UWE staff to strike next Thursday 10/02/11

Members of University & College Union have balloted for strike action next week - this is highly significant considering  the scale of the attacks on higher education, with UWE being seen as a test case for what can be forced through, and given the student militancy around this issue - especially at UWE and in the city of Bristol generally. It should be given full support and solidarity. Here is the press release:


Staff to strike at University of West England

• University to face local strike action for the first time in its history over restructure plans

Members of the University and College Union (UCU) at the University of West England (UWE) today (Thursday) announced that they will be taking strike action on Thursday 10 February in a row over controversial restructure plans.

The union has accused UWE of trying to rush through proposals which it believes could lead to inferior jobs descriptions and a dubious selection process. Under the plans all university readers, professors and principal lecturers are being made to reapply for their jobs as the university looks to cut back on senior posts by 25%. The measures will also affect lecturers and hourly-paid staff who will be subject to a review over the next few weeks.

UCU said that although it wasn’t against a restructure in principle, management had refused to allow enough time for the union to see if the process was fair and had prevented a deal from being reached.

The news follows the result of a month long ballot. Two-thirds of staff (66%) who voted supported strike action and over four-fifths (89%) agreed to action short of a strike. The union said that although its members at UWE had given a clear mandate for local strike action for the first time in the institution’s history, it still hoped the dispute could be resolved without any disruption.

UCU regional official, Nova Gresham, said: “Management is looking to rush proposals that will affect the jobs of hundreds of staff here at UWE. Had they been prepared to pause their plans and allow time for both sides to sit down together and make sure the process was fair and transparent a deal may well have been reached by now.

“There is still time for a negotiated settlement to be reached, but management should be warned that staff trust is at an all-time low and they are very angry at the way things have been handled. Unless the university gets its act together the branch will take local strike action for the first time in its history.”

http://paperbrolly.tumblr.com/post/3087919183/uwe-staff-to-strike-press-release

Forest of Dean: Tory MP Harper calls public meeting with only a day's notice

Circulated today by the Bristol & District Anti-Cuts Alliance:
HARPER CALLS PUBLIC MEETING WITH ONLY A DAY'S NOTICE!
In a shock announcement today Mark Harper MP has said in the press today he will be holding a public meeting at 7.00pm in the Main Place (the Library building) Coleford this Friday 4th February.
He has always said he will visit us and tell us what the government's plans are in a public meeting - in itself hardly consultation - but to give the people of the Forest only a few hours notice and to hold the meeting in a venue that only holds a few dozen people is not treating us with the respect we deserve.
Mark Harper is hardly living up to his promise - which is prominent on his web site - to represent the Forest in Parliament, not represent Parliament in the Forest.
Come along and tell him what you think. Sell off includes woodlands around Bristol

Scottish Anti-Cuts Alliance launched

This is an excellent initiative, showing how things can not only be built from the ground up but need to be if they are to be democratic, representative and have the fighting weight to defeat all of the cuts. Our success in Bristol, and the example of Scotland, show what can be done on an all-Britain basis - it needs to be done!

By Matt Dobson

An historic step was taken on Saturday 29 January when the Scottish Anti Cuts Alliance (SACA) was established at a conference in Glasgow. The conference came after a successful Defend Glasgow Services rally that drew more than 400 people to George Square to hear local trade unionists, young people and students condemn the cuts of the Con-Dem government, the Scottish Parliament and Glasgow City Council, and offer a fighting alternative.

The launch of SACA and its founding principles was democratically discussed and debated. The conference of almost 100 trade unionists and anti-cuts campaigners was made up of 58 delegates elected from trade union organisations, campaigns such as Youth Fight for Jobs and Right to Work, student organisations, anti-cuts campaigns from across Scotland, and another 35 visitors.

