unions
-
London Underground prepares mass closure of ticket offices By James Hatton and Paul Bond
Recent disclosures have again confirmed London Underground management is planning to close all its 268 ticket offices over the next two years. Around 2,000 jobs are expected to be lost during that period, with job losses across the rail and underground network rising to 6,000 by 2020. The job losses are part of Transport for… Continue reading
-
South Africa: Sectarian shame of the SACP By Terry Bell
Shortly after the column below was written and blogged, the SA Communist Party issued its statement on Marikana that reveals the deep and dangerous sectarianism of this organisation. Here, I feel, is exposed one of the roots of the problem. I include here the final paragraph of that statement as an introduction to a repeat… Continue reading
-
Video: South Africa's Largest Union on the Verge of Major Split
Patrick Bond: South Africa trade unions become magnets for capital as an ideological confict masked as a sex scandal threatens to fracture union behind the one-year-old massacre (inc. transcript) Continue reading
-
Billion-pound NHS contract offered to private health care providers By Joan Smith and Paul Mitchell
The biggest ever contract for the sell-off of public health services in England, worth between £700 million to £1.1 billion, is being offered to private health care providers by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) as part of its “Older People’s Programme”. From July 2014, six National Health Service (NHS) contracts that include… Continue reading
-
Our Sad, Misunderstood Labor Unions By David Macaray
A union official I correspond with (the International Vice-President of a West Coast labor union) recently shared an interesting anecdote. He said that whenever he meets someone for the first time and they casually ask what he does for a living, he answers by saying he’s a “workers’ rights activist.” Continue reading
-
Britain’s People’s Assembly covers for Labour and trade unions By Paul Mitchell and Robert Stevens
The “People’s Assembly Against Austerity”, held in London on June 22, was a desperate attempt to uphold the threadbare authority of the trade unions and to suppress any movement independent of them and the Labour Party. Continue reading
-
Disturbances Continue, Schism in Society Intensifies By Dimitriy Sedov
The events on Istanbul’s Taksim Square are presented in the world media as the consequences of an «ecologically incorrect» decision by the government to clear a landscaped area in a park located on the square. This is far from the truth and raises questions about the real interests of the West in the spreading conflict. Continue reading
-
Workers in Britain suffer the greatest fall in wages since the 1930s By Robert Stevens
The UK is experiencing the deepest and most protracted economic downturn in a century. The decline in wages is even greater than that resulting from the Great Depression of the 1930s. Continue reading
-
Book Review: Our NHS on the brink By Bernadette Hyland
Edited by Raymond Tallis and Dr Jacky Davis, ‘NHS SOS: How the NHS was betrayed – and how we can save it’ it is a difficult book to read. In chapter after chapter we see the way in which determined neoliberals have hacked away at a cherished British institution. Davis and her co-writers do not… Continue reading
-
Ireland and the Basque Country By James Petras
Many billions of Euros are being extracted from Europe’s vassal-debtor nations – Spain, Greece, Portugal and Ireland –and transferred to the creditor banks, financial speculators and swindlers located in the City of London, Wall Street, Geneva and Frankfort. Under what has been termed ‘austerity’ programs vast tributary payments are amassed by ruling Conservative and Social… Continue reading
-
The Manifesto of the Mediterranean Meeting in Tunisia
1. For more than a quarter of a century, neoliberal capitalist globalization has extended its dominance over the entire planet. The processes launched have accelerated the commodization of the world in favour of a minority and have confiscated people’s citizenship and nations’ sovereignty. They are exacerbating economic insecurity and social inequality in the North and… Continue reading
-
South Africa: Pro-government faction attacks COSATU's Zwelinzima Vavi By Benjamin Fogel
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is in the midst of the biggest crisis in its 27-year history. This crisis has arisen from a South African Communist Party (SACP)-driven attempt to oust democratically elected COSATU general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, under the guise of corruption charges. Continue reading
-
Financial Cleansing: The Cyprus Bail-in Template By grtv
The recent bail-in in Cyprus has given the world a glimpse at the future of the banking landscape. Now, as Canada gets set to hardwire the bail-in process into law, analysts like Michel Chossudovsky are warning how the big banks can use this template to further consolidate their monopoly of economic control. This is the… Continue reading
-
“Let us glory in our inequality.” By Michael Hudson
As in Chile, privatization in Britain was a victory for Chicago monetarism. This time it was implemented democratically. In fact, voters endorsed Margaret Thatcher’s selloff of public industries so strongly that by 1991, when she was replaced as prime minister by her own party’s John Major, only 35 percent of Britain’s voters supported the Labour… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 