North London was alive with the sound of pickets yesterday, as hundreds of people around the boroughs stood outside their workplaces to take on bosses and persuade workmates not to cross the line. Focussing on the particularly vibrant borough of Hackney, North London Solfed can report a strong showing from the places we visited, with scabbing kept to a minimum - though sadly not every staffer had worked out that it's worse for kids to have badly-treated teachers than for them to miss a day of school.

Bridge Academy

Download the pdf here.

Job Centre workers in the PCS union are on strike today to defend their pensions, but this is our fight too. The government’s attacks on job centre workers go hand-in-hand with their attacks on claimants. On the one hand they lower the terms and conditions of job centre staff, on the other they force claimants onto privately-run workfare schemes like the Flexible New Deal, through for-profit companies like Maximus, Skills Training and Careers Development Group. Meanwhile they force ill and disabled people off the sick (ESA) and onto Jobseekers Allowance (JSA).

The North London Local of the Solidarity Federation would like to extend our fullest solidarity and support to the Guildhall cleaners who are struggling to claim their rightful wages.  Despite the various international backgrounds of the cleaners, they've stood firm and held two days of strikes.

Our bulletin for the June 30th public sector strikes. Including:

• Why should I care about public sector pensions?
• Claimants: today is a strike day
• Disabled people answer June 30 strike call
• Plus: a map of pickets and demonstrations in Brighton (see our online map here)

Download as a pdf (double-sided A4).

The past week has seen NLSF participate in two “distros”: handing out fliers, badges, and stickers in support of June 30th's public sector strike and giving out free copies of SolFed's national newspaper Catalyst.

View J30 Brighton in a larger map

Stop work to stop the cuts? Why striking against the cuts makes sense on June 30 and beyond.

Striking back: In-depth centrefold feature on strike action, including an illustrated timeline of strikes in Britain and a graph plotting falling strike days against rising inequality.

Victory against Office Angels: Direct action solidarity wins a temp's stolen wages.

This year's war: From Iraq to Libya - where there's oil there's 'humanitarian intervention'.

Plus: Your basic rights at work, Stokes Croft after the riots and your letters on the Southern Cross healthcare debacle, Slutwalks and more!

Due to popular demand, the pdf download is now as single pages (no spreads), so it can be printed out legibly on a normal A4 printer.

On Monday 20th June, Solfed arrived once again at the steps of the Serbian embassy in Belgrave square. Following the successful campaign to free the Belgrade 6, we are somewhat familiar with Serbian state and it's repressive tendancies. This time the picket was called in solidarity with the International Anti-NATO Campaign. We hope that international solidarity will work as well as it did last time and lead to swift justice. Text of leaflet below: