It turns out that construction firms have been buying private data on employees , and using it to blacklist union activists . I can only think that practises like this must be fairly widespread, even in those industries where unions are generally banished. Informal spying on potential employees is u...

I have heard that Bookmarks is experiencing its own, painful credit crunch at the moment, and needs to raise approximately ten grand in a very short period of time. Bookmarks is one of the few socialist bookshops in the UK, contains a lot of material that you would otherwise find hard to get hold of...

So, I don't know if you saw it or not, but there's apparently this huge crisis in the capitalist system right now. No kidding . One hears from various sources that this has to do with the 'animal spirits' of workers, investors and consumers. Would it not, then, be possible to revive the whole system...

BMW came under furious criticism yesterday after it said it was laying off 850 agency workers at its plant in Cowley, near Oxford, where it makes the Mini. Union leaders attacked the decision to end the weekend shift, which the company blamed on falling demand. Opposition politicians seized on the a...

From the NUJ: Morning Star journalists set to strike NUJ members at the Morning Star have called a strike over pay, with journalists set to walk out next Monday (23 February). They've voted 11 to three for industrial action and last night called a one-day strike for Monday 23 February - followed by ...

This is not a racist strike . Naturally, a media obsessed with the idea of a 'white working class' can't see this. But thousands of workers across the UK aren't dropping their equipment and walking out at risk of losing pay and possibly their jobs over some racist bullshit. As Phil BC has already po...

The former trade minister Lord Jones brought fresh embarrassment on the government today when he claimed that half the civil service should be sacked. Jones told MPs that Whitehall could be run with "half as many" civil servants and that he had been amazed during his time in government by how many s...

From Marx and Coca Cola, he reports that Senate Republicans killed the Car maker bailout because: "This is the democrats first opportunity to payoff organized labor after the election. This is a precursor to card check and other items. Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against ...

It's one thing to have seen this crisis coming, and to have understood roughly why it was happening. Now that it's upon us, with the full horror emerging day by day, with headline after headline announcing massive job cuts, stagnant or falling wages, the threat of deflation, closures - its overwhelm...

Young Master Osler has a wee defence of the Labour/Union link Here. I reproduce a letter the SPGB sent to the Fire Brigades Union some while ago, when they disafiliated: A letter to the Fire Brigades' Union:Dear General Secretary, At its meeting of 3rd July 2004 our Executive Committee asked me to w...