We look at news from the BMA and the Royal College of Nursing, victory for security workers at Heathrow, bin workers on strike in Bristol, Gloucestershire and Leicestershire and the ITUC criticises the UK for its shabby treatment of workers.

https://youtu.be/uaM4UKgKn7M via @YouTube

Delegates to Unite’s Policy Conference should leave the hall when Sir Keir Starmer takes the rostrum.

Labour is anti-worker, anti-trade union and anti-socialist. That Unite is affiliated to this party of imperialism at all disparages the union’s name.

Why is Britain so set on escalating the war in Ukraine? | The Communists
https://thecommunists.org/2023/06/17/news/why-britain-escalating-ukraine-war-rishi-sunak-depleted-uranium/

The Collapse of the Nurses’ Strike – Class Consciousness Project
https://classconsciousnessproject.blog/2023/07/04/the-collapse-of-the-nurses-strike/

As far as the revisionist CPB is concerned, trade unions are beyond reproach. Workers should join a union, take the free life insurance and the will-writing service and no more.

We respectfully disagree. We support the trade union movement, but will criticise it when criticism is due, we will point out its limitations and we will actively encourage workers not just to join a trade union, but to become active within its democratic structures, to challenge its bureaucracy and to be part of a cycle of members from the grassroots of the union, to its executive levels and, vitally, back to its grassroots again.

For workers to be better equipped to fight and defeat the exploitative system we exist within, we have to do much more than just #joinaunion

" Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system."

Karl Marx - Value, Price and Profit

When history comes to judge the failures of the trade union movement, and there are many, this will rank as amongst its biggest.

Remaining in fealty to a party which despises the trade union movement and everything it stands for.

Statement On The Unite Policy Conference – Class Consciousness Project
https://classconsciousnessproject.blog/2023/07/10/statement-on-the-unite-policy-conference-2/

We know that people are leaving Unite. We urge you to reconsider and to leave the Political Fund instead. It’s important that the bureaucrats who run Unite are given a clear message that their continued and servile relationship with Labour has to end, either their way or yours.

A potted history of the Royal Mail dispute:

- CWU members strike in 2022, losing £1,400 each

- CWU leaders accept crappy deal in 2023

- CWU members realise their leaders have abandoned them and so accept crappy deal

- CWU leaders wonder why CWU members are leaving in droves

https://classconsciousnessproject.blog/2023/04/26/the-inexplicable-capitulation-of-the-cwu/

In this podcast, we looked at the capitulation of the CWU and gained valuable insight from people who had actually worked for Royal Mail.

We speculated that CWU’s bureaucracy had been spooked into thinking that Royal Mail may go bust if the strike action continued. It looks like we were right.

https://classconsciousnessproject.blog/2023/05/08/podcast-debut/

The Communication Workers Union and their total capitulation in the Royal Mail dispute is examined in this latest article from the Class Consciousness Project.

https://classconsciousnessproject.blog/2023/07/13/the-failure-of-the-royal-mail-dispute/

The literal trickle we were promised.

Our comrade Alex will be speaking here.