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Workers' Fightback: Update 5

Workers' Fightback | 05.06.2009 21:54 | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements

Parents are still defiantly occupying the rooftop of Lewisham Bridge Primary School, six weeks after they began their action against a planned demolition and privatisation.



If Lambeth Council gets its way, the Grade Two listed building will be demolished, to make way for a new, privatised 3-16 foundation school. In the meantime, the Council are bussing children to the Mornington Centre, some nine miles away. Understandably, given the extra journey times (and everyone having to get up much earlier), tempers are getting frayed. But hey, just as long as there’s money to be made, eh? Join the Facebook group here, or read the blog here.

Unite joint general secretary Tony Woodley has finally set a date for the start of strike action against the sacking of union convenor Rob Williams at the Linamar factory in Swansea, due to his reputation as a fighter and support for Visteon workers occupying their factories. However, Woodley’s first response to this dramatic assault on workers’ rights was to raise the matter with Gordon Brown, so he cannot be trusted to be an ‘honest broker’ between the workforce and Linamar/Visteon/Ford. At a time of crisis in the car industry, his first priority must be to protect his dues base. This is very different from the interests of rank-and-file workers. The strike is provisionally due for 6 am on Thursday. The Facebook group is here, or you can make cheques to the hardship fund out to "T&G 4/1" and send to Linamar Workers Hardship Fund, 31 Wanunwen Terrace, Swansea SA1 1DX.

And as Barack Obama’s praises his “steadfast ally”, Egyptian military dictator Hosni Mubarak, workers are fighting back against the Mubarak regime and corporate interests. Textile workers have begun an open-ended strike for bonus payments, while one hundred staff at the First Day Surgeries Hospital in Nasr City held a sit-in, having waited three months for basic wages and night shift allowances. And thousands of postal workers are defying ‘their’ union, to strike against a new ‘appraisal system’.

Workers' Fightback
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