Bournville School on strike next week. Worthing High out this week. Noel Park School, Haringey out.
Bournville School Strike
Bournville School in south Birmingham is set to face two days of strike action next week over plans to convert the school to 'foundation' school status. Workers at the school had successfully defeated plans to force an academy conversion less than a year ago after threats of joint strike action and a community campaign.
The latest action is set for Wednesday 18th and Thursday 19th July in "protest at the failure of the school to enter into meaningful consultation regarding proposed conversion to Foundation status and in protest at the change of employer with resultant threat to terms and conditions."
Strikes, nukes & overdue subscription fees: talk and exhibition will take place on Saturday July 28th, 2012 starting at 2pm at the Nottingham Mechanics, 3 North Sherwood Street, Nottingham NG1 4EZ, UK.
The event will showcase unique material from the Solidarity Federation archive and related anarcho-syndicalist material held at The Sparrows' Nest, concentrating on earlier artifacts mainly from the late 1930s up to the 1960s. All welcome.
The North London Solidarity Federation would like to extend our deepest solidarity to the John Lewis cleaners engaged in a struggle to secure the London Living Wage. By exposing John Lewis' overt failure to live up to its proclaimed co-operative model, the cleaners have shown that company schemes are not the way to secure a decent wage. Instead, only collective struggle can force bosses to provide us with decent working conditions and respect on the job.
Members of North London SolFed will make every effort to turn out to support the cleaners at their upcoming strike and will encourage all our friends and contacts to do the same.
London Living Wage for All Cleaners! No Cuts to Hours! No Speed Up!
The police have attacked the massive demonstration in Madrid today in support of the miners. They have fired rubber bullets out of vans, shot tear gas, hit people with rifle butts, beaten elderly miners and have injured a small girl with a rubber bullet. On the ground after a police charge you could see discarded walking sticks and miners’ helmets.
In perhaps the greatest team-up since The Avengers (Emma Peel and John Steed, not that comic book superhero rubbish) members of SolFed and the IWW organised a protest and leafleting of Pizza Hut in Oxford Road, Reading, tonight at 5-30, fighting against thunder, lightning and torrential rain to make the case against workfare. Joined by members of TUC unions they leafleted the local community and found many sympathetic voices from people who had themselves been threatened with the joys of workfare. The Pizza Hut staff were happy to come and talk to us and understood why we were there and we encouraged them to send a message to their regional office to abandon the workfare scheme. They obliged by faxing one of our leaflets through to their regional officer.
As the Spanish miners march towards Plaza del Sol in Madrid with their lamps lit, huge crowds turn out to cheer them on. The miners have been on strike for more than forty days against pit closures.
The popular mobilisation in solidarity with the miners includes 15-M , Marea Verde (against education cuts), Sindicato de Metal CNT Madrid, Solidaridad Obrera, CGT Madrid, the mainstream unions CC.OO and UGT, and neighbourhood assemblies.
The miners say they will stay in Madrid until a solution is reached. The right wing government of Madrid, who have been taking repressive measures against striking workers in the city, have said it is forbidden for the miners to camp in Plaza del Sol.
As part of the national week of action against workfare, members of Liverpool Solidarity Federation, the Anarchist Federation and various comrades held a picket at the city-centre offices of A4e, with the aim of keeping the pressure on these exploiters, while a communications blockade was simultaneously carried out by allies all over the country.
The struggle against pit closures in northern Spain continues with the miners marching nearly 400 kilometres to Madrid. The march from the coalfields is nearly at the edge of the capital, where there will be a mass protest against plans to close down the mining industry.
The "Marcha Negra" started on the 22nd of June from Asturias, Leon and Teruel, all marching towards Madrid. The march from Asturias left from Mieres with eighty miners, with thousands of people there to see them off. The march from Leon, also with eighty miners, set off from Villablino and Bembibre. The two columns from Asturias and Leon met in La Robla with a lot of emotion and then marched together as the Marcha Norte, while the Aragon column from Teruel marched to Madrid from the north east.
On Saturday the 7th of July Thames Valley Solidarity Federation joined a host of other groups in a day of action against workfare in Oxford to mark the start of the Week of Action.
Like many other groups on the day, we began with the dilemma of who to target. Holland & Barrett had surrendered the previous week and there were so many exploiters to choose from. Still, all were in agreement that it was a fine dilemma to have!
When we discovered a day before our planned Week against Workfare that Holland and Barrett had pulled out of the government's "replace paid jobs with JSA conscripts" scheme we almost found ourselves at a loose end.
We've spent months doing scary-dangerous things like handing out leaflets, waving placards and sending emails of complaint, so in the absence of H&B we had to ask ourselves, who deserves a swift kick to the ethics most this week?
Fortunately we're up on our current affairs and the answer came quickly - a Libor fixing, unrepentant banking giant led by sociopaths which is so greedy it still uses Workfare to get its menial tasks finished. Yes, we went after Barclays. Never let it be said we think small.
