Leaflet produced for a demo against the BNP launching a local branch in December 2008.

The BNP believe in much of the worst in society. Thugs in uniform kicking down immigrants doors at dawn and forcing them into detention camps without trial. Attacks on the organised working class. Playing one racial community against the other. Christian fundamentalist bigots in charge of communities. Destroying social institutions such as the NHS. These are some of the dreams of the BNP. They are also new Labour policy, and currently ongoing before our eyes.

The BNP merely represent the logical extreme of all the mainstream parties, as they compete against each other to be the most anti immigration, the hardest on the unions, the toughest on “waste” in the public sector. For these parties, the BNP become convenient pantomime villains – “Nazis” whose policies are completely alien to their own. No matter how much they in fact coincide.

Solidarity with sacked IKEA workers in Brescia, Italy.
 
On 1st September, whilst workers were being transferred between one work agency to another, 7 workers were sacked, even though they had been assured they would be absorbed into the new agency.

These general service workers had been working at IKEA for several years, had been lowly paid at €5 per hour and working up to 200 hours per month and had been working in unsafe working conditions in the underground car park with no exhaust fans. Workers even had to purchase their own safety clothing.

It is obvious that IKEA had no respect for the workers health and preferred to ignore health and safety rules in order to maximise profit. With decreasing sales, IKEA chose to downsize their workforce and weaken the work conditions of the workers, with restaurant and bar staff within the complex now having to perform the duties of the sacked carpark workers.

A top London restaurant paid only £1.50 an hour to a kitchen porter.

Cesare Copeta, a member of the Solidarity Federation's South London local, was employed by The Food Room, owners of The French Table restaurant in Surrey and the Tom Ilic restaurant in Battersea, which is currently listed in Time Out's Top 50 London restaurants.

He was employed as a kitchen porter at the Tom Ilic restaurant and had applied for the job through an advertisement in the Department of Work and Pension's Jobcentre Plus database.

He worked 50 hours over a 2 week shift, but was then paid only £75. Having been paid only £1.50 per hour, he walked out of the job in disgust.

In this issue:

Migrant Cleaners ; Confronting Inequality ; Double Whammy for the Low Paid ; Unions Derecognised at Nottingham Trent ; Hera to Zero ; What we Mean by Direct Democracy

On 24th of April, our comrade Mónica, a barista at the multinational Starbucks, was fired.

The district manager himself, Tomas Pinto, recognized the unfairness of the dismissal, and declared that her "profile was not suitable for what they were looking for". The surprising thing is that he drew that conclusion after she had been working for the company for a year and a half.

The fact is that Mónica was starting to organize the CNT Union Section at the company. She did not notify her union membership and her position of Delegate of the Union Section, but during all her time in the company she fought for her rights and dignity as a worker. For example, during the Holy Week she refused to double her working shift because the shop manager did not tell her if it was going to be paid overtime.

In this issue:

Bullying ; HERA Lessons ; What we think of... ; Pensions ; Work Councils ; Academy Schools

South London SolFed have involved with this campaign to reinstate five sacked Columbian cleaners.

More than forty people demonstrated outside the Institute of Engineering and Technology in Savoy Place on Wednesday 22nd,  in support of Colombian cleaners unfairly dismissed by the cleaning company Amey. There was a simultaneous demonstration in Bristol outside Amey’s offices there. 

One of the sacked cleaners and a former trade unionist in Colombia, Julio Mayor, said:

‘We were sacked for trying to communicate with the other staff at the National Physical Laboratory about Amey’s violation of the employment rights of cleaners there. We are protesting here to publicly request the National Physical Laboratory to take action against Amey to stop victimising cleaners.’

In this issue:

HERA ; What we think of... ; Crichton Campus ; Union Partnership ; Health & Safety 

The Tricia Jennings Dispute

This dispute arose after the Ardbride strike, and once again was initially publicised by Edinburgh DAM. It also reached a successful conclusion, unlike the one we’d put so much effort into supporting over the previous year.

In September 1987, Tricia Jennings, a worker at Burton’s in Edinburgh, became pregnant and a few days later was rushed to hospital with a threatened miscarriage. She informed her employer about her situation and at first they seemed sympathetic. Tricia spent the next 6 weeks fighting to save her baby, but when she returned to work on 9th November she found she’d been sacked. Everyone else in the ship knew 2 weeks before Tricia did. No reason was given, though subsequently Burton’s tried to claim she was sacked for “absenteeism” or because her work was “below standard”. However, Tricia had had a certificate for the absence and had passed her six month probation.