bullying

The latest copy of the West Yorkshire SolFed newsletter, Spanner in the Works, was released to an unsuspecting public on Saturday 20 April 2013. Articles on ex-Remploy workers, David Brown Ltd, May Day, Freedom benefit and workplace victimisation. Initial distribution took place at the anti-bedroom tax demonstration in Leeds and later the same day at the Freedom Press benefit gig at Bradford's 1in12 Club. Available to download here: http://db.tt/aGUdeY2f

Auto, a games industry worker and SolFed member, writes about the horrific working conditions of those at the other end of his industry's supply chain; workers in the infamous factories of Foxconn. He argues that despite being halfway around the world, we're not so different after all...

Last month I wrote an article about crunch time in the games industry; the large amounts of unpaid overtime that have become a common feature of the game development cycle. However, us tech workers in the west are simply the thin end of the wedge. If you want to see true horrors of exploitation, simply spin the globe and look at to the east. To China, Taiwan and all the other new darlings of the manufacturing industry.

Bullying at work is no joke; it can lead to stress, anxiety, depression, even suicide. In short, it makes people's lives hell. It is all the more disgusting then that within the GMB the bullying of union employees is apparently rife. Over the last 6 years, the GMB has spent £4m on 61 tribunal cases involving allegations of bullying and intimidation. Many of the cases have been brought against the union's powerful regional secretaries, including two candidates for top dog John Edmund's job. The mentality of the morons who run the union are summed up by the decision of Yorkshire leader J Nelson, who dropped the union logo because it was not ‘hard' enough, and replaced it with a badge with eagles wings on each side of it. In response, the union is proposing better management training. A better idea would be to get rid of these obnoxious bureaucrats and replace them with a workplacebased organisation.