The Socialist Issue 213

"ONCE THE fat cats get a foot in the door it will soon be individual schools that are handed over to private companies for profit." "They will be charging teachers to rent their classrooms next!" Such sentiments are forcing teachers and support staff to take action against privatisation of education services in the east London borough of Waltham Forest.

Linda Taaffe, Waltham Forest NUT and NUT national executive, personal capacity

National trade union leaders may have got some spurious "concessions" from the prime minister, but actions not just words are necessary. For almost a year, unions and parents in Waltham Forest have been campaigning against privatisation. Now the National Union of Teachers, together with UNISON and the TGWU unions have decided to ballot jointly for strike action.

The three unions are balloting the centrally based staff (about 120 people) for strike action to stop the private profiteers of Nord Anglia/Amey plc taking over the education services in September. This is the first ballot by the NUT against education privatisation in the country.

It is difficult to find anyone in favour of private shareholders making money out of education. Teachers and support workers are opposed to it. Parents have organised a lively campaign.

Some councillors are now realising they are making a mistake. They privately allege they were being bullied into voting for it by the new education secretary, Estelle Morris. So much for local democracy!

A strike by centrally employed staff would show the strength of feeling and could prepare the way for wider action. There will be a demonstration and lobby of the council on 11 July and the strike day is likely to be 19 July.

We want to continue action in September, possibly being joined by teachers in all schools. We welcome messages of support and urge activists in other areas who are facing privatisation in education to press for a day of national action or demonstration against privatisation in the autumn term.

We have to draw a line now through preparing national action. We have no other choice if we want to keep education in the public sector.

Rally 4.30pm 11 July, Walthamstow market square, march to the town hall.

Messages of support to: Waltham Forest NUT: Education Centre, Queens Road, London E17 8QS, tel: 0208 521 3311, fax: 020 8509 9668.

Email: secretary@wfnut.org

Website: www.wfnut.org

TGWU conference

Free The Funds

BILL MORRIS, the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) general secretary has been quoted in the press as saying that the union will financially support the Liberal Democrats. He quickly qualified this, saying they could collaborate with the Liberals in single-issue campaigns but the Labour Party is "the only show in town."

UNISON has also, it seems, donated money to a Liberal Party research project through the General Political Fund. UNISON's Affiliated Political Fund on the other hand is solely devoted to giving money to the Labour Party and Labour Party candidates standing in elections.

What is needed is for the unions to change their rule books so that they can financially support candidates and political parties that represent the interests of the members, not the interests of big business.

Recent union conferences have discussed this issue. UNISON voted to review its links with New Labour and the Communication Workers' Union and the Fire Brigades Union have passed similar motions.

Bill Morris's threat about the Liberals is obviously as a result of his recent dinner with Tony Blair along with the other trade union leaders. But the Liberal Democrats, who are currently perceived as being to the left of Labour, are not the answer. Whatever they pretend, they are just another capitalist party and their councils, like New Labour's, have attacked public-sector union members' pay and conditions.

This is why at the TGWU conference, motion 282 and the amendment on the funding of the Labour Party, should be supported.

The motion asks: "The GEC (General Executive Council) to look at alternative ways of using the Political Fund, other than large donations being made to the Labour Party election fund, in the fight to better the conditions of the union's membership."

The amendment suggests: "One way of doing this would be for the union to donate money to parliamentary candidates prepared to support union policies... and certainly not donated direct to regional Labour Parties for the general election, resulting in many good trade union candidates receiving no help for the constituency election fund."

The TGWU can no longer give a blank cheque to New Labour whilst it continues to attack our members' jobs, wages and conditions. Blair has turned New Labour into another capitalist party and shown he is more interested in banquets with big business than beer and sandwiches with trades unionists.

Free The Funds

THE TRADE unions donate millions to the Labour Party every year but all we get in return is privatisation and cuts in living standards and working conditions.

