privatisation
Royal Mail staff strike
More than 12,000 postal workers are on strike as of Friday in a row over jobs, pay and services.
The 24-hour strike will affect cities ranging from Edinburgh to Plymouth. The union has accused Royal Mail of cutting the pay of employees and reducing services.
Dave Ward, the union's deputy general secretary, said: "There are serious and growing problems in the postal sector which urgently need resolving.
London postal workers strike set for Friday, other regions to be balloted
Royal Mail is braced for further industrial unrest, with unions expected to ballot more regions for strike action as early as this week. It follows the vote last week by postal workers in London to stage a 24-hour walkout this Friday.
With plans to privatise the state-owned group in disarray, Jonathan DeCarteret, from the consultancy Post-Switch, is predicting that the London vote will prove to be the "starting pistol in a long summer of industrial strike action".
Neo-liberals don't die, they just amortise
There has been a lot of talk on the left, and even in the mainstream media, about how neo-liberalism is dead or dying as the recession burns a hole through their theorists' tissue of lies. Not a bit of it. If anything, privatisation and the robbing of the working class is accelerating.
While calm waves lap against the shingle of Felixstowe's pretty little beachfront, giant ships tower over the horizon, headed to every corner of the world and back again. Watching them glide from one side of the sea to another seems unreal, as though they belong to another world, the vast container port they've been visiting just an alien outpost tacked onto the end of a semi-retired resort.
Unrest over academies expansion
As 70 failing schools join the 310 already on the list of schools which will be or already are now operating as academies, coalitions of parents in Brighton and Hove, Ipswich and Sheffield are challenging moves to switch them over.
In separate developments, privatisation moves in Goldsmiths College, London and Essex University are also being fought by staff and students, and sponsors of the Unity Academy – one of the early flagships of the initiative – have pulled out. The academy lost its primary backer, Amey, who deny financial pressures are behind their decision.
Ghazl el-Mahalla workers protest privatisation
Workers from the Ghazl El-Mahalla spinning factory held a demonstration Thursday against alleged plans to sell off the Ghazl El-Mahalla company to private investors.
At 3pm some 40 women workers had congregated outside the gate of the factory, located in the Delta town of Mahalla El-Kobra. At 2:45 pm hundreds of workers were filing out of the factory, ahead of the scheduled time for the end of the morning shift at 3 pm.
800,000 bank workers on strike in India
More than 800,000 bank employees from 50,000 branches across India started a two-day strike Wednesday to oppose privatisation, merger and acquisition of state-owned banks.
Reports from Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Orissa and Jammu and Kashmir said the strike was total.
Thailand: Rail strikes against privatisation
Following a wildcat strike which shut down the state rail network on October 31, the rail union is threatening further action if privatisation continues.
The Bangkok Post reported that the State Railways of Thailand (SRT) labour union will resume striking against the Surayud government next month if the authorities fail to meet its demands involving the controversial leases of SRT property to the private sector and revision of SRT privatisation schemes.
UK: Tube maintenance workers begin six days of strikes
The first of two 72 hour strikes by more than 2,300 workers at failed private maintenance firm Metronet is to go ahead from 6pm tonight.
The strikes were called after the company and its administrator failed to give the unequivocal guarantees on jobs, transfers and pensions that the union is seeking.
"The letter we have received from Metronet and the administrator falls way short of the guarantees our members need and deserve," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today
Privatisation by the back door: The health workers’ strike and the future of medical care in Poland
Laure Akai analyses the neoliberal reforms to Poland's health service as the doctors' strike enters its fourth month.
Some hospitals have given up the strike, some hospitals are concluding private deals with doctors. Nurses have organised separately from the doctors with a slightly different agenda. And it well may turn out that the results of the strike are strikingly different salaries for health care workers throughout Poland and increased privatization of the health care industry.
UK: Post Office strikes continue
Workers at Crown Post Offices struck yesterday and on Friday, and are due to strike again tomorrow to stop plans to outsource services to WH Smiths.
While management tried to downplay the effects of the strike, the CWU claimed that members supported the strikes in overwhelming numbers. Post Office Limited (POL) Head Office was placed in disarray due to severe staff shortages as managers were once again forced to travel at great cost across the country to cover members’ jobs.
