Vestas occupation – all power to their elbow

A press release from Jerry Hicks, candidate in the election for Amicus-UNITE General Secretary

On Monday 20^th July workers began occupying part of the Vestas wind turbine plant at Newport on the Isle of Wight in protest against threatened closure at the end of the month. 600 jobs would be lost.

Vestas is the world’s biggest wind energy group and recently reported a quarterly sales rise of 59%, up to €1.1bn (£0.95bn). They’re coining it in. They obviously think they can play around with jobs all over the world and don’t have to be held to account for ruining workers’ livelihoods.

Save Vestas wind turbine plant

22/07/2009 6:00 pm

DECC, 3 Whitehall Place, SW1A 2HD

Just when we need a huge expansion in renewable energy they are closing down one of the two wind turbine factories in the UK. The government has spent billions bailing out the banks, and £2.3 billion in loan guarantees to support the UK car industry – they can and should step in to save the infrastructure we are really going to need to save us from climate catastrophe.

GMB To Ballot Engineering Construction Members For Strike Action At Power Station And Oil Refinery Sites

The objective of this dispute is to eliminate discrimination, unfair treatment and exploitation in this industry of workers wherever they come from

16 Jul 2009

GMB today announced that it will conduct an official strike ballot of engineering construction members working in the building and maintenance of Britain’s power stations and oil refinery sites. Members working for contractors at the following sites will be balloted:- BP FPS Grangemouth and Ineos Grangemouth in Scotland, Sellafield, Shell UK Stanlow and Staythorpe RWE in Nottinghamshire and Chevron Pembroke and Aberthaw in Wales. Unite will also ballot its members on the same sites with the same timetable.

Barclays staff to be balloted for industrial action

Unite members will be balloted for industrial action over Barclays’ decision to close its final salary pension scheme.

Unite members are incensed at the pension proposals which would result in the total closure of the Barclays’ pension scheme. In a consultative ballot, 92 per cent of staff said they wanted to be balloted by Unite on industrial action.

Posties deliver three day strike

By John Millington, Morning Star

LAYING THE BLAME: Lord Mandelson attempted to push the responsibility for Royal Mail’s difficulties on to unions, saying that they had a “negative attitude.”

Thousands of postal workers have picketed delivery centres across south-east London morning in an “unprecedented” show of industrial power over jobs, pay and cuts.

RMT Network Rail Maintenance members vote by over 95% to reject harmonisation proposals

RAIL UNION RMT announced today that members working for Network Rail Maintenance have voted by over 95% to reject harmonisation plans in a referendum ballot.

In the vote, 4094 members voted to reject the proposals against 151 in favour.

RMT had been engaged in discussions with Network Rail in an effort to reach an agreement on harmonisation but pulled out and went to ballot of the membership when it was clear that the talks had been effectively hijacked at top level as part of a drive for cutbacks in working conditions.

The harmonisation process is brought to a halt as the result of the referendum ballot and staff will retain their current terms and conditions.

Bob Crow, RMT General Secretary, said today;

“This is a magnificent result. We recommended that our members reject Network Rail’s proposals and they have done so by a massive majority.

There is no doubt that the harmonisation process, which we entered into in good faith, was hijacked by senior Network Rail managers looking to stonewall progress, and who saw harmonisation as an opportunity to attack pay and conditions as part of their £3 billion cuts plans.

Staff will now retain their existing terms and conditions.”

GMB Accuse Senior Managers Of Provoking The Unofficial Dispute At Lindsay By The Layoff Of Original 51 Workers In Breach Of Agreements

It is clear from what Richard Rowlands told the union that there never was any intention to redeploy these workers despite the company agreeing to do this just a few short weeks ago say GMB

22 Jun 2009

GMB today revealed that two senior managers at Lindsay Oil Refinery site Richard Rowlands and Ian Elliot instructed a contractor on site, R Blackett and Charlton, to hire 61 new workers although they knew that the original contractor Shaw were about to make 51 workers, doing exactly the same jobs, redundant three days later. GMB claim that Richard Rowlands and Ian Elliot did this deliberately in breach of agreements and accuse them of provoking the unofficial disputes in the engineering construction industry.

Iran: The elections and workers organisations

This is a statement by the Tehran bus workers whose union has been subject to continuous oppression since it was relaunched in 2005.

The Tehran and Suburbs Vahed Bus Company Workers’ Trade Union is purely a trade and workers’ organisation. This trade union was formed in 2005 based on the consciousness of the workers and the broad support and involvement of workers, and  despite its ups and downs and many problems, has continued its activity as before until today.

UNISON NEC: And the winner is?

This is from UNISON NEC member Jon Rogers blog

The first meeting of the newly elected National Executive Council(NEC) was scheduled to take place at the close of National Delegate Conference on Friday afternoon.

This meeting is chaired each year, at the outset, by the General Secretary, since the former President and Vice-Presidents have ceased to hold office and the main item of business is the election of a new “Presidential Team”.

At the commencement of the meeting, General Secretary Dave Prentis noted the presence of John McDermott from the Yorkshire and Humberside Region. John had been a candidate in the NEC election and had secured 4,670 votes. His opponent had secured 4,577 votes but had been declared elected.

Dave requested – but did not instruct – John to leave the meeting. John pointed out (quite reasonably in my view) that he had won the election and was entitled to be present. In response to John’s refusal to comply with his request, Dave invited Deputy General Secretary Keith Sonnet to make a statement.

Keith announced that the meeting of the NEC would be adjourned until 8 July at Mabledon Place and members of the NEC left the meeting room without having elected a President or either Vice President.

I have queried the power used by officers to adjourn the NEC meeting as it was clear to me that there were other options to enable the election of the Presidential Team. I will report to branches on any response. Given the highly unusual circumstances in which the Independent Scrutineer has declared as elected a candidate who did not win their election it may well be that the Union will not be able to resolve this difficult question without the intervention of the Certification Officer. I will report to branches further as information comes to light.

Essex Fire Crews tell Fire Authority – suspend plans for firefighter cuts or ballot starts on June 25th

Essex fire crews and officers have given the fire authority a further 10 days to shelve plans to cut firefighters or they will ballot for industrial action. The Fire Brigades Union has accused the fire authority of targeting frontline fire crews for cuts rather than looking at genuine efficiency savings.

The union has called for a joint review of the balance between office based activities and the 999 emergency response with a view to redeploying resources to fire stations. It says there also needs to be a better balance between prevention activities and the need for a proper and safe emergency response.