Anti-strike injunctions are becoming commonplace‏

Over the past 6 months two high court injunctions – at BA and Network Rail - have overturned union mandates for industrial action. These are widely seen as opportunistic abuses of trade union legislation by employers using spurious technicalities in biased courts – a case made emphatically by Professor Gregor Gall in a recent Morning Star article:http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/88946

UNISON joins global delegation in US for Sodexo week of action‏

A small delegation of UNISON members joined other Sodexo workers from France in Washington, DC, in preparation for three days of activity in support of the campaign by Sodexo workers in the U.S. to protest against the company’s attempts to suppress workers - through threats, intimidation, among other things - in their efforts to form a union
http://cleanupsodexo.org/2010/04/global-delegation-arrives-meeting-with-s.php

Solidarity with SAMWU‏

South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) is taking national strike action against the South African local government employers. The action follows longstanding union concerns about chronic service delivery failures, the involvement of legal firms in disciplinary processes and disputes about job evaluation.
http://www.samwu.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=590&Itemid=1

Irish pay deal - Nurses' union says No, Siptu says Yes‏

The pay and public services reform deal brokered between the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) and the Irish government is in jeopardy following yesterday’s decision of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) to recommend rejection in the ballot of its 40,000 members.

UNISON poster campaign attacked by Tory rabid dogs‏

The excellent UNISON poster campaign, funded by the union’s General Political Fund, brings to an end the Tory monopoly on billboard advertising in the General election.

BP under pressure from global public sector pension funds‏

With just two days to go before BP's annual general meeting, a growingwave of support from global public sector pension fund investors is emerging for the resolution - co-filed by the UNISON staff pension fund and co-ordinated by Fair Pensions and opposed by BP management -questioning the company's planned oil sands projects in Canada.

Labour manifesto – a stale menu dished up for public services‏

The Labour manifesto published yesterday was a missed opportunity to create a clear dividing line between the Labour Party as the champion of public services and the privatising small state vultures of the Conservative Party.

Council bites back at media bosses on public service pay

OK, so it’s about chief officers, but Fife Council’s leader asks some pertinent questions of the media about its attack on public services. In a letter to the Scotland on Sunday newspaper, he points out that one local paper’s chief executive was paid more than the council’s top eight earners put together!
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/letters/Council-salaries--story-misleading.6218126.jp

Colombia - a massacre foretold‏

Santiago de Cali, 8th April 2010
Eight miners were murdered by armed men travelling in two vehicles and a motor bike. The killings occurred in a place known as “Alto de Ovejas”, a rural zone in the municipality of Suárez, department of Cauca, southern Colombia. The place where the massacre occurred is the upper part of the Ovejas river. It can be reached by a one and a half hour journey on foot.

Democracy by Langston Hughes‏

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.