Knowsley Housing Trust recently attempted to withdraw their workers rights to a tea break. Workers were asked to leave the works canteen by the Assistant Depot Manager, when they refused three of the men were made the subject of a disciplinary investigation. As a show of solidarity all the workers even those were out on the job returned to the canteen in an organised mass tea break even though it was made clear by management that anyone taking a break could take disciplinary action. Faced with the united response management were forced to back down and reinstate the workers right for a morning tea break. By the time the official union representatives arrived the workers' imaginative direct action had already won the dispute.

The plight of those suffering from asbestos related diseases is going from bad to worse (see previous Catalysts). First, Turner & Newall (T&N), once one of the biggest global asbestos companies, went into voluntary liquidation to avoid paying out compensation to asbestos victims. Then Kroll, the firm administrating T&N, started charging over £460 per hour for their services (so far their bills is £23 million). Meanwhile, the US administrators have been charging $75 million a year.

If you want an example of how not to organise at work, look no further than ASLEF, the train drivers' union.

In Cat8, we reported on the election of Shaun Brady as leader – since then he has threatened to sack staff working at ASLEF head office and replace them with non-union labour. Why? Because they had voted to strike over bullying by none other than Brady himself. It is all part of the bitter ASLEF turf war between the “left” faction led by ex-leader Brian Rix and Brady's “right” faction (actually orchestrated by Adams).

Lawyers are getting their hands on a large slice of the £2b of state funds set aside to compensate miners suffering from industrially related disease.

The payout to individual miners is already pitifully low but is seems that lawyers who already receive millions in “handling” payments from the government are still charging miners up to 20% of their settlement for administering the claims.

Not only is it lawyers who are robbing chronically ill workers. Leaders of the scab union, the UDM, have become the best-paid trade union bosses in Britain also by cheating miners out of their full compensation. The UDM have set up a front company called Vendside to handle the miners' claims. As a result many miners do not even realise that their compensation claims have been processed by the despised UDM.

The welfare state was introduced largely at the behest of capitalism to ensure a healthy and educated workforce. Its origins date back to the Boer War when the army recruits were in such poor health they were unfit to fight. Since then, things have changed. Large sections of the working class are now surplus to the needs of capitalism, so the capitalist state no longer cares so much about our health, education and welfare.

Consequently, the British state is now withdrawing from many areas of welfare provision and handing responsibility over to charities, religious groups and the voluntary sector. This brave new world is the US model, where those in well-paid jobs have private schooling and health provision, while the low-paid and unemployed are left to under-funded public sector provision and whatever handouts the voluntary sector provides. In some US cities, health provision has been handed over wholesale to right-wing fundamentalist Christian groups.

Liverpool Solidarity Federation members held a street stall in Bootle town centre today (Saturday 6th November 2010) to spread our message of community/workplace resistance and working-class self-organisation.

As well as handing out copies of our No War but Class War leaflet, we also gave out our new Beat the Bailiffs advice pamphlet.

The conversations we have with members of the public suggest that libertarian anti-capitalist and anti-state sentiments are widespread, but anarchism isn’t always seen as a viable alternative to the status quo. We aim to try and change that.

Throughout the world it is the workers who are paying the price for the capitalist crisis. In Britain it took a trillion pounds sterling to save the banks from collapse and the government now aims to pay for the bank bailout by making brutal spending cuts. The attacks by the Thatcher government decimated many working class communities but the planned spending cuts go much further than Thatcher ever dreamed. Over the next 4 years the government intends to cut public spending by 25%.

Even the government admits that this will lead to the loss of half a million public sectors jobs. And as the British economy is so dependent on the public sector, again, according to the government’s own figures, there will be at least another half million jobs lost in the private sector. These job losses will be felt hardest in the old industrial heartlands of Britain, places like Scotland, the North of England and Wales, that were decimated by the Thatcher government.

The media keep running stories about benefit fraudsters living it up no doubt in preparation for drastic changes to the benefits system. Brighton SolFed spoke to one of the supposed benefit scroungers to find out what it’s really like to live on benefits.

Since finishing a postgraduate course, Teresa has been looking for a job in Brighton. “I have been applying for at least 4 to 5 jobs a week for the past 4 months but did not get any job. Often I have been told I am overqualified for the positions and even though I tried to impress on them that I would like to work – I was told that they can get someone less qualified to do the work on minimum wages.”

“When renting any place I have to keep in mind that I will not get any help towards any heating or water rents etc. I only get £62 a week for unemployment benefit, which also has to cover heating and water bills together with food, travel expenses or any other bills that I may have to pay.”

Today (November 1st 2010) marks the 100th anniversary of our Spanish sister organisation, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT-AIT). Liverpool Solidarity Federation extends revolutionary greetings to our comrades in the CNT-AIT and best wishes for the next century of struggle.

¡Viva la CNT-AIT !
¡Viva la AIT y el Anarcosindicalismo!

Read more on the CNT-AIT here.