Free the Funds is a cross-union campaign to free the political funds and campaign for a new party which would represent the interests of working-class people.

Unions should be able to support election candidates and parties who support union policy and campaign to defend workers' interests.

The founding sponsors are the following trade union national committee members (all in a personal capacity): Roger Bannister, Jean Thorpe, Raph Parkinson (UNISON), Bernard Roome, Gary Jones (CWU), Robbie Segal (USDAW), Marion Lloyd (PCS), Andrew Price (NATFHE), Linda Taaffe and Nina Franklin (NUT).

To contact Free the Funds for a speaker or to add your name to the sponsor list, write to: PO Box 24697, London E11 1YD, specifying your trade union.

email: free_the_funds@hotmail.com

Icy Blasts Of Recession

THE CHILL wind of a world economic recession is starting to blow across Britain's shores. Whilst recession has not yet hit the finance and service sectors, the crisis in manufacturing is deepening. Engineering and electronics, which initially escaped relatively unscathed, have now been hit.

Initially when the US economy, the engine of world growth, first went into crisis last year, most capitalists claimed confidently that the recession would be short-lived, and would not drag the rest of the world down with it. Now, as the crisis deepens and spreads worldwide, panic is starting to set in.

Far from being a brief crisis, all the factors in the US seem to point to a lengthening and deepening of the recession. Almost a million jobs have been lost since October. Productivity growth has slowed dramatically, dropping 1.2% in the first quarter of this year, the biggest drop since 1993.

First quarter profits for the US's biggest companies fell by 42%, the worst profits for a decade. Falling growth rates and profits have already had a dramatic effect on capitalism's confidence, as shown by the crisis in world banking. In the first six months of 2001 the mergers and acquisitions market (the banks' staple income stream) has fallen by $1.9 trillion, a drop of 42%.

With no end to the US recession in sight, the prospects for capitalism are bleak. As The Economist, the main magazine of finance capital, wrote this week: "Over the past couple of decades, a slump in the United States has usually been offset by a boom in Japan or Western Europe.

"It is alarming, therefore, that the three big economies should now be slipping at the same time... in the three months ending May, the total industrial output of America, the EU and Japan fell by 0.5% on a year earlier, compared with annual growth of more than 6% the previous year. This is the sharpest-ever dive for industrial growth rates within a 12-month span."

The catastrophic slumps in Turkey and Argentina are a warning of what will happen in any number of vulnerable, semi-developed economies as a result of a world recession. Internationally, it will be the working class and oppressed who will suffer the terrible consequences of the crisis. The working class in Britain will not escape.

The Socialist Party, on the basis of a Marxist analysis, has given clear warnings that this recession was looming. Increasingly, even capitalist commentators are seeing the relevance of Marxism. In the Guardian (2 July) Larry Elliott, the Keynesian economist, wonders what Marx would have made of the current crisis. He says:

"The chances are Karl would argue this is a crisis of capitalism amplified by being played out on a global scale. Over-investment and over-production are leading to falling profits, and the traditional remedy - cheaper money - is not working. The only way out will be for companies to boost earnings by cutting costs - either by mothballing capacity, sacking people or driving down wages...

"The Marxist interpretation of globalisation may yet be proved right. Its analysis of the events of the last few years has tended to be more coherent than the Panglossian guff emanating from those who believe that the world economy has never been in better shape."

While it's significant that in the capitalist press, under the impact of events, Marx's analysis of the nature of capitalism is coming into vogue, something far more important is happening among a layer of workers and young people.

Marx famously said that "philosophers have only interpreted the world" but "the point, however, is to change it". Growing numbers of people, although still a minority at this stage, have drawn the conclusion that capitalism doesn't work, and that an alternative system is needed. Under the impact of a world recession far more will reach these conclusions.

As socialists and Marxists we will be campaigning to popularise Marx's alternative to capitalism - a socialist society based on rational planning instead of the profit-driven anarchy of capitalism.

