gas
News and articles about work, policy and workers' struggles in the energy sector around the world.
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.
Bolivia: class struggle and social crisis
Pamphlet looking at the class struggle in Bolivia underlying the struggle between Evo Morales and the oligarchy.
The Commune's pamphlet on the class struggle and right-wing coup attempts in Bolivia includes the following articles and documents:
- Evo Morales, the Bolivian oligarchy and the workers' movement, by David Broder
- Central Obrera [union federation]: 'neither Evo nor the oligarchy'
Bolivian union disapproves of Morales' negotiations with fascists
The Central Obrera Boliviana sees no value in the current dialogue between the indigenous-peasant government and the separatist oligarchy. The president is urging the fascist governors to sign a grand national accord in the next four to five days. From the commune, translated from the Spanish from Econoticias Bolivia
La Paz, September 18th 2008 - The leadership of the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) has declared that it does not approve of the negotiations president Evo Morales today opened with the fascist governors and the oligarchy in search of a great national accord.
UK: One in four will live in fuel poverty
Over 14 million people could find themselves in fuel poverty in the near future, if new figures from gas giant Centrica predicting a 70% rise in gas prices prove accurate - nearly a quarter of the population.
Around 4.5 million households are currently living in fuel poverty, equating to around 10.4 million people according to the government’s 2002 figures from the Household Survey, but another 1.6 million homes are likely to be added as prices continue to rise.
The Ecological Challenge: Three Revolutions are Necessary
With a planetary ecological crisis on hand, it can no longer be denied that socialism will be incompatible with mass production and mass consumption. Indeed, even without returning to Malthusian catastrophe theories, we are forced to admit that the planet’s resources are not inexhaustible. These resources could provide for humanity’s needs, but only if they are used in a reasonable and rational way, i.e., in a manner directly opposed to capitalist logic, which in itself is a source of imbalance.
The Ecological Challenge: Three Revolutions are Necessary
by Alternative Libertaire
Bangladesh; life's a gas! $100 a month employee grabs 'bonus' of $145 million
The extent of the corruption discovered within the Bangladeshi gas supply industry is astonishing even the anti-corruption investigators (see earlier story).
The head of the state-owned Titas Gas Distribution Company has estimated that 80% of his employees (including, as he was obliged to admit, himself) are corrupt - investigators are trying to trace just how many millions have been siphoned off. It is claimed that "almost everyone in the company is a millionaire".
300-strong wildcat in Milford Haven ends
Workers at South Hook LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) have gone back to work following a 26-hour stoppage in support of a colleague who claims to have suffered from racial abuse on site.
The Western Telegraph reports:
Three hundred men working for Shaw stopped working at 10 am on Thursday, and marched on the offices of main contractors Chicago Bridge and Iron. The men came out in support of fellow worker, Omar Mohamed, who alleges that he has suffered racial harassment from workers from another company sub contracting to CB&I.
The struggle against Shell in the west of Ireland
This report was written for the International of Anarchist Federations in March 2007. A Spanish language version is here.
There are, at a very conservative estimate, currently thirty local campaigns against unwanted hazardous developments in Ireland.
Rossport: a closer look.
This article on the Shell to Sea campaign and on Rossport Solidarity Camp, was written in May 2006, for a publication which unfortunately did not see the light of day. It is a look at the campaign against the state and Shell’s “development” of a corner of the west of Ireland, situating it in an international context of environmental justice struggles.
This campaign against the plan to build an unprecedented high-pressure raw gas pipeline and refinery in Northwest Mayo is in its sixth year, but last spring took a turn towards popular protest and direct action and has shut down construction work.
LPG - a load of hot air
The Competition Commission has found evidence that huge monopolies dominating a major utility sector are taking advantage of the position - but apparently not enough to warrant action.
A report has found that the Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) market is uncompetitive and could be ripping off vulnerable rural people, but has refused to suggest the breakup of controlling monopolies.
LPG is used to supply heating for housing not covered by the national gas grid, with people living in rural areas having gas periodically delivered and stored at their homes.