Anti-cuts campaigns were represented from Dundee, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, Edinburgh and West Dunbartonshire. Trade union organisations including Unison branches from Dundee, Glasgow and North Ayrshire sent delegates.
Leading members of the PCS took part, as did branches of Unite and the UCU, and the Clydebank Trades Council. The Scottish Pensioners Forum, the disabled rights campaign, the Black Triangle, the National Union of Students and the Glasgow anti-cuts student network were also represented.
In all, 23 anti-cuts and trade union organisations took part in the conference making it the widest and most representative anti-cuts organisation in Scotland.
The fighting tone of the conference was set by Janice Godrich, President of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), who outlined the vicious cuts planned by the Con-Dem government to the civil service that if implemented, will mean the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and the decimation of vital services.
Janice highlighted the recent announcement by TUC leader Brendan Barber that unions should discuss coordinated industrial action against the cuts. She explained that unions with a fighting leadership such as the PCS would continue to push for this and stressed that the development of a powerful anti-cuts movement would pressure union leaders to organise action.
Raymond Watt of the Right to Work campaign also spoke and Brian Smith, branch secretary of Glasgow City Unison then moved the proposed founding statement of the SACA.
Brian argued that the key founding principles of the alliance should be opposition to all cuts, support for industrial action by workers and mass resistance by communities, support for the setting of no cuts 'needs budgets' by councils and the Scottish Parliament, and that elected politicians who want to participate in anti-cuts campaigning should vote against cuts.
Brian outlined an alternative to the cuts, including calling for increased taxation of the rich and big business. He explained that SACA would not be a substitute for the trade unions or local anti-cuts campaigns but would act as a national coordinating body to build a mass anti-cuts movement against the cuts.
Speakers from local areas reported on their activities. Harvey Duke from the Dundee Unemployed Support Centre gave a rousing account of the challenge made by the campaign to Tory minister Iain Duncan Smith to come to Dundee and publicly debate the planned attacks on welfare and benefits.
A representative from the National Union of Journalists reported on the huge cuts to the BBC and workers organising to fight back.
Dave Sherry from Unite Scottish Housing Association branch and a member of Right to Work (RtW) and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) moved five amendments to the founding statement.
In particular amendment 4 caused debate as it sought to delete the proposal that all elected politicians who wish to participate in SACA must vote against the cuts.
Their amendment wanted to only "encourage" councillors, MSPs and MPs to vote against cuts. In the conference debate SWP members argued that this was needed in order to build the broadest possible campaign against the cuts.
They warned that unless this amendment was included, left Labour politicians would not join the campaign and Labour supporters would be alienated if excluded from SACA for not promising to vote against cuts.
Right to Work and SWP supporters urged that SACA should give the benefit of the doubt to Labour politicians who were wavering against the cuts and not exclude them from the campaign.
They claimed the alliance risked isolating itself from the millions of workers who are looking to Labour for opposition and who would vote for them in the forthcoming Scottish Parliament elections.
These arguments were opposed effectively by PCS NEC member Cheryl Gedling from Edinburgh who explained that PCS members remember the record of New Labour who began the cuts in public services.
Cheryl argued that Labour politicians who are trusted by workers are in a minority and that Labour and SNP politicians would align themselves with the anti-cuts movement to build their careers when they have no intention of defending jobs and services.
Cheryl pointed out that the amendment would let these politicians "off the hook". Jim McFarlane, delegate from Dundee City Unison, explained that elected politicians had already had enough time to decide whether to oppose the cuts and reminded the conference that councils would be voting on cuts budgets across Scotland in the next few weeks.
He and other speakers exposed the real implications of the amendment, that it would mean a weakening of the programme of the anti-cuts alliance. Delegates opposing the amendment raised the example of the debates in the campaign against the poll tax.
Some had then argued that non payment was impossible and that the campaigning should be left to politicians rather than working class communities, but were proved wrong.
False analogies were also drawn in the concluding argument by Dave Sherry between the role of Labour politicians and the trade union leaders.
The argument was put that: "We don't agree with everything the union leaders do but we don't exclude them do we?"
In summing up his opposition to amendment 4, Brian Smith explained the role that elected politicians should play and that if they are not prepared to make sacrifices over their careers to defend services and communities they should not be allowed to associate themselves with our movement.
He explained that the alliance should welcome Labour voters and supporters and have a broad and inclusive nature but a different attitude had to be taken to the Labour leader of Glasgow City Council, Gordon Matheson, who had clearly stated his opposition to the unions' call for a needs budget and planned to make £60 million of cuts.
He highlighted the recent decision by the Scottish Council of Unison after a motion from Glasgow City Unison, to call on politicians to vote against the cuts and set needs budgets.
Brian explained this argument was won despite the opposition of the right wing in the union and that the anti-cuts alliance should align itself with this decision of the leading Scottish body of the largest public sector union.
After an equal number of speakers for and against amendment 4, it was rejected by a clear majority of delegates with 33 against and 18 for. Significantly, not one person outside of the supporters of RtW supported the amendment.
The conference agreed to set up a steering committee for the alliance with two delegates from each local anti-cuts campaign, trade union organisation and national campaign such as Youth Fight for Jobs and Right to Work.
It was agreed to link up on an all-Britain level with anti-cuts campaigns such as the one recently set up by the National Shop Stewards Network. The establishment of the Scottish Anti-Cuts Alliance on a clear platform of opposition to all cuts, and demands on elected politicians to refuse to make cuts, marks an important milestone in the struggle to build a mass anti-cuts movement in Scotland.