Wales:

Tuition Fees Damned - Now Abolish Them!

THE RECENTLY published Rees Report into student hardship and funding in Wales is damning in its criticism of tuition fees and the abolition of the student grant.

It concludes that the present system is chaotic and is stopping people from working-class backgrounds going to university, and estimates average student debt on leaving is £12,500.

Nearly half the students at Welsh higher education institutions whose parents are assessed to make a contribution to their maintenance failed to receive the assessed amount.

It also shows that the system isn't working; there's an estimated £31 million outstanding in overdue tuition fees. This report is a vindication of what Save Free Education (SFE) has argued all along.

The report calls for the Welsh Assembly to lobby the British government to scrap up front tuition fees.

They also call for £52 million to be allocated for learning maintenance bursaries or LMBs and for massively increased funding for those with childcare costs and for mature students over 25.

The report calls for students to make a contribution to their education through what is effectively graduate tax or "income contingent graduate endowment contributions."

Although these recommendations should be welcomed as a step towards alleviating student poverty they do not go far enough - tuition fees should be scrapped altogether with the reintroduction of a living grant for all.

The Rees Report still reinforces the idea that education should be paid for by students. It fails to call for the scrapping of the current loans system instead calling for more stringent means-testing for loans, supposedly to prevent wealthy students abusing the loans.

Budget worries

SFE argues that more stringent means-testing is not the answer; means-testing is inherently stigmatising and will do nothing to address the fact that many students do not receive the financial support their parents were assessed to make.

Despite these limitations the report's acknowledgement of the present funding system's many failures is a victory for all those who have been campaigning to save free education.

SFE's concern is that if left alone the Welsh Assembly will fail to act on the Rees Report's recommendations as education minister Jane Davidson admitted that the report could be shelved because of "Assembly budget concerns".

SFE calls on all students in Wales and all those who support the principle of free education to lobby the Assembly at 3pm on 11 July, outside committee room 3, where the education committee will be discussing this issue.

This should be followed by a massive lobby of the Welsh Assembly in October when all the students are back at college.

Capitalism's Bitter Coffee

WHAT DO these two people have in common? Howard lives in Seattle, USA, and has just bought himself a $200 million stake in the Seattle Supersonics basketball team. Maria lives in the Eastern Highlands of Guatemala, central America, and has just lost her husband and sons who have gone to Guatemala City in search of work.

Clearly they are poles apart in terms of lifestyle. But they do have one thing in common. Maria picks the coffee beans that make Howard rich. For Howard is Howard Schultz, chairman of Starbucks, the massive coffee chain which now boasts 4,000 branches (and rapidly rising) around the world.

Millions of small coffee growers in South and Central America, South-East Asia and Africa have watched in desperation as prices for their product have fallen to less than half the figure of two years ago.

According to the charity Oxfam, coffee commodity prices are lower than they have ever been. But coffee can account for up to 75% of some countries' export earnings - the main source of their foreign currency. Consequently, wages paid to those who harvest the 'golden bean' have slumped.

While beans have slumped to 30-50 US cents a pound on the world market, the price of a cup of coffee in a trendy outlet of Starbucks, Costa Coffee or Coffee Republic remains high.

Oxfam calculates that the price of raw coffee exported from producer countries accounts for less than 7% of the eventual cost of coffee to Western consumers. The rest is pocketed by the big corporate traders and speculators.

The bosses' apologia for this global rip-off is that maintaining high prices is a hedge against fluctuating world commodity prices. So much for the 'free market'!

No wonder, then, that first-quarter profits are up 40% for Starbucks, 20% for Nestle. Nestle's coffee profits rose last year to $1 billion, something it attributes to "favourable commodity prices", in other words, screwing the ex-colonial world.

While the best harvest in years, both in terms of quality and volume, is being picked, half the workforce on many coffee plantations have been laid off. Wages for those that remain have been slashed and economic migration has been forced on many desperately trying to escape complete ruin.

