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Algeria: Wildcat General Strike Paralyzes Ports, Auto, Steel Plants

A massive wildcat general strike of nearly 20,000 auto, steel, port and public health workers is in its twelth day and is spreading across Algeria, amid repeated pitched battles with thousands of cops and security forces. Workers are also defying the ban on public rallies and demonstrations, stemming from a “state of emergency” declared by the government in the early 1990s. Strikers are demanding a wage hike and changes in the minimum wage and tax laws. They’re also denouncing the sweetheart deal signed by their unions which raises the retirement age from 50 to 60 for workers doing difficult and dangerous work, some of whom began working at age 17.

2010-02-01

Unemployment in UK

Thousands of jobs losses were announced by UK companies today, underscoring fears that British households will continue to suffer the repercussions of the recession for years to come.

Global pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca unveiled plans to cut another 8,000 jobs on top of the 15,000 already announced, but would not say how many will go in the UK. At the same time, the home retail group Shop Direct outlined plans to cut 1,500 jobs in Sunderland, Burnley and Newtown in mid-Wales and carmaker Toyota aims to axe up to 750 jobs at its main UK factory.

The news of thousands of job losses follows a stark warning from a group of labour market experts earlier this month that unemployment may continue to rise for years after the recession ends.

2010-01-28

Unequal Britain: richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest

The gap between Britain’s richest and poorest is wider than ever before, according to the Hills report.

A detailed and startling analysis of how unequal Britain has become offers a snapshot of an increasingly divided nation where the richest 10% of the population are more than 100 times as wealthy as the poorest 10% of society.

The new findings show that the household wealth of the top 10% of the population stands at £853,000 and more – over 100 times higher than the wealth of the poorest 10%, which is £8,800 or below (a sum including cars and other possessions).

When the highest-paid workers, such as bankers and chief executives, are put into the equation, the division in wealth is even more stark, with individuals in the top 1% of the population each possessing total household wealth of £2.6m or more

2010-01-27

Manchester - Unions: Whose Side Are They On?

Public Meeting of the Communist Workers’ Organisation

The financial bubble has burst and the cost is being pushed onto the working class. Jobs gone, pensions stolen, wages cut and services lost … Workers are starting to realise they have no choice but to fight back. The media are talking about the return of ‘union power’. But is there a new union militancy and if there is, is it the way forward for the working class? Join the discussion at:

Friends’ Meeting House — 6 Mount Street (behind the Central Library) — Central Manchester — 2.00 p.m. Saturday 23 January 2010 — maps.google.com

Computer firm workers to strike

Workers at Japanese giant Fujitsu are to stage a three-day strike in a row over pay, jobs and pensions, it was announced today.

Unite said its members will walk out on 12, 13 and 16 November following an overwhelming vote in favour of industrial action. It will be the first national strike at a UK computer company, according to the union.

The union is protesting over proposals for 1,200 redundancies, a pay freeze and plans to close the final-salary pension scheme to new staff.

2009-11-06

Postal workers begin two-day national strike

Up to 42,000 mail centre staff and network drivers launched a 24-hour strike, while 78,000 delivery and collection workers will walk out tomorrow.

CWU members voted by 3-1 in favour of a national strike in a ballot complaining that jobs were being axed, pay cut and working conditions made worse.

Union shows its true colours

People are saying we are against modernisation as a union but we are not,” he said. “Sixty-thousand jobs have gone from this business in the last five years in agreement with the union. That’s not a union against modernisation. What we want to do is get Royal Mail fit for the 21st century, but it’s got to be through agreement, not dictatorship or imposition.

History of conflict

Shortly after the union announced that the strikes would go ahead, the government published figures showing that almost 1m working days have been lost due to industrial action at Royal Mail since 2000

2009-10-22

Blair, clear winner of hypocritical RICH SCUMBAG award.

They have already amassed a collection of homes to rival even the most brazen of Russian oligarchs.

Now Tony Blair and his wife Cherie have bought yet another — bringing their total property portfolio to six homes worth a total of £11.94million.

Read more: dailymail.co.uk

2009-10-07

World bank - dollar to be "eclipsed"

America must brace itself for the dollar to be usurped as the world’s reserve currency as US dominance wanes in the wake of the financial crisis, World Bank president Robert Zoellick warns today.

Speaking ahead of the World Bank/IMF annual meetings in Istanbul, Zoellick said that it was time for a “responsible globalisation”, in which decision-making is more fairly shared between the old economic powers and fast-growing developing countries such as China and India.

Ever since the post-war Bretton Woods agreement, which cemented the dollar’s ascendancy over sterling, Americans have been able to rely on borrowing cheaply from the rest of the world as governments banked on the dollar as a safe bet. But Zoellick said the greenback’s status could now be under threat from the growing strength of the Chinese renminbi and the euro.

