Year 2001 No. 150, September 3, 2001 | ARCHIVE | HOME | SEARCH | SUBSCRIBE |
---|
Workers' Daily Internet Edition : Article Index :
Teaching an Unsustainable Profession
Connex to bid for German routes
Hitachi cuts 14700 jobs worldwide
High Street Bank to Sack Workers
Jobs to Go at Shropshire Call Centre
RSC Workers Back Strike Action
Daily On Line Newspaper of the
Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
170, Wandsworth Road, London, SW8 2LA. Phone 020 7627 0599
Web Site:
http://www.rcpbml.org.uk
e-mail:
office@rcpbml.org.uk
Subscription Rates (Cheques made payable to Workers' Publication
Centre):
Workers' Weekly Printed Edition:
70p per issue, £2.70 for 4 issues, £17 for 26 issues, £32 for 52
issues (including postage)
Workers' Daily Internet Edition sent by e-mail daily (Text
e-mail):
1 issue free, 6 months £5, Yearly £10
Teaching is now an "unsustainable profession" according to research published on Friday for the National Union of Teachers (NUT). The current shortage crisis, the report says, will only be reversed if working conditions improve. The report by Demos for the NUT is a reflection of the reality of stress and exploitation of teachers that has increased by huge proportions.
The NUT-commissioned report said that the profession's morale had plummeted. It has come out at a time when Mike Tomlinson, Chief Inspector of Ofsted, (Office for Standards in Education), warned that the shortage of teachers was the worst for 36 years.
The NUT report declared: "The current crisis in recruitment and retention is long-term, not cyclical."
This position is in total contradiction with that of the Department for Education and Employment. They have insisted that teachers are more difficult to recruit when the economy is strong, as it has been claimed. The government position is a reflection of their intention to use a situation of crisis and the unemployed reserve army of labour to force teachers to accept poor working conditions, rather than solve the problem in favour of teachers and education. Already the government has resorted to resolving the problem by recruiting from abroad and in particular poorer countries who can ill afford to part with their teachers.
The Demos report for the NUT says that it has found, "The most influential factors, alongside pay, in recruiting teachers and determining whether they stay in the profession are the perceived quality of their working conditions, and their opportunities for professional creativity and autonomy."
The report stressed that there must be a reduction of unnecessary workload as an immediate priority.
The possibility of Tube workers striking moved a step closer on Friday as union leaders decide their next move in the pay dispute with London Underground.
RMT assistant general secretary Bob Crow accused LU management of being "hell-bent on a dispute" after they refused to increase a 3.7 per cent offer already rejected by the union.
London Underground ignored a midday deadline set by the RMT on Thursday for an improved offer - and then informed the union that it would drop certain conditions but would not increase the actual offer.
Balloting members for industrial action was a strong option when the RMT's council of executives met on Friday lunchtime.
If approved, ballot papers could start arriving within the next weeks, allowing stoppages in October. The conciliation service ACAS had recommended a four per cent deal during talks which broke down last week.
LU wrote to the RMT on Thursday to stress that it had "made clear" at the ACAS talks that it was unable to go beyond 3.7 per cent. Mike Gardiner, LU's head of employee relations, wrote: "There is no reasoned analysis to justify a move to four per cent which would be higher than the majority of settlements in the public sector and totally ignores the company's ability to pay for the many and varied demands made by the trade unions."
The letter calls on the union to complete negotiations "without further delay". A similar letter was also sent to the ASLEF train drivers, who have yet to declare their position.
It is reported that LU managers are to meet union officials.
Connex, the French-owned train operator that has become a byword for all that is wrong with the railways, surrendered its South Central rail franchise on Sunday. It is making a bid to take over the German regional railway network.
Connex is notorious among British rail travellers for running over- crowded, dirty trains, with services constantly running behind schedule and cancellations rife.
Indeed, the operator's record has been so poor that last month, Olivier Brousse, managing director of Connex South Eastern, admitted: "The quality of service we provided over the last two years was not good enough. At times it has been appalling and our passengers-deserve better." The company's service had been so bad that it had no choice but to cut fares accordingly. It was fined £12.5 million earlier in the year for late running services.
Despite fierce opposition from the chairman of rail firm Deutsche Bahn, Connex's approach seems to be gaining support in Germany.
In a leaked letter to Connex, German transport minister Kurt Bodewig encouraged the Vivendi Environnement subsidiary-to table "a concrete offer and open negotiations" with Deutsche Bahn.
The proposals have also won the support of the president of the Londer transport ministers' conference and the biggest German rail union, Transnet, which is keen to preserve jobs.
Connex, now adopted as the brand-name for Vivendi's transport operations in 19 countries, wants to take over the InterRegio services linking German regional capitals.
Japan's largest electronics maker, Hitachi, is cutting 14,700 jobs, or four per cent of its global workforce, as it braces for a more than $1 billion loss brought on by the info-tech slump. About 20 per cent of the Hitachi group's employees work overseas.
In Europe, Hitachi employs more than 650 staff at 20 locations. Its European headquarters are based in Maidenhead.
Hitachi says the workforce reductions, which include "natural attrition" one of the new buzz-words in the vocabulary of restructuring would come mainly in the semiconductor and display divisions. These have borne the brunt of this year's brutal downturn in demand for PCs, cell phones and other electronic goods.