GM threat

To add to the plight of smallholder farmers (who grow 70% of all coffee) big companies are keen to introduce genetically modified (GM) coffee beans which ripen at the same time, allowing a shift from labour-intensive to capital intensive production.

According to ActionAid, the GM coffee would be suited to mechanical strip-harvesting on large plantations, making them more productive than small farms (but ecologically more damaging) where berries are hand-picked as they ripen naturally at an uneven rate.

Things have never been good for plantation workers. It has always been the norm for plantation workers to be treated as virtual slaves, with suppression of trade unions, few if any health and safety procedures, for example when the crops are being fumigated, and child labour rife. But now millions feel themselves sinking into an abyss of poverty.

One plantation worker interviewed in Central America told a reporter: "There is no such thing as free trade. We can't make ends meet. Some people are preparing to burn the fields and start growing another crop."

At a time when the United States government is desperately trying to stop the flow of cocaine across its borders from countries such as Colombia, the very madness of capitalism is encouraging the growth of cocaine as a far more profitable alternative to coffee.

Globalisation

THE APOLOGISTS of globalisation, including the UK's New Labour government, talk of its benefits for the people of the ex-colonial world. But what is happening on the coffee plantations represents the reality of globalisation.

The small producers have no say in determining the price of their product. They have to agree to what is offered. There will always be another producer willing to step in if they refuse to sell because they are unhappy with the price.

All the decisions that affect the livelihoods of millions on the plantations of Guatemala, Tanzania and Brazil are taken at meetings in plush offices in Seattle, New York or London.

Jim Stewart, chairman of the $100 million Seattle's Best, likes to claim he is helping the producers.

He boasts that his company sells 'Fair Trade' beans that were bought for more than the market rate. He says: "Globalisation has been great for me. We're doing our part. We've helped them build two schools and a road [in a community in Guatemala] but we're not a church." In other words, he's still in it to make a profit.

Some argue that if production were cut back the problem would be partially solved. With a shortage of coffee reaching the market, coffee roasters would inevitably have to pay more.

Until 1989, an international agreement regulated the volume of coffee exports. Now, it is every country for itself. How long, realistically, would it be possible to hold the line on reduced production? Not very long.

Recently, coffee producers from Colombia, Mexico and central America (members of the Association of Coffee producing Countries) decided to start destroying over one million bags of low-grade coffee to raise prices. A similar scheme was tried last year but failed to sustain higher prices.

It's a case of dog eat dog, with one country after another seizing the opportunity to steal a march on its rivals. And how would the coffee giants respond to having to pay more for their beans? They would pass the increase on to working-class consumers in the West.

Destroying agricultural products because of 'overproduction' shows how crazy this system of capitalism is.

Others have suggested that boycotts of coffee outlets could force the Starbucks and Costa Coffees of the world to give the farmers a better deal. Certainly, a co-ordinated boycott would be a good way of bringing the issue to the attention of more people, and may even force concessions on a short-term basis.

Long-term, however, it would not provide a solution. One youth in Seattle summed up the situation very well. When asked what he thought of sweatshop coffee, he replied: "Everything we buy comes from a sweatshop. This country's economy is based on sweatshops."

And that's the heart of the matter. Just like with every other part of the global economy, until power is taken out of the hands of the multinationals, the terms of trade will always be weighted against the people of the ex-colonial world.

The struggle for fundamental social change requires the linking of movements of the urban and rural workers and small producers in Asia, Africa and Latin America to the working-class in the developed capitalist countries.

The linking of these struggles through an international socialist organisation armed with a socialist programme for jobs, living wages, decent services, land and nationalisation, is the basis for ending the nightmare of capitalism.

In The Socialist Newspaper: Macedonia, Only workers unity can prevent civil war.