2009-09-28

UK - Last ever Labour government? It should be.

Alistair Darling has revealed his frustration at the collapse in Labour morale under Gordon Brown, accusing his party — from the prime minister down — of handing power to the Tories without a fight.

On the eve of what many MPs believe could be Labour’s final conference as a governing party for a decade, the normally restrained chancellor delivers a stinging rebuke to the entire Labour hierarchy, which he says appears to have lost “the will to live”, and warns that a Conservative government would “crash the economy”

In another sign of the party’s woes, a leading Labour thinktank warns today that Brown could be running the “last ever Labour government”.

Compass argues that unless the prime minister offers a referendum on electoral reform, Labour will suffer defeat followed by the loss of dozens more seats soon after, as Scotland opts for independence and David Cameron reduces the size of the Commons. The result could be a party with 130 seats incapable of mounting a challenge for power

2009-09-27

The new holocaust - the crisis is killing the poor

Mexico and Central America are said to be one of the regions most affeted by the crisis. The often illegal economic migration to the USA was traditionally a mitigating factor. A study prepared for the BBC by the Migration Policy Institute revealed that in the past three years the number of new migrants from Mexico to the United States fell considerably, dropping from 653,000 between March 2004 and March 2005 to only 175,000 in the same period in 2008 and 2009.

the following statistics are from BBC mundo

Mexico — 12.5 million work in informal sector.

ILO say 500 000 workers sacked in Central America.

5 .1 million people in food poverty in Mexico.

50% suffer chronic nutrition in Guatemala.

Half of population of El Salvador, Honduras y Nicaragua suffer malnutrition.

When there is no money, the first who stop eating are the under threes, there is not a family that does not take this decision….according to the specialist the real impact of the crisis in infant nutrition will start to be apparent in 5 years

2009-09-23

UK unemployment

Union leaders have warned that cutting public spending would provoke a “double dip” recession, raise unemployment to over four million and spark the threat of mass industrial action.

One senior official also reminded politicians that the last time the UK suffered “slash and burn” economics, there were riots on the streets.

The TUC has published a new report, analysing the effects of possible public spending cuts on the 25 local authorities with the highest levels of unemployment. The study found that areas such as Liverpool, Leicester and Middlesbrough would suffer 40 per cent increases in unemployment.

It also warned that a ten per cent cut in public sector staff would lead to 700,000 workers being laid off.

2009-09-14

Chinese rich scumbags beware

Not content with murdering miners, the chinese rich scum just have to rub it in….

A millionaire in northern China paid four million yuan (600,000 dollars) for a dog and ordered 30 luxury cars to come to the airport to greet her and the animal, local media reported.

The woman and her new pet — a black Tibetan Mastiff — flew into Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi province, a report on popular news portal sohu.com said.

A convoy of 30 black Mercedes-Benz cars, led by two sports utility vehicles, drove to the airport Wednesday to pick up the pair, who had arrived from the Tibetan-populated province of Qinghai in China’s northwest.

Photos of the event posted with the report showed a committee of dog-lovers holding up a long red banner welcoming the mastiff to Xi’an.

Research by the Hurun Report, a magazine that tracks China’s wealthiest, revealed in April that 825,000 people had personal wealth of over 10 million yuan (1.5 million dollars), or 0.06 percent of the population.

The vast majority of these millionaires have said the global financial crisis has not had any impact on their lifestyle, the research said.

2009-09-10

Deadly Chinese mining industry - more dead.

The death toll from a gas explosion at a coal mine in central China has risen to 42, with 37 workers still trapped underground, state media reported Wednesday, citing local officials. The deadly blast, the latest to rock the notoriously dangerous coal mining industry here, took place early Tuesday in a small mine in Pingdingshan city in Henan province, officials said.

Two city officials were sacked and all of the city’s 157 mines temporarily shut down following the accident, which the official Xinhua news agency said was believed to have been the result of illegal mining.

China’s coal mines are among the most dangerous in the world, with safety standards often ignored in the quest for profits and the drive to meet surging demand for coal — the source of about 70 percent of China’s energy.

Official figures show that more than 3,200 workers died in collieries last year, but independent labour groups say the actual figure could be much higher, as many accidents are covered up in order to avoid costly mine shutdowns.

Elsewhere in Henan, Xinhua reported that 13 people were trapped Wednesday in a gold mine in the city of Lingbao after a fire broke out.

2009-09-09

Unemployment in Japan

The total number of unemployed people rose by about one million from a year earlier to 3.59 million as companies slashed costs to cope with the worst recession in decades.

