"BBC - Shame on You" - Gaza Appeal

Yesterday I joined the protest outside the BBC in Manchester about their outrageous decision to ban the appeal from the Disaster Emergency Committee for aid for the Gaza crisis.

Extending "impartiality" to being impartial between life and death is a step too far. As Tony Benn pointed out, people will die as a result of this decision.

Benn has been magnificent on this issue, even managing to make the appeal on BBC news when they were trying to interview him about banning it. The clip is below:

Tweet

Nortel into administration, ICL, STC and Nortel pensions impact

Disgracefully, most of the coverage of Nortel (UK) going into administration focuses more on the impact on the 2012 Olympics (for which Nortel is a sponsor) than on the 2000 UK employees, many of whom are UNITE members. This BBC report is typical.

Concern about what has happened to Nortel will be even wider than its current employees, their families, friends and supporters.

As Electronics Weekly comments "Nortel is the first major vendor in the ICT industry to have gone into administration as a direct result of the credit crunch". Will it be the last?

There is also likely to be an impact on the pension fund for 43,000 people, as Nortel has asked the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) to rescue it.

The figure of 43,000 pension fund members seems extraordinarily large. At least part of the reason is that Nortel used to be Northern Telecom, a firm which took over STC in the 1990s. STC owned ICL (now Fujitsu Services) until 1991. When STC sold ICL to the Fujitsu group, STC kept most of the pension fund, along with all the current and deferred pensioners. In those days of pension fund surpluses, this must have seemed an attractive proposition - it certainly caused a lot of concern to those of us in ICL at the time.

Tweet

Palestine and the Unions

While I'm sure everyone shares my relief that Israel is temporarily stopping its bombing and open warfare in Gaza, we shouldn't get too carried away with that relief.

Israeli troops remain in Gaza, and the siege which has inflicted so much suffering on the Palestinians is tighter than ever. The open warfare could start again at any time.

I was delighted that my own MP, Gerald Kaufman, spoke out so forcefully against the recent Israeli atrocities, arguing against using the holocaust against Jews to justify today's brutality.

The contrast with the UK government stance could not be more stark. At a time when surely we should be imposing an arms embargo, boycotting goods and using diplomatic sanctions against Israel, our government's response is to offer the use of the British navy and other resources to tighten the siege on Gaza!

Much of the coverage of this one-sided slaughter focuses on Hamas as much as the actions of the Israeli state. It is easy to forget that one side of this fight is the occupier, while the other is resisting occupation with meagre resources. I am reminded of the scene in the film "The Battle of Algiers" when a journalist interviews one of the Algerian leaders:

Journalist: M. Ben M'Hidi, don't you think it's a bit cowardly to use women's baskets and handbags to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people?
Ben M'Hidi: And doesn't it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on defenseless villages, so that there are a thousand times more innocent victims? Of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets.

In discussions at work, one point that comes out more and more strongly is the parallel with apartheid South Africa. Here we have a state founded on the principle that one racial group is treated worse than another, a state armed to the teeth and playing a major role in "policing" its neighbours. Now that he's treated almost like a saint, it's easy to forget that Nelson Mandela defended the ANC's use of armed resistance (terrorism) against the apartheid state. It's easy to forget that opposing apartheid was controversial - until we won.

To those who doubt that unions should get involved in contentious international issues, I suggest that we should take pride in the role the labour movement played in opposing apartheid, and that we must have the same courage today.

In that context, I was delighted that UNITE had a speaker on last weekend's demonstration against the Israeli attacks. I hope this will continue. I will be on today's demonstration in Manchester. There are demonstrations all over the country and another national demonstration in London on 24th January.

A good way to get people at work talking about Palestine is to do a collection for one of the charities such as Medical Aid for Palestine, Interpal or through TUC Aid.

We need to ensure that the tidal wave of support for the Palestinian cause is sustained beyond the immediate crisis, so that eventually they can secure justice and peace.

Tweet

Gaza demo

What a magnificent demonstration on Saturday against the atrocities in Gaza. This was the biggest protest in Britain ever held on the issue of Palestine.

The organisers have set up a web site: www.gazaprotest.org through which people could use Flickr to upload their photos for us all to see. What a brilliant idea.

There have also been protests in towns and cities around the world.

We should use the widespread outrage against what is going on in Gaza to massively strengthen campaigning on Palestine in the unions, in the workplace and generally. The TUC have been moved to launch an appeal for Aid to Gaza. As well as being desperately needed, raising funds for the appeal is a great way to involve people and get them discussing what is going on.

Tweet

Unionising Procter & Gamble

I've been contacted by one of the activists busy unionising the Procter & Gamble (formerly Gillette) site in Reading.

It sounds like they're doing a great job of building up the union, despite an active anti-union campaign by the employer. They've even set up their own "Bring It On" blog to promote the campaign.

Despite organising being a central plank of UNITE's strategy, it's still common to find activists involved in campaigns like this who've had little or no training in organising techniques or in countering union-busting techniques from management. While they often manage to solve many of the problems through their own research and ingenuity, high quality training would surely help us win more often, more quickly and more decisively.

We really must make sure that one of the outcomes of the current review of UNITE education and training is to provide training aimed at activists in the process of building up union strength and fighting for union recognition. Not only must the content be good, but the courses must be readily available at times and locations which are accessible to new activists who don't yet have the legal rights to time off that come with recognition.

Tweet

European legislation

There have been two important developments, and I also want to draw attention to a UNITE campaign that every member should be supporting.

The European Parliament has at long last passed a revision to the European Works Council (EWC) Directive. UNITE's comments suggest this is generally positive.

MEPs also voted through amendments to the Working Time Directive. This was a very significant vote, with many Labour MEPs rebelling against the UK Government's long obstruction to this vital health & safety legislation, but unfortunately doesn't mean that we will necessarily see the end of the "opt-out".

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) rulings in the Viking, Laval and Ruffert cases are a very serious threat to union rights. Basically, the court believes that the right of companies to trade freely has precedence over the right of workers to take industrial action. This means that even if workers comply with the UK's ridiculous red-tape around industrial action ballots, any action could still be ruled illegal. UNITE has set up a web site to campaign on the issue at www.lavalvikingruffert.eu. There's a petition on there which we should get everyone to sign. If we can collect a million signatures, we force the issue to the European Commission.

Tweet

Rebuttal

There is a document circulating unofficially in the union which is a transcript of Derek Simpson's speech at a recent UNITE F&GP meeting. In it, Derek falsely attributes the second comment on one of the articles on my web site to me. As you can clearly see, the comment is not anonymous, and is from another user (also called Ian). I want to make clear that the comment does not reflect my own views.

Tweet