Put All The Warmongers On Trial

THE EXTRADITION of former dictator Slobodan Milosevic from Serbia to face war crimes charges in the Hague, Holland, and the drift toward civil war in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, have once again thrust the region into the headlines. As the following article shows, under capitalism, there can be no peaceful nor just solution to this ongoing Balkans crisis.

LIKE MODERN-day bounty hunters Serbia's rulers have handed over Slobodan Milosevic, NATO's most wanted 'war criminal', for $1.3 billion (£900 million) of Western money.

Yugoslavia's deputy Prime Minister, Miroljub Labus, attending an international donors conference in Brussels, said: "We did it. Now it's your turn."

Not that many Serbs will be shedding a tear for the former dictator whose regime embezzled state funds, politically assassinated opponents, ethnically cleansed Kosovar Albanians, and whose nationalism led to the break-up of former Yugoslavia and to war.

It is these crimes that the working class of Serbia should try Milosevic for in Serbia itself. That would also serve to expose the rotten, corrupt officials, businessmen and armed forces chiefs who collaborated with Milosevic.

Although the nationalist Yugoslav federal president, Kostunica, opposed the extradition (and was excluded from the cabinet meeting which met to discuss Milosevic's fate), the pro-Western Serbian prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, had no such qualms in booking Milosevic's one-way flight aboard an RAF plane.

Ironically, Djindjic used powers inherited from Milosevic to over-ride an earlier decision of the Yugoslavian Constitutional Court (still stuffed with Milosevic-appointed judges) to suspend the extradition process.

It seems that Milosevic's departure had been carefully prepared. Was it an accident that the interior ministry discovered the bodies of ethnic Albanians, which had laid buried for two years, in a Belgrade suburb just before Milosevic's extradition?

However, the whisking away of Milosevic has triggered a collapse of Kostunica's fragile Yugoslav Federal government (made up of the coalition of anti-Milosevic parties of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia 'reformers' and the pro-Milosevic Socialist Nationalist Party) and has pitched Djindjic into a power struggle with Kostunica.

Djindjic wants to speed up market economy 'reforms' and the process of integration with the European Union.

New federal elections could result in Montenegrin nationalists (who boycotted the last election) winning a majority of seats in the junior republic and attempting to split away from the rump Yugoslav federation. This in turn could provoke a military response from the large Serbian population in Montenegro leading to civil war with all the consequences for the region as a whole.

Bankruptcy

DJINDJIC DESPERATELY needs Western cash. The economy is bankrupt, with a huge foreign debt of $12.2 billion. Industry is only operating at 50% of capacity and inflation has increased to 80%.

But $1.3 billion represents a drop in the ocean compared to the estimated $29.4 billion economic damage from NATO bombing and the Kosova war.

The Serbian government is privatising $150 million of state assets to reduce its foreign debt and to compensate the pre-1945 owners of companies nationalised by Tito's 'Communists'!

The first to go will be the Boecin cement factory to French construction group Lafarge. Other tantalising morsels for foreign capitalists will be the arms manufacturer Zastava (makers of the Yugo car) and JAT, the national airline.

Western crimes

THE HYPOCRISY of the Western leaders over Milosevic's war crimes reeks to high heaven.

These are the people, including Tony Blair, who sanctioned the 57 days of air attacks in the 1999 Kosova war which killed hundreds of Serbian civilians and Kosovan Albanian refugees. They also backed the late Croatian nationalist dictator Franjo Tudjman and Bosnia's Alija Izetbegovic whose militias also committed war crimes.

And then of course there's 'Mr Hypocrisy' himself - new Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw (who's having a 'local difficulty' in Macedonia right now - see opposite).

As Home Secretary, Straw prevented the extradition of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet from Britain to Spain to face 'crimes against humanity' charges. Instead, he allowed the instigator of Chile's 1973 'Caravan of Death' to return home on health grounds.

