The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition says:

“No to Cuts and Privatisation!

Make the Bosses pay!”

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TUSC stands in opposition to public spending cuts and privatisation, calls for investment in publicly owned and controlled renewable energy, the repeal of the anti-trade union laws, and the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Read more ...

TUSC has had hundreds of declarations of support. You can sponsor TUSC as an individual trade unionist or socialist, or apply for your organisation to join TUSC.
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TUSC has no big business sponsorship. TUSC is a coalition for the millions not millionaires. Every donation to TUSC strengthens our fight for a better future. Read more ...

Printed and published by TUSC, 17 Colebert House, Colebert Avenue, London E1 4JP

Telephone: 020 7702 8667

email: info@tusc.org.uk

Press: 07984 027754

Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition Bulletin No.28

Monday 23 January 2012

Go figure: Four supermarket giants pay staff "poverty" wages while making huge profits: http://ind.pn/vZTEZo while fruit and vegetable consumption by poorer families falls thirty per cent: http://bit.ly/y3BigF

TUSC News

Final Call: TUSC Election campaign Conference Saturday 28 January 2012,
11:00am – 4:00pm, University of London Union, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HY: ULU Contact page

11-00am to 1-30pm: How can local councillors fight the cuts?

Cllr Dave Nellist , Michael Lavalette and Nick Wrack to speak for ten minutes each, followed by a ‘Question Time’ format discussion, to try and answer the many questions that are continually raised around this issue and introduce the draft local elections policy platform (appended below).

2-00pm to 4-00pm: Organising an election campaign

Maxine Bowler, Hannah Sell, and Pete McClaren to speak for ten minutes each, followed by a general discussion from the floor – but also giving people a chance to ask any direct ‘electoral law’ type questions that they may have.

Last week we got a phone call from a woman in east London…She had picked up one of the TUSC ‘where will your vote go?’ postcards from a street stall. She wanted more information about what we were and what we stood for. She was desperate that the Labour Party had ‘let her down so badly’. We sent her the TUSC leaflet setting out our policies and she sent a text the day she received it: ‘I have read the TUSC flyer and it lifted me. If only the policies could come to fruition.’ She hopes to come to the conference on 28 January and has asked us to send material to a friend who was also interested.

Here is the new website for the United Left Alliance in Ireland http://www.unitedleftalliance.org/

Trade Union News

Hear Mark Serwotka debate

Tessa Jowell Liberal ConDemocrat Danny Alexander and Chief Political Commentator of The Daily Telegraph, Peter Oborne on the last edition of Any Questions: http://bbc.in/AvaWGi

Jaguar Land Rover restores RPI link for all members

Unite members at Jaguar Land Rover have won a change from linking their pensions to the Consumer Price Index back to the Retail Price Index – reversing an 18 per cent cut. This is one of the proposed changes public sector workers are demanding http://bit.ly/zhFD1C

Claims of bullying routinely ignored by London’s fire authority

Claims of sexist bullying and other inappropriate behaviour by senior politicians are being routinely ignored by the body responsible for upholding standards on the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA), a Freedom of Information request has revealed http://bit.ly/xVc7XJ

Labour's views on public sector pay are a 'slap in the face', says UNISON

UNISON has condemned the Labour Party's suggestion that public service workers should accept more pay freezes and pay cuts. The Union claims Labour's misguided statement comes at a time when it is predicted that 700,000 jobs will be lost in the public sector by 2017, two thirds of whose workers are women http://bit.ly/yI3PRP

La Senza workers win their call for back pay

Workers who staged a sit-in protest at a lingerie store have won their battle for back pay. http://bit.ly/xa0D6s

UNITE OIL tankers workers to strike for 7 days from 24th

More than 100 Unite oil tanker drivers, working for road haulage firm Wincanton on the ConocoPhillips contract, will begin a week long series of stoppages from Tuesday 24 January to 31 January, over the company’s refusal to stop the attack on drivers’ pay and terms and conditions http://tinyurl.com/8yrlu3q

