Transport Workers Solidarity Committee

9/1/2010 World action day to back Turkish UPS workers

World action day tomorrow backs Turkish UPS workers
Trade unions in over 40 cities worldwide will demonstrate their solidarity with sacked Turkish UPS workers tomorrow, September 1, in an action day coordinated by the ITF (International Transport Workers’ Federation).

The international protest is being held in response to reported intimidation and sackings of workers who opted to join Turkey’s TÜMTIS trade union. Since April 2010, 157 employees of UPS Turkey have been dismissed without any application of the procedures specified by Turkish law. All of the dismissed workers are union members or were interested in union representation. On 2 July 2010, the conflict escalated even further when the manager of a sub-contractor fired shots at the office of a notary public in Izmir where, union representatives reported, he had been trying to force workers to resign their union membership (see www.itfglobal.org/press-area/index.cfm/pressdetail/4662/region/1/section/0/order/1)

TÜMTIS President Kenan Ozturk explained: “UPS workers in Turkey face aggression. International support will send a clear message to UPS that anti-union activity is not acceptable. Global workers' solidarity can help to defeat an attack by employers.”

UK Tube workers' unions to meet over strike action

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5gQgQjy-u9CoWRHkXw85U8IJ9e0ig
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Tube workers' unions to meet over strike action
(UKPA) – 3 days ago
London Underground (LU) union leaders are to meet to draw up a possible timetable for strikes in a row over jobs, threatening disruption as the capital returns to normal working after the summer holidays next month.
Members of the Rail Maritime and Transport union and the Transport Salaried Staffs Association voted in favour of a campaign of industrial action over plans to cut 800 jobs among station staff.
The executives of both unions will have to endorse any strike dates, but it is likely that action could start from September 6, when Parliament returns for a few weeks before the autumn political conferences.
Meanwhile, Caroline Pidgeon, leader of the Liberal Democrat London Assembly Group, said LU was set to close ticket offices across the underground by almost 7,500 hours every week.
"London Underground and the Mayor are playing with words when they keep peddling the claim that no ticket office will actually close. The harsh reality is that if you can't access a ticket office for most hours of the day, it is effectively closed.

UK RMT - Rail fares rip-off and a threat to thousands of safety-critical jobs – transport under attack 100 days in to ConDem government

http://www.rmt.org.uk/Templates/Internal.asp?NodeID=138082

Rail fares rip-off and a threat to thousands of safety-critical jobs – transport under attack 100 days in to ConDem government

Publication Date: August 17 2010

As the ConDem Government marks its first 100 days in office this week transport union RMT warned that jobs, quality and safety have been lined up for an all-out assault this autumn with the travelling public expected to take a massive hit on fares to use battered and under-resourced services.

RMT is pointing to:
Rail and tube fares jacked up to the hilt to protect the profits of private companies and to finance the mess left behind following the failed PPP experiment on London Underground.
Rolling stock replacements, upgrades and renewals work all scrapped or delayed leaving passengers to pay through the nose to travel in overcrowded carriages on under-maintained track.
Thousands of transport jobs under threat on rail, the buses, the tube, the ports and at sea compromising safe working standards and condemning key workers to the threat of the dole.

BAA, Union Avert U.K. Airports Strike

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704868604575433864209199710.html

BUSINESSAUGUST 16, 2010, 5:57 P.M. ET
BAA, Union Avert U.K. Airports Strike

Associated Press

LONDON—Strikes that could have closed Britain's major airports during peak vacation season were averted Monday after a full day of talks between the country's airports operator, BAA Ltd., and the Unite union.

Officials from BAA and the union emerged Monday evening from a meeting brokered by the U.K. government's conciliation service to announce the agreement. Unite's national secretary, Brendan Gold, said it was "a settlement which we're prepared to recommend to our members."

The details of the agreement weren't revealed. They are to be presented Tuesday to union members, who must now vote on the offer.

The two sides had been locked in a dispute over pay.

"It's been challenging," said conciliation service spokesman Peter Harwood. "The parties wouldn't have been here if it was a straightforward matter."

BAA, which is owned by Spain's Grupo Ferrovial SA, had said it would have to shut down its six airports—including Heathrow, Stansted and Edinburgh—if the walkout went ahead because the striking workers would have included security staff, engineers and firefighters.

Runaway train on London Tube's Northern Line-The Cost Of Privatization Drive In Rail
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-10964766
13 August 2010 Last updated at 10:43 ETShare this pageFacebookTwitterShareEmailPrint
Runaway train on London Tube's Northern Line

The train ran for nearly four miles before it stopped at Warren Street
A runaway train went through six stops on a 13-minute journey on London's Tube with other trains having to be cleared out of its path.

The engineering train became uncoupled as it was towed on the Northern Line near Archway station on Friday morning.

Passenger trains were diverted to another branch of the Northern Line while trains were cleared from the Charing Cross branch.

The train ran for nearly four miles before it stopped at Warren Street.

It came to a rest only because there is a slight incline at the station.

Pat Sikorski, assistant general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, said he was "horrified" as it could have "very easily resulted in disaster". He said the union understood a collision with a passenger train "was only narrowly avoided".

The train was stopped by a "slight incline" at Warren Street station, London Underground director Richard Parry said.

UK RMT Tube workers vote to strike (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)
http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/wfnews/8325440.WALTHAM_FOREST__Tube_workers_vote_for_strike/

WALTHAM FOREST: Tube workers vote to strike
1:20pm Wednesday 11th August 2010

By Daniel Binns »

LONDON underground RMT members have voted to go on strike.