Milosevic is threatening to spill the beans at his trial on the secret deals between the West and himself to halt the civil war in Bosnia and which kept him in power. According to The Sunday Telegraph his lawyers will implicate the former foreign secretaries Douglas (now Lord) Hurd, Lord Carrington and Lord Owen.

Tory foreign secretary Douglas Hurd, who went on to become deputy chairman of NatWest Markets, acted to secure a deal with Milosevic to privatise Serbia's telecoms service.

With US money and 'advisers' the Bosnian Moslem army drove out Serbs from Krajina, committing many war crimes. Richard Holbrooke the US diplomat then brokered the Dayton Accord with Milosevic to end the fighting in Bosnia.

During the 1990s French governments also continued behind the scenes negotiations with Milosevic.

Workers in Serbia and the West should demand the publication of all the secret deals and treaties for which the people of the Balkans paid for dearly.

Workers' solution

THE SERBIAN working class demonstrated its potential power to change society in its own interests last October when it overthrew Milosevic after five days of strikes and demonstrations.

To escape the current crisis it once again should apply this power to sweep aside the 'market reformers' of Kostunica and Djindjic. The working class urgently needs to build a mass party armed with a socialist programme.

Such a movement, raising the task of overthrowing capitalism, could sweep aside the profiteers and nationalists and unite the whole of the Balkans working class and rebuild the shattered economies.

A democratic socialist society would provide the material basis to peaceably resolve the outstanding national antagonisms throughout the region.

Northern Ireland:

New Sectarian Dangers - Workers' Response Needed

THE RESIGNATION of David Trimble, First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly over the issue of IRA arms decommissioning, ahead of the Orange Order 'marching season' with its expected flashpoints at Drumcree and elsewhere, poses new sectarian dangers for the working class as ROBERT CONNOLLY explains.

THE RECENT escalation of tension in Northern Ireland is posing real dangers of a slide into a violent sectarian conflict.

The peace process since the mid-1990s has been a double-edged sword. On the one hand the process, at vital stages, was propelled forward by working-class action against sectarian murders and there was relative peace compared to the era of the 'Troubles', a definite weight off the shoulders of working-class people.

Also, some opportunities to put forward a class alternative to the twin monoliths of 'orange' and 'green' sectarianism were opening up for a period.

But the other side of the peace process was a further polarisation of working-class communities into more exclusively Catholic or Protestant areas.

Sectarianism

THE PRESENT tension and violence, in North Belfast for example, is all about territorial control. A confrontational mood has developed in areas which are bordering communities that have become more strictly Catholic or Protestant.

The role of sectarian politicians and more directly of paramilitaries has created an atmosphere of fear and anger. The Ulster Defence Association (UDA), in particular, is carving out increased spheres of influence with a campaign of intimidation and strict marking out of 'their' areas with UDA flags etc.

The sectarian landslide of the 7 June Westminster and council elections was a further reflection of the reality of the process of polarisation on the ground. The anti-agreement wing of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) now holds the upper hand and has paralysed the leadership of David Trimble.

The days of Trimble's manoeuvres are over. His resignation is part of a process of realignment in Unionism. What will happen to the UUP now is unclear but the forces tearing it apart are stronger than those holding it together.

A realignment of Unionism on the basis of a DUP on the up and the hard line wing of the UUP is becoming the dominant trend.

The increase in electoral power for the strident nationalists of Sinn Fein at the expense of the SDLP is another reflection of the sectarian polarisation.

These are general trends. The situation over the rest of the summer could be even more difficult. Trimble's resignation will probably mean that the Assembly will, after a short period, judder to a halt again and then another protracted period of intense negotiations over the summer to get the ball rolling again.

The present situation, however, has the potential to escalate beyond the control of the main sectarian parties. The snails' pace negotiations and cynical posturing of the establishment parties offer no solution to the fundamental problems.

No going back

The dangers of the violence we see now means that working-class people must act. The lessons of the peace process are clear. Only united action by workers from Catholic and Protestant communities can halt the violence.

