Cambridge Unemployed Workers Union founded

Unemployed Workers Union (UWU) started in Cambridge to fight for improved welfare conditions.

There was a well-attended meeting in the Earl of Beaconsfield public house on Mill Road, Cambridge, on Friday the 25th of September of the unemployed.

The meeting resulted in the founding of a local Unemployed Workers Union. The founders of the new union for claimants reflected the diversity of those on the dole – divided between those on Job-Seekers Allowance (JSA) and those on incapacity benefits.

Cambridge UWU is dedicated to fighting for better welfare benefits, respect in the Job Centre and the scrapping of the government’s National Welfare Reform Bill and “Workfare” schemes. The National Welfare Reform Bill will attack single parents and the disabled who receive incapacity benefits. Workfare, the controversial program to make the unemployed work for theirbenefits (without being covered by National Minimum Wage!), is in the pipe-line to be tested in Cambridgeshire.

The unemployed activists also welcomed the presence of Steve Sweeney, Secretary of the Eastern Region Shop Stewards Network whichfights for rank ‘n’ file power in the trade unions. Steve kindly offered his and the SSN’s help. It was felt all round that it was important to build solidarity between all working-class people — employed and unemployed.

You can get involved in the Unemployed Workers Union by e-mailing them at cambs_unemployed@worker.com

Taken from Indymedia

This is now the 3rd branch to be set up (others being Merseyside and Salford), with many more areas, including Tyne & Wear, ready to set one up.

No job is safe under Gordon Brown

Labour conference backs cuts and public services are under threat

New Labour is planning devastating public service cuts – to education, health, the civil service and firefighters. They say that the cuts will not have an impact on “front line” services, but they already are.

For Gordon Brown’s ministers no service is sacred. Fire authorities across the country are slashing jobs, cutting the number of fire engines and abolishing specialist rescue teams.

That will leave the fire service under-resourced – and put people’s lives in danger. And the government has pledged that some £2 billion will be cut from education.

Education minister Ed Balls claims this will have no impact on our children’s education. But colleges up and down the country are already closing courses, shedding staff and dumping students at a time when many young people are finding it difficult to find a job.

Labour says the NHS needs to make £20 billion of savings. Claims that there will be no cuts in the number of nurses and doctors. But these cuts will fall on cleaners and ancillary staff whose role is just as vital.

Local councils are already cutting jobs, slashing pay and ripping up pension agreements. Over the next year they will be cutting more.

Key services, such as home help for the elderly, are disappearing. Brown’s government is desperate to balance the budget after squandering billions of pounds of our money to bail out the banks.

Now we are being told we have to pay again with our jobs and services. But New Labour is not having it all its own way. Resistance is growing across the country.

This week alone post workers, college lecturers and council workers have all been taking strike action.

Over the next year more and deeper cuts will be announced. We must support every struggle for our services, and build for the big fights now and in the future.

Taken from Socialist Worker

Rolls-Royce workers meet amid job fears

Hundreds of workers at a Sunderland engineering plant face an agonising wait to find out the future of their jobs.

Rolls-Royce is holding a meeting of staff from its Pallion plant at the Stadium of Light tomorrow.

The Echo has received information claiming the firm plans to cut its Wearside workforce from 400 to 250 and that staff were facing pay cuts of up to £15,000.

Rolls-Royce said there would be no comment ahead of the meeting. Rumours about the future of the factory have been circulating for some time.

The company unveiled plans to invest in four new factories and two advanced research programmes in the UK in July, which it said would create or secure more than 800 jobs.

It confirmed the new developments would be based “largely in Assisted Areas’”- such as Sunderland.

The new plants will include one making fan and turbine discs for commercial and military aeroplane engines. The Sunderland plant produces engine parts for planes.

The firm also confirmed it and its partners are to invest around £90million in research into the development of low-carbon aircraft engine technologies.

Taken from Sunderland Echo

Working mothers have unhealthiest children, study finds

Research prompts calls for more support for working families

Children whose mothers work are less healthy than those with stay-at-home mums, researchers said today.

Working mothers are more likely to drive their children to school and the youngsters are more likely to watch TV, drink fizzy pop and eat too few portions of fruit and vegetables, the study found.

The research, on more than 12,000 British schoolchildren, was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Mothers who worked full-time had the unhealthiest children, followed by those who worked part-time.

A total of 30% (4,030) of the mothers had not worked since the birth of their child but the rest (8,546) were employed, typically working 21 hours per week.

The mothers were questioned about the hours they worked and their children’s diet, exercise and activity levels when the youngsters were five. This included how much sweets and crisps, sugary drinks, fruit and vegetables the child ate and drank, whether they took part in organised exercise, and how they got to school.

The research found that many children had habits that could lead to them becoming overweight: 37% of children mostly ate crisps or sweets between meals and 41% mostly drank sweetened drinks, while a total of 61% watched television or used the computer for at least two hours a day.

When the researchers took away factors that might influence the results, such as socio-economic background, they found a definite link between a mother working and the health of her child.

The researchers, from the Institute of Child Health in London, said: “Children whose mothers worked part-time or full-time were more likely to primarily drink sweetened beverages between meals (compared to other beverages), use the television/computer at least two hours daily or be driven to school (rather than walk or cycle) than children whose mothers had never been employed.

“Children whose mothers worked full-time were less likely to primarily eat fruit and vegetables between meals (compared to other snacks) or eat three or more portions of fruit daily (compared to two or fewer).”