BMA Doctors considering industrial action over pensions

BMA council chairman Hamish Meldrum has stepped up the pressure for fresh pensions talks between the health unions and the government. He says in a letter to health secretary Andrew Lansley that doctors, having been consulted by the Union, have now said, very clearly, that they do not accept the proposed changes. They have also said that, for the first time in a generation, they would be prepared to take industrial action. http://bit.ly/yEWCtE

Government policy risks privatisation, job cuts and worse deal for students, warns union

UCU has claimed that the government's untried experiment of shifting the burden of funding degrees from the state to the student was causing chaos at universities and putting courses, jobs and even universities at risk. http://bit.ly/yAXjKX

Metro station cleaners in South Tyneside are losing out on free transport says RMT

The RMT said it was a disgrace they were not entitled to passes to get to and from work without paying: http://bit.ly/zBie1B

Information Burst

Black people are 30 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched: gu.com/p/34y44/tw

Ordinary families will be worse off till 2020, report claims

Think tank says rich will prosper but 'squeezed middle' will not regain pre-recession earning power for eight years: http://bit.ly/yhDPDL

Six myths about the benefit cap: http://bit.ly/xgGMWF

PCS says cap rents not benefits. Read our alternative vision of welfare - http://tinyurl.com/7dabof4

Bernard Hogan-Howe's recent talk on 'total policing' at the LSE didn't go down too well: http://bit.ly/xlTJFO

In the United States today there are more blacks under correctional control

— in jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850 http://thkpr.gs/zcyreq and the richest 400 US families own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent: http://bit.ly/eFCCrA

Events

Nationwide Fuel Poverty Action Winter Warm-up

27 Jan 2012: Friday, January 27th – Monday, January 30th People are being asked to come out of their cold homes and into the warm offices of the Big Six Energy : E.ON, EDF, Scottish Power, Scottish and Southern, Centrica (British Gas), and Npower - and to warm-up at the town halls and housing associations, which are putting profit and cuts before people’s welfare http://bit.ly/yeGMF7

Keep Our NHS Public, Stoke Newington

28 Jan 2012: 1:00pm Stoke Newington Church Street, London N16, outside William Patten School Street stall to inform local people of implications of Health & Social Care Bill and promote forthcoming rallies. http://bit.ly/AhBy9o

Keep Our NHS Public, Dalston

4 Feb 2012, 1pm: Street stall to inform local people of implications of Health & Social Care Bill and promote forthcoming rallies. Kingsland High Rdoutside Centrepoint, London E8 http://bit.ly/AFfsPG

Lobby of Birmingham City Council Meeting

7 Feb 2012: 2:00pm Birmingham City Council House, Victoria Square, Birmingham B1 1BB

Febraury’s council meeting will discuss the 2012/13 budget, with the council seeking to make over £100m of cuts in addition to the £212m cut last year. http://bit.ly/zy54mI

Punk Pussy Cats Against The Cuts, Sheffield

17 Feb 2012: 6:00pm Plug, 14-16 Matilda St, Sheffield

We’ll be getting our claws into the cuts….Black Cat White Cat, The Violet May, Pete David & The Payroll Union, Black Ech, and other live acts http://bit.ly/wQRUyT

Lambeth Council Cuts Demonstration

29 Feb 2012: 6.00pm Lambeth Town Hall, Brixton SW2

This year Lambeth will be voting through the cuts it proposes on our services! We cannot, and therefore will not, allow this to happen and so are having a mass demonstration with music and noise at the Townhall to oppose them and hopefully stop them! http://bit.ly/woz74e

TUSC information
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TUSC aims to bring trade unionists, socialists and anti-cuts campaigners together to stand candidates at elections who are committed to representing working-class interests. Resistance to the cuts is vital, but we also need a political alternative to the policies of cuts and privatisation. TUSC believes that a new working-class party is needed that campaigns for a democratic socialist society run in the interests of the millions not the millionaires.

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