48-hour week under attack.

Thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers have lost their jobs.

August 16 is the bicentenary of the Peterloo Massacre in which 18 people were killed and hundreds injured when soldiers attacked an unarmed crowd of 60,000 men, women and children peacefully demonstrating for the right to vote in Manchester.

  By James Copley A crucial victory was won this month in Wigan, with workers in bakers’ union BFAWU forcing bosses at the Hovis factory to employ workers on full time rather than zero-hour contracts, and put an end to the routine use of agency labour. These precarious workers are super-exploited, not knowing from one […]

KD Tait reports on how the rise in zero hour contracts exposes the bosses’ latest strategy to beat the crisis – at our expense  First published by the Revolutionary Socialists Up to one million workers are employed on zero hour contracts in Britain. These contracts give people no guarantee of work, but force them to […]

A strike by 220 machine operatives and cleaners at the Hovis factory in Wigan shows that determined action backed by militant tactics and labour movement solidarity can beat the bosses. Members of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) voted for three weeks of discontinuous action to stop bosses using agency staff to undermine […]

By KD Tait / Saturday 10 August, 2013 Last week retail workers’ campaign for $15 an hour and the right to unionise took another step forward with thousands joining strikes in seven cities. What began as a one-day strike by 200 fast food workers in New York last November has spread to several states and […]

Last week, British Prime Minister David Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg were presenting John Lewis as an example of “popular capitalism”, a model of corporate responsibility that not only increased its profits but gives its workers a share in the profits.