A weekend of demonstrations

The Labour Party conference is in town, and for those of us who live in Manchester it means traffic and parking problems - and lots of demonstrations.

On Saturday I joined the Stop the War Coalition demonstration to the Labour Party conference. I thought this was an important - not only do we have the US trying to impose its power on various weaker countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, but now with the conflict in Georgia the eastward expansion of NATO is leading to increasing conflict between major powers. A worrying world indeed.

This artistic collaboration between demonstrators and police summed up how many felt:


On Sunday I joined the UNITE demonstration over public sector pay. I think this issue is important for all trade unionists - not just those in the public sector, as it is the sharp end of the argument that working people should pay for the current economic crisis - even though it has clearly been caused by the greed of the bankers.

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Job worries at EDS

There are reports that both UNITE and PCS have spoken out about potential job losses at EDS, following the takeover by HP.

The current economic turmoil is making all of us worry about job security. Governments seem ready and willing to intervene on a massive scale to protect big business and the financial system from the consequences of their own greed, but still unwilling to intervene to protect working people from the consequences.

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Fujitsu NHS redundancies

Apologies for not posting for a while, I've been extremely busy dealing with a potential redundancy situation at Fujitsu, where I work.

On 20th June the company put 672 staff at risk, following the termination of its contract to supply IT services to the NHS (after the company withdrew from talks to renegotiate the contract).

The numbers at risk have fallen significantly thanks to redeployment and some ongoing work. However, there are still a couple of hundred people at risk, the first of whom are due to be made redundant on 18th September.

The locations most affected don't have union recognition yet, which has made things much harder. Nonetheless there is no doubt that UNITE has achieved a great deal. As a recent UNITE newsletter within the company asked, could compulsory redundancies have been avoided altogether of the locations most affected had been well unionised?

This week I attended a meeting with the Health Minister, Ben Bradshaw, in a last ditch attempt to save more of the jobs. You can read the UNITE press release here.

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