Fighting Back

Workers across London are fighting for decent pay and against attacks on conditions over the next week in a mini London strike wave.

There has been overwhelming support for strike action over Haringey Labour council’s proposals to increase class sizes and change terms and conditions in the five local authority-run secondary schools.

Southwark council housing repair workers began a three-day strike on 28 January. Unite the Union members picketed the two depots in the South London borough on all three days.

London bus drivers are getting restless. On 29 January, bus workers marched through midweek traffic, creating gridlock in Piccadilly and Whitehall, continuing to Parliament.

Unite the Union members, who perform repairs and maintenance on council-owned housing and Southwark Council’s own properties, walked out to demand annual leave that matches other council workers.

Dozens and dozens of people packed into to the basement of United Voices of the World HQ to hear from Solace domestic violence advisors. They announced that they are facing 33% workforce cuts.

“I think the biggest issue that is concerning staff and parents is ‘split classes’ where, instead of finding cover for a class when a teacher is sick, they put the children into other classes. Those classes end up with 40 or so children, some without a chair, without pencils, sitting on the floor all day. No other school in our borough is using split classes.

On 5 November, teachers at BSix Sixth Form College in Hackney, east London, started a series of strikes over pay and conditions. “Teachers in schools recently got a 5.5% salary increase and ours was just 2.5%”

Bus drivers and road safety campaigners marched through central London on 5 November to Transport for London (TfL)’s posh head office.

Housing maintenance and repair workers at Haringey council have decided to take indefinite strike action over the Labour council’s continued refusal to negotiate with them over the issue of pay despite them not having a pay rise in over a decade!