The electronics monopoly said it expects $1.17 billion in consolidated net loss for the business year, reflecting restructuring costs, and an operating profit of zero.
Rival Japanese chipmaking conglomerates Toshiba, NEC and Fujitsu have also issued profit warnings and plans for thousands of job cuts over the past month. Fujitsu has already unveiled 16,400 job cuts. Toshiba has said it expects to lose around 10 per cent of its 190,000 strong workforce, with 17,000 of the cutbacks coming in Japan, where the firm has 144,000 staff.
Since the start of the year, Hitachi's shares have fallen 5.5 per cent, compared with declines of 20 per cent or more at Japan's four other chip and electronics conglomerates.
The market for DRAM chips, used in computer memory, has been hit particularly hard by the info-tech slump, with prices of standard chips falling 90 percent over the past year and forcing Japanese chipmakers to restructure their operations.
Toshiba has already announced plans to cut DRAM chip production capacity and combine its operations with another chipmaker, while Hitachi and NEC have formed a 50-50 DRAM joint venture to help share investment costs and risks.
Now that the recession in manufacturing is said to be "official" attention has turned to the financial sector. One feature of the crisis will be to cut jobs in order to make the workers pay for the crisis and at the same time maintain the massive bank profits, which have been recorded over recent years. Jobs done by clerical workers, computer operators and many other banking functionaries are carried out by agency workers on contracts. Already there is a slowdown in recruitment of staff in order to cut costs.
Lloyds TSB is to axe 500 regular jobs from its branch network by the end of the year. A spokesperson for the bank said that the cuts had nothing to do with the merger. She said, "Whilst we've been bringing the two banks together over the last few months we needed more people, but now that we've completed that project and we've brought in new technology and new processes we will need 500 fewer jobs."
It is an ideal time for the bank to cut back on workers by using new technology and scale down due to the merger of the two banking monopolies. The cycle of capitalist economic crises has traditionally seen workers thrown onto the dole by the financial oligarchs.
A Shropshire call centre for more than 50 factories across Britain has announced that it will close later this year with the loss of up to 91 jobs.
Management at Sunlight Services have told workers they plan to close the Telford telephone sales operation, which also acts as a credit control and administration centre for the group, in October.
The company is cost cutting due to the recession. Human resources manager for Sunlight, Martin Roberts, said on Thursday that the company was in the process of a 30-day consultation period with workers.
He added that the firm had announced plans to close the Stafford Park site and transfer the work to other sites across the country. The company is streamlining its operations at the expense of its workforce as part of its plans to maintain profitability.
Technicians and other staff from the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) voted on Thursday in favour of strike action over new production proposals that will cut up to 60 jobs.
Lighting technicians, programme sellers, sound engineers and box office staff are among those who could lose their jobs at the RSC in Stratford.
``We have consistently told the management that their proposals are completely unacceptable to the staff,'' Gerry Morrissey of the Broadcasting Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theater Union (BECTU) said in a statement. ``The ballot is an overwhelming vote of no confidence in the current management team,'' he said.
Under the proposals put forward by artistic director, Adrian Noble, performances at the three RSC theatres in Stratford will be scaled down to allow more shows to be staged in London's West End and regional centres.
The RSC's Roger Mortlock said the changes were necessary to keep the company alive. ``This is short-term pain for long-term gain,'' he said.
The RSC and BECTU are due to meet for more talks on September 4.
A strike by airport baggage handlers at Newcastle International Airport is to go ahead on Saturday, September 8. The baggage handlers who work for Goundstar are demanding parity in pay and shift allowances with workers who work for its other bases at other airports. The ballot of 148 Transport & General Workers Union members gained 94% backing for strike action. The strike was originally going to take place on September 1 and then every Saturday after that, but further talks between the union and management resulted in a postponement of the one-day strikes until September 8. Last Friday those talks broke down and the strike will now go ahead.
One of the baggage handlers was reported as saying "All we are asking for is the same wages as staff are getting at other airports but the company has been stalling and stalling all summer."
The airport had its busiest day in its 66-year history recently when more than 16,000 passengers passed through on Saturday, July 28. During July, almost 400,000 flew to and from Newcastle.
Activists are planning to protest outside a McDonald's restaurant over the announcement the burger chain will be sponsoring events at the Labour Party Conference in October it was reported on Saturday.
Demonstrators from the Green Party, Socialist Alliance and Globalise Resistance, as well as others, plan to take part. The protest is to be at the McDonald's branch in Western Road, Brighton.
University of Brighton lecturer and lecturers' union NATFHE chairman Tom Hickey said: "This is an insult to all in the labour movement. McDonald's is an icon of corporate greed, foul working conditions and environmental destruction. If Tony Blair wants McDonald's at the conference, then I want to see a McDonald's worker address delegates about experiences of low pay, long hours and bullying management."
Brighton and Hove Globalise Resistance activist Christine Bird said: "This announcement makes it clear what New Labour are about. Their conference is rapidly becoming known as McLabour Conference. Labour voters are disgusted with their party."
More than 10,000 people are expected to take part in a similar protest in Brighton on Sunday October 30, the first day of the conference.