their employer before every strike. The Bill has widened the group of workers affected to include firefighters, ambulance workers and border staff in response to the […]

INFLATION HAS reached its highest level since the 1980s. The November rate for the UK was 10.67%. Between September 2021 and September 2022, food prices increased by 14.5 percent. At the same time annual wages rises in the private sector stood at 6.7% and 2.9% in the public sector. The purchasing power of wages has […]

AS IMPORTANT as they are, these strikes are not the immediate answer for the whole working class. Given weak levels of unionisation and strikes in Britain since the 1980s and Thatcher, there must be a social movement against the high cost of living crisis—the poor, those on benefits, pensioners, low income workers and precarious sections […]

Branches have called on the NEC to bring all members out in January.

The unions must demand Labour commit to repealing every anti-union law.

The UCU took action in 150 universities in November.

We must escalate to all out.

The government has picked a fight with nurses to hold public sector pay down and continue NHS privatisation.

Royal Mail has suspended at least 100 CWU reps.

By KD Tait THE ROYAL College of Nursing (RCN) is taking strike action on 15 and 20 December in the largest nurses’ strike in UK history. After more than a decade of underfunding, health workers have seen their pay, conditions and staffing levels deteriorate to breaking point. Nurses have lost more than 20% of their […]

By a CWU Rep TENS OF thousands of postal workers will mass the picketlines then march on London today. Despite wintry weather and management harassment, strikers remain solid. Public support too has kept strong. True, the billionaire press and TV grill union leaders like Dave Ward and Mick Lynch for Christmas strikes while letting the […]

Drip-feeding strikes hasn't shaken the bosses. It's time to organise for escalated action and against a compromise.

CWU leaders have called off strikes after bosses threatened them with court action

What is the TUC going to do about it?

By a Unison activist THE NATIONAL Education Union has won an impressive mandate to call an official strike ballot for a cost of living pay increase. Not only did over a quarter of a million teachers vote by 86% on a 62% turnout for strike action in support of a fully-funded (i.e. increasing school budgets) […]

Management threats must be met with escalation

Joint strike committees should mobilise across all unions for a big yes vote, and demand escalating action to win

Civil servants are being balloted over pay, pensions and job cuts until 7 November

By Dave Stockton Dockers in Southampton have refused to unload containers diverted from Liverpool, in defiance of shipping companies and government ministers attempts to undermine the Liverpool strike. This act of solidarity shows both the possibility and necessity of defying the anti-union laws, which outlaw secondary action and allow bosses to divert work to non-striking […]