Bob Crow's massive secret volcano fortress. Where he keeps his magical TUSCs.

Travel chaos struck the UK as a Militant left-wing volcano took an illegal solidarity eruption with striking BA workers. This act of disruption has come shortly after Iceland rejected banker’s takeover of their economy and a large vote for the left-greens. Unite Union Baron Charlie Whelan told SSY today  -- “All of Thatcher’s anti-trade union laws have been swept away by the massive power of socialist Volcanic activity”. Other Unite activists told us that various laws affecting secondary picketing had been spiked by their Unite’s Emperor Ming like ability to control the planet’s very inner workings. Gordon Brown has been unavailable for comment, suggesting that he is in ad hoc to the magma lobby. Tories have said “How is Britain meant to keep up with these volcanoes erupting every other week? It’s time to limit the number of single mum volcanoes allowed in this country.” Bob Crow has already established a Blofeld style base inside the volcano, and unconfirmed reports suggest he is plotting to blast Edinburgh’s previously inactive volcanoes into mass destruction to support the SSP’s election campaign.

Unite Union secretary Len McCluskey strikes chaos from his office.

Angry Scots are tired and emotional at volcanic-socialist eruption disruption.

Earlier today over 200 staff and students at Glasgow University rallied against the ongoing ‘restructuring’ process and the cuts which, despite initial denials from management, are eventually beginning to come to light. Called by the UCU, the main lecturer’s union on campus, the demo also had a strong turnout from both Unite and Unison, who represent maintenance and admin staff respectively.

The demo came on the same day it was unveiled in the national press that an entire research unit at the university, the Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division (GUARD), a pioneering group which regularly features on programmes like Time Team, is being closed down by senior management who claim it does not generate enough income. This is despite the fact it made £200,000 over the past financial year and is entirely self-funding! GUARD staff this afternoon told Leftfield of their shock and anger at the decision, but assured us that they wouldn’t be going down without a fight (apparently they’ve got whole cupboards stacked full of medieval weaponry and cannons, just sayin’…).

The decision clearly indicates where the priorities of senior management and Principal Anton Muscatelli lie – in the further marketisation  of education, where any department ‘not generating enough income’ can be discarded and thrown to the scrap heap, and raises serious questions of where the axe will fall next – if a self-funding department at the forefront of archaeology in the UK can be sacrificed, can anything be considered safe?

Over 100 jobs are now at risk at the university. The UCU have identified 83 across four departments which they believe are at threat, plus the 30 staff employed at GUARD. On top of this, across departments staff are not being replaced when leaving – a sly strategy of ‘natural wastage’ that avoids any confrontation. Last year, the University Health Service was subject to serious downgrading, with the closure of the main medical facility for student accommodation. Earlier this year, the post-graduate student union – the only one of its kind in Scotland – went bankrupt. What this amounts to is a serious attack on education and student services, but from a management cynical and skilled enough to stagger out the cuts – chances are, the major announcements will come at the very end of term, if not during the summer holidays itself.

The student-run Anti-Cuts Action Network was established at the uni last year as a pre-emptive move against the cuts. Management have consistently played a difficult game with us, making false promises and refusing to even reveal the existence of the restructuring process in itself until February of this year. Similarly, the student union bureaucracy have acted shamefully – no official student representation showed up in support of today’s demonstration. This comes despite past assurances from the SRC that they will ‘oppose academic cuts’.
Today’s ACAN speaker received an excellent reception, arguing that if any cuts are necessary at Glasgow Uni, it should be the salaries of senior management. Muscatelli is paid £248,000 and received a pay rise of 8% this year. Meanwhile, staff are being offered below-inflationary increases of 0.5%, effectively mounting to a pay cut, exposing the rank hypocrisy of those pushing through these swathing job cuts.

The UCU have called for an immediate halt to the restructuring process and for a fuller consultation to take place.Unfortunately, any opposition to the plans was needed months ago – when the unions were offering ‘cautious welcomes’ to the plans and refusing to engage with those who predicted the inevitable cuts and job losses that would soon follow. Nevertheless, there is still scope for action to be taken – the uni has warned that compulsory redundancies may be necessary, saying that ‘nothing can be ruled out at this stage’.