Among working-class people there is a strong mood against any return to a military campaign. Sectarian attacks on workers from either communities can lead to spontaneous walkouts in workplaces. The role of the Socialist Party (formerly Militant Labour) played a key role in organising such united action in workplaces and initiated the 'No Going Back' campaign in 1996.

With the issue of parades moving into focus, the danger in the situation is clear. There is no solution to the problems facing Protestant and Catholic working-class people on the basis of capitalism.

The dead-end politics of the sectarian parties offer nothing; no reprieve from the privatisation holocaust of New Labour, no future for youth, no improvement in facilities and living standards for working-class people, and no escape from the violence that they perpetuate.

An alternative can be built. 90 young people attending a meeting of Socialist Youth in Belfast on the ideas of Che Guevara are an indication of this. The recent successes of the work of Socialist Youth have shown that a new generation are searching for an alternative.

Hackney Bin Workers Score Quick Victory

EARLY ON 28 June, workers at Millfields cleansing depot, Hackney, refused to take their vehicles on the road. This was not a strike, they insisted to CLARE DOYLE from the Socialist Party; it was just a "stoppage"! (The law makes wildcat strikes illegal.)

They were not picketing, just waiting beside the nearby canal for their union representative. But when it got past 9am and there was no sign of a TGWU officer, there was talk of marching on the union office.

Then they decided to make for the Town Hall and go straight to Hackney's top man, Max Caller.

"He says we were 'outsourced' (privatised) because we were always on strike. Well we want to tell him and the public that there are still big problems and refuse workers are still prepared to fight, if we have to".

They could not have chosen a better moment to embarrass the hated and vastly overpaid chief executive of Hackney council.

Within minutes of their arrival, Caller was on his way to Westminster to try and convince government ministers that he could deal with Hackney's problems and there was no need for them to intervene!

On the town hall steps, the two workers at the centre of the dispute - calling themselves Smith and Jones - explained what had happened. "This is the way management has been over the last six months - getting harder and harder 'Do it or else!'

"This week, they just ordered some of us to tip at Edmonton - about an hour away. Before that, it was Ashburton tip - about ten minutes away. On Monday, we finished our work but an hour over our time. On Tuesday again we did an hour over for no extra pay and no thanks. On Wednesday we were back in the yard at the usual time - 2.30 - but hadn't finished the job.

"The deputy contracts manager just told us there and then: 'You'll work down'. That means being taken off your usual beat and put in the pool. This breaks the TUPE agreement we had at the time of privatisation" (see editorial in last week's issue of The Socialist, which went down well with the town hall protesters).

"The procedures were totally ignored. For one thing, they should send the managers on a course to learn how to speak to people!

"We got a letter saying we'd be 'off beat' from Monday but work Thursday and Friday on our usual round. It was 'non-negotiable'. We've been 23 years and eleven years working in this depot."

"This is a battle leading to a war," said the TGWU steward. "They want the unions belly up, just agreeing to everything management says. They want to change our terms and conditions before they put in for a ten-year contract.

"After our 'summer of discontent' last year, when we had a lot of stoppages, some of us had not taken holidays and when Service Team took over, they got £200,000 out of Hackney council to buy our holidays from us. Now we're told the council is having to pay them an extra £1.2 million because of the extra rubbish being picked up."

"Yet they can't even get the toilets at the depot cleared out!" continued Smith and Jones. "There's sewage at the back and not even any toilet paper. There's cockroaches in the lockers and two new showers not even connected up. There's three showers for 100 on the 'dust' and 40 sweepers.

"Management get brand new cars, including the two union men who went over to management as trade waste officers. The top ones have got brand new four-wheel drive Mitsubishis."

"Let them try and do our work", said the steward. "Last summer when we were fighting the council, one of the managers got a hernia trying to lift bins the wrong way. He spent £3,000 on an operation and then claimed it back!"

