education

During a September Saturday Brighton SolFed held a network and skills day covering; the immigration act and healthcare, the attack on benefits, fighting wage theft and anarchists on austerity. This full day, including a mighty lunch prepared by members, maintained a constant level of debate and information, concluding in practical action points to continue agitating around Brighton and beyond.

Newcastle Local has closed the year in a much stronger position having gained new members, new contacts and developed a new direction for the Local. We’ve been involved in 3 successful workplace battles - one of which being the Santander conflict in Spain, that was in support of a sacked member of our Spanish sister union, the CNT; another being a week of international action against a company our German union, the FAU, were in conflict with; and closer to home a local pay theft case in North Tyneside, which won a four figured settlement. http://www.solfed.org.uk/newcastle/another-win-for-solfed-this-month

Workers at Lambeth College will enter the fourth week of their indefinite strike soon. UCU members have been out since June3. Tomorrow (Tuesday 24 June) they will be joined by UNISON, who will be striking for three days.

This strike is important for many reasons. Teachers are fighting against changes in their contracts which will drastically worsen their working condition. They are taking action for themselves but also for all future workers in the college – at the moment many of the changes would only affect new employees. In the attack on the workers the management is specifically targeting the unions. They plan to cut 10 posts in ESOL department, where there are 3000 students on the waiting list but also UCU is the strongest.

After a short but intense campaign, Marta, a receptionist at the Speak Up London language school, has won a week’s unpaid wages and a glowing reference.

Marta was sacked without reason and without the required one week’s notice.  She got in contact with Solidarity Federation who quickly organised over a dozen people to March into the bosses’ office with a letter demanding she be given a week’s pay in lieu of notice and a positive reference.

After Speak Up failed to respond to Marta’s letter, SolFed and other supportive individuals and organisations organised a massive blockade of the Speak Up Facebook page.  Hundreds of post appeared within the 45 minutes. An hour and half into the action, Speak Up shut down their Facebook page entirely to all UK users.