Official figures last week showed the world’s second largest economy grew in April-June for the first time in five quarters, limping out of recession, but many ordinary people say they are not feeling the recovery.

Japanese companies are also struggling. Toyota Motor said Friday it was abandoning a plant in California that it jointly owned with General Motors — the first time the Japanese firm has ever pulled the plug on a factory.

The overall economic picture in Japan remains weak,” Societe Generale analysts wrote in a research note. “We expect unemployment to continue rising through the third quarter of this year before any real recovery occurs.

There are also fears that the economy could stumble again as the effects of the government’s massive economic stimulus packages fade.

Consumer spending remains weak in Japan, leaving the economy highly dependent on exports. Household spending fell 2.0 percent in July from a year earlier, sharply reversing a 0.2 percent rise in June, data showed.

“The recent growth was mainly due to government spending and was not a self-sustaining recovery in the Japanese economy,” said Hiroshi Watanabe, economist at Daiwa Institute of Research.

We’re unlikely to see a swift recovery for the time being.

2009-08-28

UK unemployment

The number of people out of work increased by 220,000 in the three months to June. It means 2.435 million are now unemployed .

The three months to May saw unemployment rise by 281,000 to 2.38 million.

It is predicted dole queues will stretch past the three million mark next year — but an even gloomier forecast from the Centre for Economics and Business Research says it could approach four million.

This would be far worse than the 1980s peak under Margaret Thatcher.

2009-08-12

Race barriers flourishing in rotten UK

Alongside class division, racial discrimination grows like a weed on the capitalist manure heap.

Recent news is that institutionalised racism within the police force is worsening.

The Home Affairs Committee said in the ten years since the Macpherson Report aspects of police race relations, such as stop and search, had got worse.

In a context of generalised exclusion of “coloured people” from the upper echelons

“To become a member of this elite club of senior managers and directors, it isn’t simply a question of whether you are able to do the job — other things come into play: social background, how you spend your leisure time, whether other members of that club would like to spend social time with you. All too often, people of colour fail these tests.”

“Taking trend rates of the last seven years and projecting them forward shows that, if anything, the gap will widen,” the report says. “The depressing implication is that there may still be a colour bar to management jobs 33 years after the passing of the Race Relations Act.”

2009-07-22

Class barriers flourishing in Rotten UK

The rich /poor divide made the headlines again due to the publication of “Unleashing Aspiration; The final Report of The Panel on Fair Access to the Professions”

From the Guardian

Sometimes the obvious needs to be stated. Britain is an unequal society. The elite look after their own. Poverty traps people from one generation to another. Government action and huge expenditure have at best stopped social division worsening. Encouraging aspiration is hard. And these conclusions, from yesterday’s excellent report on access to the professions, sit alongside some startling individual facts.

There are, it reveals, more students of black Caribbean origin at London Metropolitan University than in all the 20 Russell Group universities put together. Only 60 of the 250 schools that run cadet forces, feeding leaders into the army, are in the state sector. The vast majority of graduate recruiters target 20 or fewer university campuses, although there are 109 universities in Britain. While only 7% of pupils are educated privately, 75% of judges went to independent schools, 70% of finance directors, 45% of top civil servants, 32% of MPs — and many journalists, too.

It is uncomfortable to be told such truths; behind its modern veneer, British society is determined by who you know, and who your parents are.

2009-07-22

Birmingham Left Communists

Left Communist literature will be on sale in Birmingham city centre on Saturday, 4 July, 11.30-12.30pm, outside the Pavillions shopping centre. Make contact there with the street-sellers if you wish to buy copies of Internationalist Perspective, Revolutionary Perspectives and World Revolution. Afterwards, you may wish to go on to the next meeting of the Midlands Discussion Forum in Bennetts Bar, Bennetts Hill (1.30-5.00pm) to discuss the ramifications of the current economic crisis.

UK economy shrinks

The economy shrank at its fastest rate for more than 50 years in the first quarter of 2009, with output down 2.4 per cent — much worse than estimated. Output had been estimated to fall to 1.9 per cent, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

The decline in the first three months of the year equals a 2.4 per cent slump seen in 1974 and is the worst since a 2.6 per cent fall seen in 1958.

The recession also began earlier than expected, with a 0.1 per cent decline seen between April and June last year compared with previous estimates of zero growth.

Following the revision — which also saw a deeper 1.8 per cent decline in the final quarter of 2008 — the UK’s output is now 4.9 per cent below the level seen before the recession.

2009-06-30

London - CWO Open Meeting

Capitalism Has No Future
It is Time for Us to Stop Making Sacrifices
How Can We Fight for a Better World?

