Today, PCS members in HM Revenue & Customs took strike action over the threat of privatisation. In Bootle, a member of Liverpool Solidarity Federation and PCS activist put the following statement - calling for a national week of action against privatisation - to an assembly of striking workers, where it was approved unanimously.

HM Revenue & Customs are engaging in a 12 month pilot with two private contractors, Sitel and Teleperformance, to handle calls alongside existing staff at contact centres in Bathgate and Lilyhall. The department claims that this is merely to look at ways they can address call backlogs during peak times. However, this is a transparent attack on the jobs, terms and conditions of PCS members.

SOLIDARITY WITH THE LA SENZA SIT-IN

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UPDATE - From the La Senza Sit-In Facebook page:

"Victory!!!!! Thank you to everyone for the support!!! We are going to donate all the money we were given to AWARE!"

Congratulations from North London SolFed

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Four women workers as the Dublin La Senza store have taken the bold step of occupying their workplace to ensure they get fair redundancies.  The protest has met with overwhelming support and the local community has come out to support these courageous workers.

The strikers claim that the redundancies are not valid and considered them a clear retaliation for the strike. They demand to be reinstated by ABB or outsourced by ADECCO - EUROCEN.

On Wednesday EULEN fired all the workers on strike since November 28.

EULEN has claimed that it fired the workers because of the loss of its contract with ABB, where it was replaced by ADECCO - EUROCEN.

Among those dismissed is the entire Strike Committee. Nine of it 12 members already had been dismissed on 31 December.

On Sunday 8th January 2012, Merseyside Police attempted to illegally evict Occupy Liverpool from their city centre squat. A member of Liverpool Solidarity Federation was in attendance to observe and lend assistance to the occupiers.

The Ryanair Don't Care campaign, supported by Liverpool Solidarity Federation, is calling for an international week of action against exploitation and recruitment-scamming by Ryanair starting on March 12th 2012.

The Ryanair Don't Care Campaign was started by John Foley when his daughter was sacked as a flight attendant mid-flight and abandoned abroad, penniless. This would lead to the exposure of a cynical and highly exploitative recruitment scam by the airline.

After sitting in the files for two years this hour-long talk in Manchester by a member of the Spanish Confederación Nacional del Trabajo has only just been formatted and uploaded to the web. In it, the formative years of what would become the largest anarchist organisation in history are described in detail, from 1840 when socialist ideas first started to penetrate into the Iberian Penninsula, up to its establishment as one of the biggest players in 20th century Spanish politics, one which would influence the world in unexpected and far-reaching ways.

Cleaners at the Guildhall have been holding a sit in and stopping work since the 22^nd of December because of mistreatment and intimidation. Early this morning management called the police, who came and intimidated and threatened the cleaners. The cleaners protested that they were holding a completely peaceful sit-in. They finally left due to police threats to drag them out physically.

The following is a report by our Portuguese sister organisation about austerity measures and the recent general strike..

On the last 24th November a new general strike took place in Portugal, exactly one year after the previous one. This was the seventh general strike in Portugal in 37 years and the third convoked by the two main labor unions CGTP and UGT.