The researchers also looked at whether flexible working had an impact, but found no strong effect on the health of the children.

The researchers called for more support for working families and concluded: “Currently, approximately 60% of women with a child aged five or younger in the UK or USA are employed. For many families the only parent or both parents are working.

“This may limit parents’ capacity to provide their children with healthy foods and opportunities for physical activity. Policies and programmes are needed to help support parents and create a health-promoting environment.”

Taken from guardian.co.uk

90 call centre jobs to go

Ninety jobs are to be axed at one of Sunderland’s longest-standing employers.
Shop Direct plans to make the redundancies from its former Littlewoods contact centre at Commercial Road, Hendon.
It is thought that most customer support team posts will be lost, as well as about 40 customer service advisers and some team managers.

The cuts are have been blamed on overstaffing as increasing numbers of customers are shopping via the Internet instead of over the phone.

One worried worker said: “It’s a massive shock. Nobody could believe it.

“There’s hardly anything else about at the moment and Christmas isn’t that far away. It’s a terrible blow for everybody.”

“We all think this is only the start and there’s more redundancies to come.”
It is believed that management have devised criteria to decide who will get the chop, which includes performance and absence levels.

Liverpool-based Shop Direct was formed by a merger between Littlewoods and Great Universal, and sells major brands including Sony, Nike and Ralph Lauren to about five million customers.

The company has been established on its Hendon site since 1955.
About 1,300 people were employed there a year ago. The workforce after the latest cuts will total little more than 800.

Shop Direct said 90 people are “at risk” of redundancy and it had entered a 30-day consultation period.

A spokeswoman said: “We always review our operations to drive forward efficiencies within our business, and with the continuing move of our customers to shop online there is less demand for calls to be managed through our call centres.”

The GMB union is setting up a small task force to help people who will lose their jobs in this latest round of cutbacks in the call centre industry.

Senior organiser Jackie Woodall said: “It is a blow to the community in an area where we have suffered significant redundancies.

“The importance now is to work with people who have been affected by the redundancies and set up a support system in order to find other employment.”

And there may be hope as last Monday, 2Touch revealed it was creating 203 posts during the next six months at Sunderland’s Doxford International.

Head of recruitment Tracy Taylor today said the company was prepared to conduct telephone interviews with any Shop Direct workers facing redundancy.

Taken from Sunderland Echo

Drugs test for claimants sparks row over unemployment benefits

Addiction charities protest at Jobcentre powers under welfare reform bill

Controversial government plans to allow Jobcentre staff to “order” benefit claimants to undergo tests for drug and alcohol dependency are in breach of European law and unlikely to work, according to leading addiction charities.

The proposals, outlined in the welfare reform bill, which is due before the House of Lords next month, are part of a major government drive to reform Britain’s benefits culture and save taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds a year.

The government points to research that suggests that some 100,000 problem drugs users – heroin and crack cocaine addicts – are claiming benefits but are not in treatment, suggesting that it is unlikely they will ever be able to escape their addiction.

But as the bill draws nearer to becoming law, there are growing concerns about the new powers it will devolve to Jobcentre staff. The legislation would allow them to ask benefit claimants searching questions about their drug or alcohol use. Those suspected of having a dependency or of misusing drugs will then be asked to undergo an assessment and, if they refuse, face having their benefits withdrawn for a maximum of 26 weeks.

The bill also gives Jobcentres the power to share and exchange information with the police and probation services. “Staff will be given unprecedented new powers that are intrusive, coercive and will take the benefit system in worrying new directions,” said Martin Barnes, chief executive of the charity DrugScope.

If the Jobcentre determines that benefit claimants’ dependency is affecting their prospects of obtaining work, they can be required to undergo treatment as part of a “rehabilitation plan”. The DWP has denied that this constitutes forcing someone to undergo a particular form of drug treatment. But Barnes said the threat of withdrawing benefits could be interpreted as compelling someone to receive treatment.

“Potentially, anyone could be required to answer questions about their drug or alcohol use as the bill includes no test or threshold which staff must first satisfy,” he said. “Do we really want to see Jobcentres given the power to drug test, share information about claimants with the police and, for the first time, require vulnerable people to undergo medical treatment by waving the stick of benefit sanctions?”

Release, a drug addiction charity, said the proposals “fail to understand the nature of problematic drug use” and claimed that requiring benefit claimants to detail their drug use contravened Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights – the right to privacy.

While the government intends to pilot the scheme with heroin and crack cocaine users, the bill includes a power for its provisions to be expanded to all drugs, including alcohol.

A DWP spokesman said: “Drug and alcohol addiction destroys lives. We want to make sure people get the help they need to overcome their addictions, so that they can find a job and get their lives back on track. That is why we are proposing measures to tackle addiction as part of the welfare bill. We will ensure that they do sit within the confines of human rights law”.

Taken from guardian.co.uk

Young unemployed feel suicidal

Scores of unemployed young people in the North East say they have considered suicide, a new report claims.

A telephone survey by charity Elizabeth Finn Care found 13 per cent of jobless young people in the region say their situation has left them feeling suicidal – the highest rate in the UK.

The charity, which cares for people who find themselves in difficult financial situations, says it has seen a dramatic increase in the number of requests made by younger people.

Total unemployment now stands at 116,000 in the North East.

Source: Sunderland Echo