Cleaners have a vital role in society, yet their job is poorly paid and routinely dismissed as a job carried out mainly by women to earn a bit of extra cash; cleaning is not generally seen as a particularly physically hard or dangerous job, many people see it as involving a bit of dusting, mopping and hoovering.
As part of its national campaign to make over 1000 people redundant Fujitsu is targeting a number of reps at its factory in Manchester. The Manchester site has a long history of militancy and the 3 reps being target, Ian Allinson, Denis Morris and Lynne Hodge, have been active at Fujitsu for many years.
You can get more information about the dispute at: www.ouruniontest.wordpress.com
Send letters of protest to Duncan.Tait@uk.fujitsu.com
Rail guards on the 3rd October took action to protect their jobs on Northern, Southern, Merseyrail and Greater Anglia. The strike is aimed at preventing the rail companies removing the guards from trains and operating driver only trains. The RMT rail union stated "RMT members are standing absolutely rock solid and united this morning in these four separate disputes as they make the case for safe, secure and accessible rail service for all.”
Calderdale SF/IWA condemns the police violence against Catalan citizens on the 1st October 2017 who went to vote on what the Spanish state has declared to be an illegal referendum on independence. While, as anarchosyndicalists, we don't support the creation of a new state, which reflects mainly the interests of the Catalan bourgeoisie, we do condemn all police violence and intimidation against men, women and children. Instead of the creation of new states with warring police and capitalist factions pitted against one another, we favour the deeply embedded solution of libertarian federalism - free, self-managed communities that are plural, open and tolerant.
Brighton Solidarity Federation has started a dispute with the lettings agency Spencer & Leigh in Patcham. A tenant has been organising with SolFed after £510 was withheld from her deposit in order to change a lock and to have the property professionally cleaned. The tenant left the property secure at the end of her tenancy, and she also had it professionally cleaned prior to vacating it.
Si necesitas un poco de ayuda sobre cómo empezar en esta ciudad, échale un vistazo a la Guía del inmigrante en Manchester
Manchester Solfed's Migrants Guide to Manchester, is now available in Spanish. See pdf attached
On Saturday September 16th, Manchester SolFed took part in a demonstration organised by the Smash IPP campaign. Imprisonment for public protection (IPP) is a brutal system under which people find themselves rotting in prison for years without any idea of when they will be released. Under IPP, people as young as 16, after being given initial sentences of two years or less for petty crimes, such as theft of a mobile phone, still find themselves locked away in prison after as much as ten years or more later. As one IPP campaigner noted, being locked away in prison for year after year with no idea of when you will be released is nothing less than a form of mental torture. Needless to say, many prisoners serving IPP sentences suffer from mental health problems, reflected in the fact that a large number of IPP prisoners resort to self harm as a coping mechanism.
