credit crisis
Articles about the financial crisis or "credit crunch" of 2008.
Revolt continues in French Caribbean
The leader of the general strike crippling Guadeloupe has accused the French government of preparing to kill protestors to bring an end to the stoppage on the French Caribbean island.
"Today, given the number of gendarmes who have arrived in Guadeloupe armed to the teeth, the French state has chosen its natural path: to kill Gaudeloupeans as usual," Elie Domota said on Saturday.
Staythorpe builders walk out over jobs
Building workers on a new power station downed tools on unofficial strike early today, as wildcat action and protests over unemployment in the building trades and the lack of allocation of jobs to local workers spread south from the Lindsey refinery at Immingham.
The men joined hundreds of pickets waving flags and placards who blocked the main entrance to the Staythorpe plant near Newark in Nottinghamshire before dawn.
Yorkshire journalists to strike over job losses
Journalists in Leeds are to hold two four-day strikes over job cuts.
NUJ members on the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post voted overwhelmingly for action in a ballot after the company said three photographers faced compulsory redundancy. The first strike will start in a week's time. The Johnston Press-owned titles are facing 18 job cuts in total.
The vote in the secret postal ballot was 109 for strike action – three against.
General strikes around the world
As French unions isolate a general strike by workers in Guadeloupe, workers in Chad have set next Monday for their general strike while the leader of the Spanish UGT hints at one (or stalls for time?) in Spain.
French unions isolate Guadeloupe general strike
Anti-social solidarity - MH
A short survey of some roots of the present economic crisis from a UK perspective - and the tasks ahead for both the ruling class and the working class, employed and unemployed alike.
(Though the article suggests that the State will clamp down hard on the growing unemployed masses, it may be that a scarcity of sufficient jobs of any kind to force the jobless into and rising costs for mass workfare programmes will limit the proposed increased repression of the workless.)
Originally written for Wildcat (Germany).
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Car industry: more attacks on jobs and pay
A new wave of redundancies and pay cuts hits car manufacturing in the UK, as companies aim to take back the cost of the recession from the workforce.
Ford are looking to axe 7% of its UK workforce, with nearly half of the staff at its Southampton Transit plant lined up to go. The company is also seeking to renege on the pay deal of 5.2% agreed with the unions, as it seeks to fund the redundancy packages from the pay of the workers.
Energy wildcats continue to spread across the UK
The wave of wildcat strike action that has swept across the UK escalated today as hundreds more workers walked out in the protest at the exclusion of British workers from jobs.
Contract workers from the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria, the Heysham nuclear power station in Lancashire and a site at Staythorpe, in Nottinghamshire, joined the unofficial action over the hiring of Italian and Portuguese workers, which local unemployed British workers were unable to apply for on a Lincolnshire power station project.
Workers occupy crystal factory for second night
Waterford Crystal workers have spent a second night occupying the main visitor centre at the company's factory in Waterford in the Republic of Ireland.
They are protesting at the decision by the receiver to stop manufacturing and make 480 staff redundant. The company, which employs 670 people, went into receivership at the beginning of January.
French general strike, 29th January 2009
Photos from France's largest general strike in three years which hit transportation, school, hospital and mail services as more than 1 million protesters took part, with tens of thousands of youths, retirees and unemployed people march across towns and cities to protect jobs and consumers during the global economic crisis.
Unofficial refinery walkouts 'over foreign workers' spread
An assessment of the spread of the refinery wildcat strikes - purportedly over the hiring of foreign workers - and the media coverage of them.
The wave of unofficial walkouts following the use of the Italian construction contractor, IREM with its own workforce at Total's Lindsey oil refinery have received a great deal of media coverage.
