strikes

Today saw SolFed members join a number of activists in the swanky Mayfair area of London to protest against the state killings of striking oil workers in Kazakhstan.

The demonstration took place outside the premises of the Kazakh-British Chamber of Commerce, a target that was chosen to highlight the role of British capital and the British state in the exploiting the workers in Kazakhstan’s oil communities.

More information can be found here:

http://solfed.org.uk/?q=protest-against-bloody-friday-in-kazakhstan

Yesterday, Liverpool Solidarity Federation members joined picket lines in Liverpool and Bootle to offer support to strikers and attended a 20,000-strong march through the City Centre. Below are several personal reports from members' blogs.

See reflections from striking Solfed members at Truth, Reason & Liberty and Working Class Self-Organisation.

A choice: race to the bottom or fight and win - blog by a Solfed member in the private sector who supported the strike.

An eyewitness account by a Hackney picket:

I went from my picket line to the CLR James library picket at about 10. On the bus up there I was a bit disturbed to see a police helicopter hovering above Dalston Junction. When I got to the library there were a huge number of TSG kettling about 35 people with a mobile sound system. I managed to speak to people in the kettle and they told me that two people had been beaten up and arrested earlier when people had tried to block the road.

I called people on my picket line and asked them to come quickly to the library. A small group of us stood around for ages occasionally having short conversations with the kettled protesters or telling the police that they were disgusting. I phoned my picket again and was dismayed to find out that they had all gone to another picket line that was nearer.

Brighton SolFed were out in force today for the public sector strikes, which saw a huge turnout of perhaps 10,000. Three feeder marches converged on Victoria Gardens in the city centre before marching around town and ending with a rally at the Level. A brief personal report and pictures are below:

Biggest march I've seen in Brighton, I'd guess 5-10,000. Couldn't see the back or the front of the march and it was overflowing the Level where it ended. Cops tried to randomly arrest a bystander and apparently some black bloc types dearrested them.

 

There were three feeder marches from across the city, one from council offices/hove town hall, one from whitehawk/the hospital and one from the universities picking up the parks and bin workers. There were huge cheers when the cityclean workers joined the feeder march from the unis. Very tangible sense of cross-sector solidarity.

WYSF attended pickets and demos across the north:

Leeds report:

In Leeds WYSF joined a picket of a public sector building (name omitted to protect the individual member), before joining the march and demo.  An estimated 10,000 took part, the biggest demo in Leedsin a long while.  SF were joined by AF and quite a few people came up and took papers and expressed support for the Red and Black flags.  Lots of support from the public and the march was “clapped” all the way into the city centre.

N30 report from Hull:

Bulletin for the November 30th public sector strike (2011)

The big November 30 strike is drawing near. Rents and prices are rising, unemployment is going through the roof and at the same time wages are falling, benefits are slashed and people are being kicked out of their homes. The NHS is being sold-off while public services are  decimated, schools and universities wrecked and the poor excluded. Officially these strikes are about pensions, but we all know it’s about a lot more than that.

We'll be keeping this post updated with plans for Brighton as we get them. So far:

A3 Posters are still available from the SF Publicity Commission via brighton[AT]solfed.org.uk. Flyers are available from the Publicity Commission, but a print-friendly (black on white) pdf of the flyer is also attached below. Poster pdfs are also attached.

In recent months cleaners at Guildhall in the city of London, and Senate House, University of London have gone on strike and held protests over unpaid wages, working conditions and victimisation.

This autumn, or spring in the southern hemisphere, Chile has been witnessing a series of student-led protests which have seen tens of thousands of people take to the streets. The movement has also included student occupations, and linked up with striking workers. The movement began by demanding free education up to university level, as much of Chile’s education sector is privately run for profit, excluding many.  But it has grown to include striking miners and environmental protests, fuelled by the economic crisis and united in anger against the right-wing government.