Heinz to strike again

UNITE members at Heinz have voted to reject the latest "final" offer from the company, so they will be out on strike again tomorrow (Tuesday).

The Right To Work campaign have produced a collection sheet for the Heinz strike fund so you can take a collection round your workplace, friends and family, or failing that it has enough information so you could donate online or send a message of support.

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Support UNITE members at Heinz

UNITE members at Heinz in Wigan are out on strike for the second time tomorrow over pay.

You can send messages of support to their convenor wrightian5@sky.com, and if you've got online banking you can make a donation to account 16085255, sort code 08-92-86.

The strike starts around 6am in the morning, with pickets at Heinz, Kitt Green, Wigan, WN5 0JL.

They have a Heinz Strike Info Page on Facebook.

They're also out again for 24 hours from 9:50pm on Wednesday 29th December.

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Heinz Pickets Full of Beanz

Congratulations to UNITE members at Heinz on a very impressive turnout for their picket line in their 24 hour strike over pay. The strike completely stopped production at the huge Kitt Green site in Wigan. Let's hope Heinz management get the message, but if not, there can be no doubt of the ability of the workers to escalate the action if they have to.

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Post, Privatisation, Wages, Beans and the Welfare State

There's a national "Keep Our Post Public" rally today against the government's plans to privatise Royal Mail, with Len McCluskey as one of the speakers.

Privatisation is a key plank of the government's strategy to increase profits at our expense, by opening up our public services as new markets for comercial activity.

Plank 2 is cutting real wages (in the public and private sector) by using mass unemployment to depress wages while letting inflation drift up. The latest inflation figures this week show CPI inflation up to 3.3%, while RPI inflation, which is a more realistic estimate of the rate of increase in the cost of living, is up to 4.7%. No wonder some members are being driven to take strike action to defend their standard of living - UNITE members at Heinz in Wigan start their strike over pay tonight.

Plank 3 is the assault on public services and the welfare state, by a combination of pushing costs onto individuals (as with education) and direct cuts in provision.

If we want to successfully defend our own jobs, standard of living and services, we need to support all those resisting any element of this strategy to make us pay for an economic crisis we did not create. Amongst other things, that means backing campaigns against privatisation such as at Royal Mail, campaigns to defend pay and pensions such as those at Heinz or the BBC, and campaigns against cuts in public service and the welfare state, such as the magnificent and inspiring campaign being waged by school, FE and University students.

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