The restructuring, which will see the number of faculties cut from 9 down to 4 and departments slashed from 45 to around 20, will be complete by August of this year. It looks likely that the major cuts will not be announced until the break-up for the summer, creating obvious difficulties for resistance from a students.
As struggles like the one at Sussex, which has seen a huge militant anti-cuts campaign of student occupations and resistance alongside UCU strike action (in the face of police brutality and unjustified expulsions), the campaign will require mass participation and solidarity between staff and students. Today was just the beginning!

Where would you say the man in the above clip comes from?

It doesn’t take a dialectologist to correctly guess he probably grew up in the Liverpool area. He’s Len McCluskey, assistant general secretary of the UNITE union, and the union official currently responsible for leading the BA cabin crew strike.

With the Tories desperate to try and make it look as if Labour is being run by the unions ahead of the election, and Labour desperate to try and out-Tory the Tories on looking anti-union, he’s someone who’s become a target for the right wing media. Both major parties care about the core of right wing voters from southern England who put Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair in power, and are keen to shit all over the working class to get their support.

But the Tory smear campaign took a turn for the bizarre this weekend, when Tory Vice Chairman Margot James attacked McCluskey for his “Scots accent”!

“On the airwaves all day yesterday, that familiar Scottish accent that we’ve come to associate with militant trade unionism.”

James is a millionaire former PR guru, and a prospective Tory candidate in the upcoming election. She also clearly has as much experience of talking to working class people from north of the Midlands as a monkey driving a bus.

TALKING.OUT.OF.ARSE.

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PCS in Glasgow [photo: john lanigan

 Thirty thousand civil servants (people who work in places like the Scottish Parliament, job centres, courts and tax offices) are on strike in Scotland today.
The action is being taken by members of the PCS trade union, over changes to redundancy entitlement which mean that if staff lose their job, they could also lose up to a third of what they would’ve previously been paid as compensation. The government is hoping to save £500,000 through this scheme.
What makes this so important at the current time, is that both Labour and the Tories are intent on pushing through massive cuts in the public sector, including job losses  - and now they don’t even want workers taking redundancy to even get decent compensation!

Meanwhile at the Student Loans Company – where workers are also represented by the PCS union – management are looking to lay off around around 150 staff in Glasgow – 20% of the total workforce!
Now, if you’re a student, you’re probably already pretty familiar with the SLC – last year, the issuing of loans was left in chaos, with tens of thousands of students starting the year with no money whatsoever. And these are the loans that have to be paid back, with interest, remember – no student grants for us! Predictably enough, it soon emerged that at the same time as students weren’t receiving their loans, senior executives in the SLC were getting massive bonuses – in some cases, up to five figures. And now, the same management have unveiled their plan to slash nearly 200 jobs across the country, which will presumably make the whole loans thing be even more efficient this year than it was last year, while hundreds of workers are thrown onto the scrapheap at the same time. Logic!

Mairi Cranie, an SSY member who works at the SLC in Glasgow, explained: “The Student Loans Company is cutting almost 200 jobs, the majority of which are in Glasgow. Forty-five of these jobs are moving from Hillington to Darlington at no saving to the tax payer. This will impact families across the west of Scotland and the service for both current students and people in the process of repaying their loans.”

You can sign a petition against the cuts at the SLC here: http://www.gopetition.com/online/34078.html
The PCS strike continues tomorrow, so get down yr local picket line and offer them some support!

Despite choosing the slightly more family friendly title of “Why must our children pay? Invest in their education” SSY members, particularly those still in high schools support the EIS teaching union’s campaign against cuts. Whilst many other unions have either decided to accommodate to cuts, or fight them solely through industrial action the EIS are opening another front and trying to win over public support. The logic of their argument is clear – cuts in education are due to a financial crisis not of teachers or students making, and will result in poorer education for a generation of young Scots.