No date has been set for the industrial action, which has been called following a row over jobs and safety.

The union claims plans to reduce ticket station opening hours will put passenger safety at risk, and that 800 jobs could also be lost in further cuts.

The RMT says 76 per cent of its members voted to strike, but Transport for London (TfL) says less than a third did.

RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: “RMT members have sent a clear message in this ballot that they will not sit by while the tracks are turned into a death trap and our tube stations and platforms are left unstaffed and at the mercy of muggers, vandals and other criminal elements.

“Boris Johnson cannot wash his hands of the crisis that is unfolding on London Underground on his watch. While his managers are ripping up the safety regulations the Mayor himself is ripping up his promises to Londoners on safe staffing levels and no amount of bluster can get him off that hook.

Greece: Union betrayal of truck driver’s strike sets stage for further attacks
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/gree-a03.shtml
Greece: Union betrayal of truck driver’s strike sets stage for further attacks
By Robert Stevens
3 August 2010
The Greek trade unions’ betrayal of a six-day nationwide strike by 33,000 truck drivers has set the stage for the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) regime of Prime Minister George Papandreou to step up its offensive against the entire working class.
Late Sunday the truck drivers union, the Panhellenic Union of Commercial Land Transportations (PSXEM) succeeded in getting a narrow majority of workers to call off the strike. They voted an agreement accepting all the original demands of the social-democratic PASOK government.
The strike began on July 26, when drivers stopped work to protest a decision by the government to revoke their system of licensing trucks.
Under the existing system, truckers pay the state up to €100,000-200,000 for a license to own and run their trucks. The truck owners can then resell these licenses. Many drivers feared that the measures, aimed at the “liberalisation” of so-called “closed-shop” professions, would bankrupt them or even cost them their licenses. Liberalisation was one of the conditions set down by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund as part of their €110 billion ($142 billion) bailout package for Greece.

Turkish Dock Workers Union Joins Boycott against Israel
http://www.sendika.org/yazi.php?yazi_no=31229
Turkish Dock Workers Union Joins Boycott against Israel
24 Haziran 2010 -

The working class movement in Turkey is starting to join the Boycott Against Israel Campaign. While the working class movements around the world has escalated the campaign against Israel by refusing to unload Israeli cargo ships, the Dock Workers Union “Liman-Is” is the latest union in Turkey joining the anti apartheid, anti racist campaign against the state of Israel.

The recent campaign against Israel started by the left and progressive organizations is beginning to get support from the workers’ unions as well. The movement against Israeli apartheid was successful in bringing the entire spectrum of the left against Israel’s racist and imperialist regime. However now, the movement is starting to gain support within the working class organizations as well.

The Boycott Against Israel movement aims to cut all ties, military, economic, diplomacy, academic and cultural, with the state of Israel.

Following the Physicians’ Association of Turkey which had endorsed the campaign from the very beginning, the dock workers’ union Liman-Is is now also calling for a comprehensive boycott against the reactionary state of Israel. The movement had organized a successful symposium for Palestinian rights and against Israel where the representatives from the world had gathered to discuss the the strategy of such a boycott. During the discussions, the Chamber of Agricultural Engineers of Turkey, a participant in the symposium announced it was joining the boycott against Israel.

Rejection of BA offer sparks fresh strike fears
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/97c78ae6-93fb-11df-83ad-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=rss
Rejection of BA offer sparks fresh strike fears
By Brian Groom, Business and Employment Editor
Published: July 20 2010 14:40 | Last updated: July 20 2010 14:40
British Airways cabin crew have rejected by two-to-one the airline’s final offer aimed at resolving their long-running dispute, raising the possibility of further strikes this autumn.

Members of the Unite union voted by 3,419 to 1,686 against the offer in a consultative ballot, dashing hopes of an end to the clash over cost savings, travel concessions and disciplinary issues.

Unite, which represents about 11,000 of BA’s 13,400 cabin crew, had balloted its members without any recommendation on whether to accept the proposed deal. Union officials were meeting cabin crew representatives on Tuesday afternoon to consider their next step.

Cabin crew have already walked out for 22 days in two separate rounds of stoppages since March, costing loss-making BA an estimated £150m in a dispute that began more than a year ago.

One of the options Unite will consider is to hold another ballot on further strikes, which could take place from September.

Anti-Zionist Trade Unionists Delay El Al Flight In Athens For Two Hours

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/anti-israel-protesters-delay-el-al-flight-in-athens-1.301921

Anti-Israel protesters delay El Al flight in Athens
Members of Communist-backed labor union say they blocked five El Al
counters for two hours to protest Gaza siege.
By Zohar Blumenkrantz and The Associated Press

An Israel-bound flight was delayed for about two hours at Athens
International Airport Wednesday after protesters against the blockade of Gaza blocked
check-incounters, airport officials said.

Members of a Communist-backed labor union said they blocked five El Al
airline counters for two hours to protest the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the Jewish
state's oppressive policies.

"This was an action taken in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their
effort to establish a Palestinian state," union spokesman Giorgos Pontikos
told the AP. He said police were present at the protest but did not intervene.

An El Al spokesman said in response to the incident that airline "considers
flight safety and the safety of its passengers as its foremost values and
willnot compromise those in any way," saying that "at no time were the passengers in