By the end of the day, the immediate dispute was resolved... for now. The two men would be back on their beat and all wages for Friday were to be paid. Another lesson, along with the recent Brighton binworkers' victory, in action paying off but also another sign of widespread discontent over privatisation.

One other issue fuelling the workers' anger and frustration was the attitude of their own union. When a TGWU official finally came to meet them, he said he had been contacted by the management and asked to repudiate the action and of course, the law being what it is, the union had to be very careful.

The unions should listen to their members rather than the bosses and their threats of legal action. The primary assets of a union are its members, not its buildings or the salaries for its top officials (£90,000 in the case of the TGWU's leader, Bill Morris).

Strike Back At School Sell-Offs

Strike Back At School Sell-Offs

TGWU conference

Free The Funds

Free The Funds

Icy Blasts Of Recession

Wales:

Tuition Fees Damned - Now Abolish Them!

Budget worries

Capitalism's Bitter Coffee

GM threat

Globalisation

Put All The Warmongers On Trial

Bankruptcy

Western crimes

Workers' solution

Northern Ireland:

New Sectarian Dangers - Workers' Response Needed

Sectarianism

No going back

Hackney Bin Workers Score Quick Victory

The Socialist 6 July 2001	Strike Back At School Sell-Offs
Strike Back At School Sell-Offs	"ONCE THE fat cats get a foot in the door it will soon be individual schools that are handed over to private companies for profit." "They will be charging teachers to rent their classrooms next!" Such sentiments are forcing teachers and support staff to take action against privatisation of education services in the east London borough of Waltham Forest. By Linda Taaffe, Waltham Forest NUT and NUT national executive, personal capacity
Free The Funds	TGWU conference: BILL MORRIS, the TGWU general secretary has been quoted in the press as saying that the union will financially support the Liberal Democrats. He quickly qualified this, saying they could collaborate with the Liberals in single-issue campaigns but the Labour Party is "the only show in town." By Teresa MacKay, TGWU agricultural trade group, personal capacity About Free the Funds
Icy Blasts Of Recession	THE CHILL wind of a world economic recession is starting to blow across Britain's shores. Whilst recession has not yet hit the finance and service sectors, the crisis in manufacturing is deepening. Engineering and electronics, which initially escaped relatively unscathed, have now been hit.
Tuition Fees Damned - Now Abolish Them!	Wales: THE RECENTLY published Rees Report into student hardship and funding in Wales is damning in its criticism of tuition fees and the abolition of the student grant. It concludes that the present system is chaotic and is stopping people from working-class backgrounds going to university, and estimates average student debt on leaving is £12,500. By Sarah Mayo.
Capitalism's Bitter Coffee	WHAT DO these two people have in common? Howard lives in Seattle, USA, and has just bought himself a $200 million stake in the Seattle Supersonics basketball team. Maria lives in the Eastern Highlands of Guatemala, central America, and has just lost her husband and sons who have gone to Guatemala City in search of work.
Put All The Warmongers On Trial	THE EXTRADITION of former dictator Slobodan Milosevic from Serbia to face war crimes charges in the Hague, Holland and the drift toward civil war in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, have once again thrust the region into the headlines. As the following articles show, under capitalism, there can be no peaceful nor just solution to this ongoing Balkans crisis. By Dave Carr
New Sectarian Dangers - Workers' Response Needed	Northern Ireland: THE RESIGNATION of David Trimble, First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly over the issue of IRA arms decommissioning, ahead of the Orange Order 'marching season' with its expected flashpoints at Drumcree and elsewhere, poses new sectarian dangers for the working class as ROBERT CONNOLLY explains.
Hackney Bin Workers Score Quick Victory	EARLY ON 28 June, workers at Millfields cleansing depot, Hackney, refused to take their vehicles on the road. This was not a strike, they insisted to CLARE DOYLE from the Socialist Party; it was just a "stoppage"! (The law makes wildcat strikes illegal.)