These cuts are being made at the same time that almost a billion pounds, £900 million is being cut from university funding across the UK, with SSY members being involved in anti-cuts campaigns like ACAN at Glasgow University.

The EIS site outlines the cuts below,

Already cuts are taking place in local council education budgets.

* 2,500 fewer teachers in classrooms than 2 years ago
* Teacher support numbers reduced
* Books, paper and photocopying materials etc. reduced
* The decision to cut the number of students to train to become teachers.

In the future this will mean

* Teacher shortages
* Increased class sizes
* Impact on teaching and learning, including the new Curriculum for Excellence
* A cut in equipment (including computers) and materials in schools
* A reduction in specialist provision, e.g. classroom assistants, learning support and music instructors
* Fewer opportunities to access further and higher education

They are also being proposed is the same time that its been revealed that inequality has increased under the Labour government – David Cameron and his Eton pals might have a chance to escape public sector cuts for his kids, but ordinary working people will see less teachers and therefore less attention for their children. In both high schools and further education, there is an attack on funding which will attack jobs and young peoples right to a decent education.

The SSP supports a “20’s plenty” campaign, for a maximum of 20 children to each teacher in class. Following this programme would have kept enough teachers employed to stop any of Labour’s previous cuts of Glasgow’s schools. The SSP was recently involved with the Save Our Schools campaign, which fought hard against these cuts.

Support the campaign against cuts in education, turn up to the rally,

THIS SATURDAY – MARCH THE 6TH

ASSEMBLE KELVINGROVE WAY, KELVINGROVE PARK 10.30AM

MARCH AT 11, RALLY AT 12 AT THE SECC

By Andy McPake
Aberdeen SSP

The strike by Unite trade union members of  British Airways cabin crew – a strike that received 92.5% of the vote in a ballot of members - has been declared “illegal” by the courts.

The High Court called a halt to the strike as members who had taken redundancy were able to vote. This technicality is a relic of Britain’s draconian anti-Trade Union laws. Designed in the Thatcher era, the laws are intended to prevent a union from taking quick and decisive action, or, as today’s ruling would seem to indicate, any effective action at all.

This ruling will severely curtail the right of workers to strike.

In a gross understatement, Unite General Secretary Derek Simpson called the cancellation “a disgraceful day for democracy”. Even if all of the members who had taken redundancy had voted AGAINST the strike, there would still have been an overwhelming majority in favour of it.
The implications of this ruling are terrifying. Every time that a group of managers are facing a dispute in future, they will turn to their reliable friends in the courts to declare the strike illegal.

If they can do this to Unite, they can do it to ANY union.  Virtually all union ballots include a few people who have already resigned as the union receives no automatic notice of this; members need to do it themselves. As a former member of Unite, I was receiving ballot papers for elections three months after I left my job.

If this logic was applied to the rich and powerful we would not have a Parliament! Our electoral register is full of people who are not legally entitled to vote; from foreign students and people who have moved, to those who are dead. However, I do not anticipate the High Court will be declaring our expenses guzzling MPs  “illegal” anytime soon!

Any person reading the British press over the past week is likely to regard BA Cabin Crew as a collection of airborne grinches, determined to steal Christmas from Britain’s travellers. Absolutely no consideration is given to the fact that BA management’s job cuts, caused by BA management’s errors, are going to steal every Christmas for the foreseeable future from BA Staff and their dependants.

The vitriol that has been directed against the union members is awful. These workers are not ‘selfish’, as so many have called them. These are ordinary people trying to defend their livelihoods. You may ask if they could not hold their strike after Christmas; but what leverage would they have against management except at the busiest times? Would you rather they disrupted your summer holidays?

Perhaps you are even thinking that they should not strike at all. If you are, I ask you what you would do if your job was at stake? If your wages were to be slashed? Roll over like some supine fool in worship of your boss?  Or fight to defend yourself? The union used the only option that was left after all other forms of negotiation failed.

Let’s make one thing clear: British Airways Management are responsible for this strike, not the workers.