News from our comrades in Berlin, who had been dragged into the courts by the bosses of the Cinema Babylon.
About 50 people gathered in the biggest hall of Berlin’s Higher Court on the morning of June 10th. They were waiting for the decision on the FAU Berlin’s appeal on whether they could call themselves a union. Only 15 minutes into the trial, the judge delivered the verdict. The injunction is overturned; the ban is repealed; the crowd goes wild.
The first issue of Liverpool Solidarity Federation’s free local newsletter, Wildcat!
Contents:
- Wildcat strike action hits Merseyside
- Liverpool Rejects BNP's fascism
- 100 years of the CNT
- No public dough for Joe
- Q&A: Alun Parry
THIS Saturday (29th May), 12pm – 6pm in Brighton. Join the Facebook event. Venue to be confirmed very soon here and on Facebook.
As a new government is getting ready to attack the living conditions of ordinary people, students and education workers have already had experiences with cuts – and how we can stop them. We will try to draw the lessons from the strikes, occupations and other forms of direct action taken in HE and FE over the last months. How can we build effective alliances between students and workers? How can we act in solidarity across education establishments? How can we organise from below to defend education?
National conference with talks and workshops, open to students and education workers.
After the failure at the polls, much attention from socialists and trade unionists has fallen upon the possibilities of working class political representation. While some talk of ‘reclaiming’ the Labour Party for the workers movement, others feel this party has had it’s day, and a replacement is needed. The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) can in many ways be seen as the springboard for the latest such attempt – coming on the heels of past attempts, such as Arthur Scargil’s Socialist Labour Party.
In early to mid 2010, members of North London SolFed organised text readings and discussions open to other anarchists and members of the public, under the name of the Radical Reading Collective.
Texts discussed included 'Give Up Activism', 'The Tyranny of Structurelessness', 'Hierarchy, Structure and Consensus within Activist Groups', a public talk on Rudolf Rocker with a speaker from the Radical History Network of North East London, Rocker's 'Anarcho-syndicalism', Marx's 'Value, Price & Profit', Mason's 'Live Working or Die Fighting', 'The Organisational Platform of Libertarian Communism', and a film showing of Vivr La Utopia.
Newsletter for the Radical Workers Bloc - Sussex uni redundancies, voting Green, nursery closure, workfare (2010)
As of yesterday, December 11, 2009, FAU Berlin (FAU-B) has essentially
been banned as a union. The decision was made by the Berlin Regional
Court (Landgericht Berlin) without a hearing. FAU-B was not even
informed that the Neue Babylon GmbH – which is involved in a labor
dispute with FAU-B – had started legal proceedings against them. The
court’s decision goes beyond merely taking away FAU-B’s rights as a
union within the Babylon cinema. From this point on they are no longer
allowed to call themselves a union!
Background
Following on from the attacks detailed in last issue of Catalyst, refuse workers in Leeds and Brighton have won significant victories defeating attempts to slash their pay under the twisted logic of ‘equal pay’.
In Leeds, following a mass meeting at which 79% of the GMB and Unison members voted to accept management’s offer, the 11 week Leeds City Council bin strike ended on 24 November 2009 when victorious bin crews and street cleaners marched back to work at Cross Green and Yeadon depots.
The workers had gone on strike on September 7, sparked by a new union-negotiated pay and grading structure agreed under the auspices of the NJC Single Status Agreement, that entailed loss of bonuses and weekend rates -leaving them facing a massive £4,500 cut to their £17,500 annual pay.
Statement the Serbian Anarcho-syndicalist group ASI presented to the
International Workers Association Congress in 2009 on the states
attempts to fit up six anarchists.
Report on circumstances which led to arrest of Belgrade anarchists and International terrorism charges
Leaflet we wrote after 115 redundancies were announced at Sussex university, where several of our members work or study.
Across the country, education is under attack. In the past month, job losses have been announced in many places, including 200 at the University of Cumbria, 130 in Manchester MMU, £35m cuts at Leeds university, and of course 116 redundancies at Sussex. Politicians from all parties are united in wanting to make ordinary people pay the costs of capitalism in crisis, and they are starting with higher education.