With only 3 days to go, things are beginning to shape up with the Slough demo against the ailing EDL. London Anti-Fascists and Berkshire Anti-Fascists have been very busy leafletting in the town and talking to locals as well as organising numbers of people to come from outside Slough.
The route of the EDL march has been announced and also UAF and the local Trades Council have announced a counter-demo in town.
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Lifeways Dorset will today, Tues 28th January, be dismissing what is expected to be the majority of their support workers for refusing to sign an agreement that would mean up to a 60% cut in take home pay with immediate effect. Lifeways is a private health care provider who won contracts for to provide care to people with a severe learning disability and challenging behaviour.
The staff were transferred with the clients when all of Dorset’s Homes for those with a learning disability and challenging behaviour shut. Most staff have worked with the clients for many years and thus have a positive trusting relationship with those supported and fully understand the complex needs and challenging behavior. Not only are the staff to lose up to £2 per hour from hourly rate, all enhancements for unsociable hours, their pensions reduced, sick pay removed, annual leave reduced all expected to be agreed to with the understanding the budget from the Dorset CCG and Local Authorities had been cut. With a backdrop of an overall profit of £12.6 million last year nationally.
How can a support worker with a family to support possibly agree to such severe cuts and thus have no option but the dismissal and implementation of the lower rate after their notice period? Many have already left to find employment that will not force them into poverty, those that remain are living in limbo and worse of all those positive relationships those supported had are being replaced by being supported by a stranger. How is Private health allowed to get away with this?
‘When masters fall out their men get the clout’
The struggle between different groups of the big capital – of power and of “opposition” – led to implement of tightened laws which transformed Ukraine in a police state. The extreme right forces from “Right Sector of Maydan”, no more controlled by the “opposition”, went to attack against Cabinet of Ministers on the Grushevsky Street in Kiev. This resulted in a brutal confrontation with the special repressive forces of “Berkut”, “Yaguar” etc., and it resulted in the causalities among protesters: several people were killed. The authorities crossed the line, showing the real essence of bourgeois democracy. The situation in the Ukrainian capital becomes tenser.
Now the wage workers facing the eternal question: What is to do? Whether to support the opposition or support the government? To go to “Maydan” – or to stay at home? To support these or others politicians? Or perhaps to strive for the happiness of whole working people?
There is only one answer to this question: to begin with the defending of our own class interests: interests of wage workers.
Some people can justly ask: What is the problem? Why neither government nor owners of enterprises not busy themselves with bettering of people`s life? The answer is that the government and the owners – bourgeoisie want to receive enormous profits moved by their greed, cupidity, individualism and egoism and exploiting the wage workers. They want to expend as less as possible and to get as many as possible. And therefore they haven`t interest in any betterments of working people`s life.
Because no one will better the life of working people, the liberation of workers must be the work of the workers themselves.
What is to do? First of all, it is to unite themselves in the struggling unions (revolutionary syndicates) for collective and organized struggle for own class interests. It is necessary to organize strikes for obtain the salary increase to the real cost of labor force (minimal wage no less than 500 Euro monthly), the reduction of working time to 6 hours daily, the control of workforce over the enterprise – to go on the offensive against the yoke of power and capital.
How this will affect the situation in the country?
Firstly, it does not give the flame of armed confrontation of “power” and the “opposition” to flare up and will not allow the big masses to be drawn into this conflict. Secondly, the fight for better working conditions and higher wages will increase human well-being . Thirdly, wage growth will increase the purchasing power of citizens and thus give new impetus for producers: the production of goods and services will increase, and it will in turn influence the modernization of equipment, tools, machines and other means of production. Fourthly it will contribute to the expansion of production capacity, which in turn will provide a real incentive to create new jobs for the development of education, medicine, science and culture.
Therefore, the fate and welfare of Ukraine is primarily in the hands of the working people. And first of all it depends on the awareness and willingness of wage workers to collectively defend their class interests and not the interests of big business, tycoons, and politicians. This is the real way out of the political and economic crisis.
One Anarchist from Ukraine.
Poole Labour Club, 22 Wimborne Rd Poole Dorset BH15 2BU. Near the railway station.
7pm for 7.30pm. £3 entry – less if you can’t afford it.
![](https://wessexsolidarity.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/title_top.gif?w=462"&h=72 "All Pakistan Fedreation of United Trade Unions")
Islamabad: Thousands workers on Friday staged protest demonstration around the country against price hike, increase in petroleum prices, proposed privatization of Wapda and its Distribution Companies, Pakistan Steel Mills, PIA and other national entities.
The protest call was given by All Pakistan Federation of United Trade Unions (APFUTU). The workers of Wapda, Railway, PWD, PTV, PTCL, irrigation department, Pakistan Post, PTDC, National Bank, ZTBL, Municipal Federation, Fon Gas, Wasa and other trade unions affiliated with APFUTU participated in the demonstration.
The protesters were carrying banners and placards inscribed with slogans in support of their demands and beating their breasts and raising slogans against the proposed privatisation, price hike, “Petrol Bomb”, anti-labour laws and other problems they are facing.
Addressing the protesters on this occasion the leaders of APFUTU condemned the policies of the government and termed it anti-people and also rejected the proposed plan of privatisation. leaders of APFUTU, said that the government instead of seeking loans from international financial institutions like World Bank and IMF should go for self-reliance.
They said that at a time when people were already hit by high inflation, they warned of country-wide strike, if the government did not introduce necessary economic and social reforms to make national public utilities sustainable.
He demanded the Federal Government to hold composite dialogues on the issue with the representatives of the union and stop the process of privatisation of the profitable distribution companies. The labour leaders condemned the killings of innocent citizens including workers by the terrorists and demanded social protection for all by raising old-age benefits. They also demanded to bring the culprits to book who plundered Rs40 billion of Employees Old-age Benefits Institution (EOBI). They appealed to the patriotic forces to join hands with the working class to establish an egalitarian society through concerted struggle and defeat the ethnic, parochial and religious, sectarian and terrorist forces.
He urged the government to withdraw recent increase in petroleum prices and review the labour legislation and repeal Section 27-B of the Banking Companies Ordinance and bring labour laws in conformity with ILO Conventions ratified by the government of Pakistan and review the privatisation policy of national public utilities including Railways, Wapda, PIA by raising their productivity through transparent management in the wider public interest.
*Syed Zia-Ullah Azam* General Secretary *All Pakistan Federation of United Trade Unions (APFUTU)* Head Office: Imtiaz Labour Hall, Faizabad, Gujrat 50700 Pakistan Tel: +92 533 533 736 Fax: +92 533 525302 Cell: +923338408467 E-mail: apfutu@gmail.com
AFN in co-ordination with Berkshire Anti-Fascists are calling for a mass mobilisation to Slough to oppose the EDL’s first national demo of 2014 on Saturday 1st February. The EDL hope to regain some momentum after another spectacular decline after losing Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carol. We stress that the EDL may have suffered over the last few months but they are still an active threat to diverse working class communities.
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7pm for 7.30pm W.I. Hall, North St., Bridport, £3 entry – less if you can’t afford it. VEGETARIAN SOUP on sale from 6.45 pm
INTERESTING EVENTS ORGANISED BY OTHERS:
“Occupied Gaza – a liveable place (or not)?”
Talk organised by Dorset Palestinian Israeli Peace Group
Wednesday 29th January 7 pm in the Cerne Abbas Room, United Church, Dorchester DT1 1EE
Also – look out for ten days of films, plays, performers, singing and dancing organised by Bridfem to mark International Women’s Day on 8th March. Events happening from 1st to 12th March – come and enjoy!
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