A new wave of wildcat strikes hits Notts

Seriously will people on here just support anything that goes againstsupposed "authority"?

How can you support people who are striking because they feel hat have a right to a job purely based on a fluke of birth.

We should be supporting the migrant workers right to compete for the jobs not these racist strikers.

Instead of mouthing off about these workers and those workers and who is racist and nationalist and who isn't and blah blah blah, it might be worth reading an excellent account of the earlier wildcats strikes from Feb this year.

The author highlightgs that the struggles were always at heart about workers organising as international workers to protect their everyday survival against international companies using European Employment laws to both divide workers across Europe and to drive down wages and conditions.

The xenophoia which was a troubling undercurrrent at the beginning and which was magnified by the press 100 fold was not the reason for the strike. Instead of denouncing all the workers as racist (as some people did) sensible minds prevailed both within the strikes and from outside sympathisers acting in solidarity to keep the focus on fighting to maintain the decent standards of work and pay which that sector has managed through previous militancy to maintain for years.

 http://thecommune.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/lessons-of-the-oil-refinery-wildcat-strikes/

Basically, many of are bored with the whiney PC liberal attacks on the strikers - who have been quite implicit in their rejection of racism, but here is a statement released by some anarchists within Bath Activist Network during the last wildcat strikes -

An open letter to the anarchist/anti-authoritarian movement

We have watched with interest and extitement the unfolding wildcat strikes across the country. The radical left has responded with both support and condemnation, but overwhelmingly, silence. For several reasons, including the complex nature of the strike actions and also our obligation as anarchists to struggle with all exploited workers, we feel that it is important to both open a dialogue and apply an anarchist critique to the situation. The BNP are agitating to subvert these strikes towards a racist agenda, and we think it's imperative for anarchists to support the strikes from an anti-capitalist viewpoint and fight the racists away. Facism is divisive and an enemy of the working class - we, as anarchists should be standing shoulder to shoulder with all workers whilst arguing and acting against reactionary and facist tendencies. The basic call for workers' rights and for capitalist profiteers not to outsource disputed jobs to cheaper workers is fair, and not necessarily racist. We do not see this as a freedom of movement issue, as what we are seeing here is the forced movement of people as disposable commodities at the whim of global capitalism. Most situations like these lead to sweatshop conditions, union busting and brutal working conditions for the foreign workers and unemployment and the destruction of working class communities for British workers. Also, supporting these workers, and listening to their concerns and viewpoints will enable us to start a dialogue with them on the subject of who the real enemy is i.e not other exploited workers, but greedy bosses and politicians ruthlessly persuing a free market race to the bottom in terms of wages and working conditions. Dialogue with all workers is important because there will be other issues we need to discuss with them in a friendly way in the future, such as enviromental issues many of us would advocate which may affect their jobs. Different traditions within the anarchist movement will always have dificulties initially agreeing with the standpoint of some workers, but a friendly and open dialogue in the spirit of solidarity is an important key to building a movement genuinley capable of confronting capitalism and the state.

In Solidarity

John, Jon, Steve and Rach from within (but not on behalf of) Bath Activist Network

These people are striking because they feel people who were born in the UK should get a chance of a job above people from outside the UK ( including people from the E.U?!? )

It's that simple.

I for one don't support that - but then I'm not an anarchist either.

My opinion is the labour market should be free, un-regulated and metocratic.

Come on - that's fair isn't it?

Recent industrial disputes have been about whether British based workers (whatever their nationality) should be allowed to apply for jobs based in the UK, and whether workers were being recruited from abroad not because they were the best for the job but because they would undermine pay and conditions hard won in UK workplaces. This is what Derek Simpson, the General Secretary of Unite - the UK’s biggest union - has said:

"No European worker should be barred from applying for a British job and absolutely no British worker should be barred from applying for a British job."

We should have solidarity because TOTAL are not only exploiting the planet, not only exploiting the people of Burma, but exploiting their own workers in rich countries aswell

looks like we are returning to the 70s when everyone went on strike constantly and the country went backrupt. great fun.... everyone ended up without a job because they couldn't even run the powerstations due to lack of money

"My opinion is the labour market should be free, un-regulated and metocratic"

what within the labour market is free? getting paid minimum wage to make someone else (who does not work, but lives the high life off the backs of others) rich?

further reading for you if you are interested.

 http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/leisure/russell.html


"I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organised diminution of work."



- Bertrand Russell

Matthew Percy argues against the strike as racist and then advocates the "right to compete for the jobs" and argues that the "labour market should be free, un-regulated and meritocratic".

That's liberal capitalist 'anti-racism'. It means that capitalists are free to use immigrant labour to undermine established working conditions.

The working class socialist solution is for all labour to be unionised - and paid the same rate and employed on the same terms and conditions. All labour, of all nationalities, both settled and migrant.

Our labour is bought and sold as a commodity under capitalism. But under whose terms? We sell our labour time to live. But this is not a fair exchange between equal partners. Instead it is unequal and exploitative. Capital is always trying to make us sell our 'commodity' cheaper. It is in their interest to make workers compete for jobs.

The only way workers can sell their "commodity" at a better price is by forming a union. Collective withdrawal of labour has won us some rights and freedoms. Collective bargaining over the rate for the job has been the solution of generations past, of our parents and grandparents, in Britain and all over the world. It tamed capital, to an extent. At least now they mostly pay survivable wages and don't send kids up chimneys or old folks to the workhouse anymore.

But they are always trying to divide us. Thatcher was keen to make a pool of unemployed labour, a reserve army of labour with which workers could be threatened. the message always being "work harder for less or be replaced". The hungry Irish were used like this against the English workers in the 19th century - after the British bosses crushed Ireland through famine. Now globalisation is used. All this to increase competition for jobs to drive down wages and conditions and thus increase profits. The more they demonise and criminalise migrant labour, the more super-exploitable it is. Illegal migrant labour has no rights, and so is in even greater demand! So paradoxically the more they clamp down on migrant labour, the more they need it and generate it!

But the working class in Britain has historically overcome enormous divisions to be able to claim its rights and freedoms. The division between English and Irish workers in the 19th century saw a civil war within the working class, with ethnically based scabbing, streetfights and killings. It was far worse than any division today between British and Polish or black and white, or secular and Muslim. But the great mass unions such as the TGWU were formed with battles like the dockers strikes in London and Liverpool which were based upon British / Irish, Protestant / Catholic unity. Before this hard won union, there had been terrible division and competition.

"Cyclic" blames unemployment on strikes. Yet now unemployment is rising, but how can this be caused by strikes, because unlike in the 1970's, there are now hardly any in the UK? Unemployment is caused by capital withdrawing investment. After years profiting from generations of British workers, capital needs a greater return, a greater rate of profit. Investment goes to find cheaper labour abroad. And unemployment, which was rising under the 1970's labour government suddenly mushroomed under Thatcher's Tory government. Thatcher forced a deeper recession to use mass unemployment to break the unions and transform British society, breaking up social cohesion, solidarity and community.

And 'Tanya" is a racist troll pretending to be a 'no borders' anarchist type! You have been spotted, now fark orf and say hi to psycho paul.

Well, thats a good ten minutes time killed.

900 workers from lindsey have just been fired.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/humber/8108434.stm

It's not about foreign workers this time, it's about workers being sacked for going on strike. A much easier issue to be "one-sided" about.