In just three months fifty million people worldwide have lost their jobs. In the USA 32.2 million people, or more than ten per cent of the population, are now receiving food stamps (worth $83 or £56 per month). This is not just a crisis about deregulated capitalism but the deepest capitalist crisis since the Second World War. Having exploded in the financial sphere, the knock-on effects for the real economy — which is in fact where the crisis was born — are overwhelming. To discuss these facts and the prospects for humanity we invite all revolutionaries to:

Calthorpe Arms — Grays Inn Road (corner of Wren Street) — London WC1

2:00 p.m. Saturday 27 June 2009

Revolutionary Perspectives 50

RP 50 is now out. To receive a copy send £3 to our group address (BM CWO, London WC1N 3XX) . Or to receive whilst each is current why not subscribe (£15 UK, £22 elsewhere). It contains the following articles:

  • Capitalism is a State-sponsored Ponzi Scheme
  • The Working Class are Paying for the Crisis
  • MP’s Expenses Scandal: The System is Bankrupt in Every Sense
  • No2EU? Yes to British Capitalist Exploitation!
  • The Bankruptcy of General Motors = The Bankruptcy of Capitalism
  • Fiat
  • Fiat-Chrysler Agreement — Workers Pay the Price
  • The Anti-Union Protest in Turin
  • Corporate Terrorism at Pomigliano
  • The Great Game in Central Asia: US Imperialism Increases its Stakes
  • Obama Speech — New Words, Old Policies
  • Midlands Discussion Forum Meeting
  • The Commune: A Radical New Grouping or Old Left in a New Form?
  • The Italian Left — A Brief Internationalist History

Wildcat strikes spread across UK

Contract workers across Britain are being urged to continue taking wildcat strike action as efforts to resolve a bitter jobs row continue.

Talks aimed at resolving the dispute following the sacking of almost 650 workers at Lindsey oil refinery in North Lincolnshire have been adjourned and will resume on Thursday.

Sources said some progress was made during the talks but there are still “significant barriers”.

Unions are demanding the reinstatement of the sacked workers and guarantees of no victimisation of activists involved in sympathy strikes, as well as jobs for 51 employees laid off at Lindsey earlier this month.

Text messages have been sent to workers urging them to continue taking industrial action, adding: “More is needed to finish this dispute to show we will not take this abuse any longer. All sites must show their support. This fight is far from over, brothers.”

Up to 4,000 workers at power stations and oil and gas terminals across Britain have taken unofficial action.

2009-06-24

UK: Striking oil workers burn dismissal letters

Thousands of workers across England and Wales have walked out in support of 647 Lindsey oil refinery construction staff sacked for staging unofficial strikes. It comes as Lindsey workers burned dozens of dismissal letters in protest.

2009-06-24

Public sector jobs "bloodbath"

The public sector is poised to make 350,000 job cuts in the next five years, sparking a “guerrilla war” with unions, the CIPD has predicted.

Speaking ahead of the publication of the Office for National Statistics job figures, which are due out on Wednesday, John Philpott, chief economist and director of public policy at the CIPD, said that the current mood of optimism over the upturn was not yet justified. The main reason is that the burden of public debt means that large-scale public-sector job cuts are inevitable, which will have a knock-on effect throughout the economy, he said.

2009-06-16

Unofficial strike at Lindsey Oil Refinery

French oil company Total said on Friday that 1,200 contractors have walked out on unofficial strike over planned redundancies at its British Lindsey refinery.

2009-06-14

Milano - Archivio Mauro Stefanini

Archivio Mauro Stefanini Partito comunista internazionalista — A tool for the history of the Communist Left — PDF: leftcom.org

June 10th 2009 Wednesday at 5.00 p.m. — Archivio di Stato di Milano via Senato 10 — maps.google.com?q=milano+via+senato+10

  • Introduction: Barbara Bertini, Archivio di Stato di Milano
  • Speech: Andrea Torre, Istituto nazionale per la storia del movimento di liberazione in Italia
  • Speech: Fabio Damen, Partito comunista internazionalista, Battaglia comunista
  • Speech: Simonetta Di Sieno, Archivio Bruno Fortichiari
  • Chairman: Giorgio Galli, Università degli Studi di Milano
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2009-06-10-insmli-invitation-en.pdf178.38 KB

BNP boss 'to attend Queen's party'

The British National Party’s leader is set to attend a garden party hosted by the Queen, according to a colleague.

Richard Barnbrook, a BNP member of the London Assembly, said Nick Griffin will accompany him as his guest at the event at Buckingham Palace on July 21.

All members of the Assembly have been invited to the event.

Mr Barnbrook said: “I imagine there will be a to-do and a hoot. These things are going to happen more and more as the party goes forward.”

2009-05-20