The 1976-78 Grunwick strike

The Grunwick dispute started in August 1976 in a film processing plant in Willesden. It lasted for nearly two years, the SPG (riot police) were used for the first time in an industrial dispute, and it involved mass pickets, over 500 arrests, strikers run down by cars, hunger strikes outside Congress House, and ended in defeat. At Grunwick nearly all the workers were Asian women. In the 70s large numbers of women from the subcontinent worked in manufacturing and in the years before Grunwick there were big strikes in the midlands involving mainly Asian women, such as the Imperial Typewriters dispute in Leicester in 1974.

The economy of making women care

The supposed ‘solution’ to the economic crisis is premised on cutting costs. It is therefore important to highlight the role that women’s subordinate position in the economy plays, as this will allow - and is allowing - for many activities to continue on an unpaid basis.

History has already shown how women are used differently at different economic junctures. Whereas the war economy of the 1920s and 1930s put women to work, it sacked them in the 1940s to give their posts to the soldiers coming home from the front. The ‘marriage bar’, that is, the prohibition of married women to enter certain better-qualified professions, which was in place in some industries until the 1960s, kept women in low paid jobs. According to Maria Angeles Durán, 2/3 of the total working hours today are unpaid caring-type of activities - done almost entirely by women.

Resisting, questioning, creating

International Women’s Day (IWD) is marked each year on the 8th of March, to signify the economic, cultural and political achievements of women and more importantly, all that still has to be achieved in the struggle for women's liberation. 2012 is the 101st anniversary of the day.

International Women’s Day first emerged from the women’s labour movement at the turn of the twentieth century, in North America and Europe. In 1908, in the United States of America, a three month strike of almost 30,000 garment workers, composing mainly of migrant women, almost shut down the garment industry and won most of the workers’ demands, including the right to organise, to bargain collectively, and improved wages and working conditions.

Interview: John Foley, the man behind ‘Ryanair Don’t Care’

When a man handcuffed himself to the goalpost during Everton’s premier league match with Man City, little was known about his cause. In 2008, John Foley’s daughter was working as an air stewardess for Ryanair. Her contract was suddenly terminated during a shift, leaving her stranded abroad with no money and no way to get home. It soon became clear that this was happening to a significant number of Ryanair’s cabin crew before their probationary period had finished.  The airline, however, were still demanding a €3,000 training fee off these former employees, earning Ryanair a tidy profit out of sacking staff.

Employment tribunal rules agency worker's blacklisting is legal

Despite rhetoric that the new EU agency worker regulations will ‘stifle business’ and ‘cost jobs’, the extent to which the British government will go to use agency work to attack hard-won legal rights and undermine working conditions is becoming increasingly clear.

A case-in-point is the recent decision by the Central London Employment Tribunal that Dave Smith, a union activist and blacklisted construction engineer, is not entitled to legal protection against blacklisting because he was employed through an agency. This is despite Carillion, the firm who ultimately employed Smith, admitting in a signed statement that their managers had supplied the blacklist with information about Mr. Smith.

Electricians beat back BESNA

Firms drop proposed 35% pay cut after direct action campaign from ‘Sparks’

Electricians are celebrating a major breakthrough in their battle to stop a co-ordinated attempt by some of Britain’s biggest construction firms to deskill their jobs and impose pay cuts of up to 35% after main players Balfour Beatty and NG Bailey threw in the towel. A source told a trade magazine that “one thing is definite, BESNA is finished.” The news was later confirmed in Construction News.

The employers had wanted to kill off JIB, an industry-wide agreement on pay and conditions, so it could be replaced with the vastly inferior BESNA plan. This would have let contractors raise and lower hourly pay rather than maintaining a standard wage for skilled work. For some electricians this would have meant a fall in hourly rates from £16.25 to £10 – a 35% cut.

The great workfare scandal

There is little evidence that workfare increases the likelihood of finding work. It can even reduce employment chances by limiting the time available for job search and by failing to provide the skills and experience valued by employers. (…) Workfare is least effective in getting people into jobs in weak labour markets where unemployment is high.

 

Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) Research Report No 533

Workfare means doing unpaid work for your job seekers allowance (JSA) of up to £67 per week. The government claims workfare helps the unemployed and create jobs, and yet their own report says this is not true, especially when unemployment is high (see quote above).

Workfare demo, Islington

As part of Boycott Workfare's National day of action against the government,s divisive workfare program, members of NLSF met up In Islington to show their opposition. McDonalds on Chaple Market was our first port of call. Loads of leaflet were handed and some good conversations were struck up, mostly in support of our presence outside these exploitative and unscrupulous shops. Although couple of the market stallholders gave us a bit of verbal and the McDonald's manager couldn't understand why his shop was being targeted as "they had nothing to do with the program", Chaple Market was undeniably supportive. Moving on to Upper St, the manager at Holland & Barrett just didn't want us there at all. We didn't plan staying there too long as some wanted to go to the main event in central London.

Rebel Rebel -

start: 
Thu, 08/03/2012 - 14:00

Location

See map: Google Maps
Event organiser: 
SolFed/Feminist Library/56a Infoshop/Colorama
iconimage: 

The Feminist Library will be opening its doors to
welcome you for a day of bookstalls, food, drinks, discussions and
celebration of rebellious women.

local, network, collective: 
SolFed
Access Layer: 
Public

Solent Solfeds First Picket!

Solent Solfed answered the call from Boycott Workfare on Saturday morning (3rd March) and joined a picket outside Primark in Portsmouth’s Commercial Road. A small group of anarchists from Solfed, Surrey and Hants Afed, and Portsmouth Anarchists turned out alongside the local SWP group. Although the anarchists and socialists had their own specific leaflets it was good to see political differences put to the side to unite against workfare. Our leaflets were drawn up and printed by Surrey and hants Afed, (thanks guys!).