The Socialist 22 September 2009

No cuts in public services

Prepare political challenge to cuts agenda

Higher education - cuts cuts cuts!

Universities in crisis - Join Socialist Students

Defend education - stop the £2 billion cuts in spending

Brown declares war on workers

TUC congress: Anger on the fringes, inaction at the top

Afghanistan: An unwinnable war

Postal workers strike as national ballot continues

Warrington mail centre

Vestas workers determined to continue fight for jobs

Youth unemployment hits record level

Future Jobs Fund - massaging the figures

Campaign for a Salford workers' MP

Energy rip-off

Threat to Coventry homeless

Socialist Party MEP denounces "campaign of fear" on Lisbon Treaty

Workers' fightback grows in Italy

Engineering construction: Stewards' forum recommends bosses' offer Workers should reject!

Portsmouth shipbuilders vote for strike

Bosses ask JCB workers for sacrifice

Battle over pensions means strike threat at Corus

Liverpool bin workers score victory

Listening to Grasshoppers by Arundhati Roy

The Dirty Thirty - Heroes of the Miners' Strike

The Anti-Flag album 'The People or the Gun'

Previous issues, etc

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Portsmouth shipbuilders vote for strike

Four hundred GMB shipyard workers in Portsmouth have voted to take strike action over working conditions and proposals forcing them to work in other parts of the UK.

They are employed by BVT, a consortium of BAE systems and shipbuilders Vosper Thornycroft, formed to build two new aircraft carriers. However, while part of these vessels will be built in Portsmouth, BVT are trying to force workers to move to other parts of the UK, including Scotland and Cumbria for up to three months at a time, while they are being built.

In the recent ballot, 82% of GMB members voted for strike action. GMB organiser Bob Stokes said: "Unless we get a settlement we'd be starting with a total stoppage of work for a period, for one day probably. If we stop work we'll picket all the gates. An overtime ban and work-to-rule arrangements would follow, but there are no dates fixed for action yet".