Egypt: “We will not leave until he goes!”

Eyewitness report from Cairo’s Tahrir Square
[see also: articles in Arabic]

Following huge demonstrations in Cairo and Alexandria yesterday, President Hosni Mubarak stated that he would step down in September. Protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square vowed however to continue their demonstrations to force Mubarak to leave office. This afternoon saw dramatic clashes as supporters of the discredited dictator attacked protestors, including with firearms, mounted on horses and camels, in a last-ditch attempt to intimidate demonstrators off the streets. Armed forces have thus far remained “neutral”, issuing an order for the dispersal of the gatherings of both sides.

Below, we publish an interview conducted by socialistworld.net before this afternoon’s events, with a CWI reporter in Tahrir Square, central Cairo.

Read the interview here: http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/4820

The CWI calls for:

• For mass workers’ action, including a general strike, for the immediate overthrow of Mubarak and the whole rotten, brutal regime
• For full democratic rights immediately, including the right to assemble, to strike and to organise democratic independent trade unions
• For the creation of democratically elected committees of mass struggle, and defence against state repression, in the workplaces, communities, schools and colleges, linked on local, regional and national scale, to spearhead the resistance
• For rank and file committees of police and soldiers - Side with the masses & purge the officers and hierarchy
• No to sectarianism – For the unity of all workers across religious lines
• No trust in any new ‘national unity’ regime based on the interests of the ruling class and imperialism
• For immediate and free elections to a revolutionary democratic constituent assembly - For a majority workers’ and rural workers’ government
• For a living minimum wage, guaranteed jobs, a massive programme of house building, education and health
• End the Egyptian blockade of Gaza – For self-determination for Palestine and for workers’ unity and mass action to overthrow dictators across the region
• For the nationalisation of Egypt’s big corporations, the banks and large estates and their democratic planning to meet the needs of the masses not an elite
• For a socialist Egypt and a socialist confederation of the region, on an equal and voluntary basis

Egypt: Independent unions announce a new Trade Union Federation

See the press release below, taken from here: http://www.solidaritycenter.org/

Solidarity with the Egyptian Revolution! See here for the CWI's Marxist analysis of events so far: http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/4816

Today, representatives of the of the Egyptian labor movement, made up of the independent Egyptian trade unions of workers in real estate tax collection, the retirees, the technical health professionals and representatives of the important industrial areas in Egypt: Helwan, Mahalla al-Kubra, the tenth of Ramadan city, Sadat City and workers from the various industrial and economic sectors such as: garment & textiles, metals industry, pharmaceuticals, chemical industry, government employees, iron and steel, automotive, etc… And they agreed to hold a press conference at 3:30pm this afternoon in Tahrir Square next to Omar Effendi Company store in downtown Cairo to announce the organization of the new Federation of Egyptian Trade Unions and to announce the formation of committees in all factories and enterprises to protect, defend them and to set a date for a general strike. And to emphasize that the labor movement is in the heart and soul of the Egyptian Peoples’ revolution and its emphasis on the support for the six requirements as demanded by the Egyptian People's Revolution. To emphasize the economic and democratic demands voiced by the independent labor movement through thousands of strikes, sit-ins and protests by Egyptian workers in the past years.

Socialist Party meeting Tue 1st Feb: The ConDem Cuts Agenda

'Broken Britain: The ConDem Cuts Agenda'

A talk by Dave Reid of Socialist Party Wales

Cheltenham Road Library, Bristol, BS6 5QX

7.30pm

All welcome - come along!

Our visiting speaker will spell out the true scale of the ConDem plan to destroy the welfare state as we know it, and how it is based not merely on an ideological hatred of public services and trade union rights, but also represents the deep crisis of world capitalism itself. 

We are facing a massive attack on jobs and services – jobs, education, health care, the right to affordable social housing, benefits, pensions, decent road and rail networks – and the truth is that anything can be sacrificed in order to placate the credit ratings agencies and their friends the bankers - the same people who brought us to the edge of the precipice in the first place! He will also talk about how communities and trade unions, standing together with a clear programme, can break the coalition and defeat the cuts. 

Stroud Against the Cuts