Trade Union

By Gareth Bromhall, Swansea and West Wales Socialist Party and Swansea Trades Council secretary Trade unionists and supporters gathered to celebrate international workers’ day at Swansea Trades Council’s annual May Day rally. The rally was called in support of steelworkers at Tata Steel at Port Talbot and Llanwern in Newport, and was headed by main speaker Jason Wyatt, a Unite rep ...

Strike to fight the jobs massacre – Nationalisation not devastation By Alec Thraves (Vice President, Swansea Trades Council) Seven months of fruitless ‘negotiations’ between the steel unions and Tata’s deaf, brutal and intransigent bosses have resulted in the widely expected rejection of both the Unite and the Community/GMB alternative proposals to retain primary steel making at Port Talbot. With a ...

By Alec Thraves Unite has announced a significant ‘Yes’ vote result in their ballot for industrial actionat Port Talbot and Llanwern.All four bargaining units, across the two sites, returned a ‘Yes’ vote showing thedetermination of the majority of the1,500 Unite members to defend their jobs andsave the industry and protect the local communities.With the average age of a Unite Port ...

By Alec Thraves (Swansea Socialist Party and Swansea Trades Union Council) Tata Steel bosses are now stepping up their ‘non-negotiable’ plan to shut the two remaining blast furnaces at its Port Talbot site, something the Socialist Party has consistently raised is on the cards. This means the loss of almost 2,000 steel jobs and a knock-on affect to thousands more ...

By Joe Fathallah On Monday 25 March, 3,000 junior doctors in Wales started their longest strike yet. The four-day strike is the third period of action this year. The BMA Cymru/Wales Junior Doctors Committee says pay has been cut by almost a third since 2008. The Labour-led Welsh government’s 5% offer is below inflation and the worst offer in the ...

By Alec Thraves (Swansea Socialist Party and Swansea Trades Council) Tata’s shock announcement, that it will be shutting down all of its Port Talbot coke ovens within a couple of days, will just confirm what most steelworkers already knew and what the Socialist Party has long warned: that there can be no trust in Tata! As part of the fight ...

By Dave Griffiths ‘Coal not dole’ was the cry across Britain as 180,000 members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in 180 pits began walking out on strike in March 1984. It became a long, bitter industrial dispute – a whole year – fought with enormous courage and elan by miners, the biggest workers’ struggle for generations. Fought not ...

By Mark Evans (President Swansea Trades Union Council) An article in February’s Labour Research magazine, ‘How will new partnership law strengthen workers’ voice?’, highlights that some unions have hailed the new Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act 2023 as “historic” and “momentous”. Wales Trades Union Congress (TUC) policy officer Nisreen Mansour said the new act “is a huge win” for ...

By Jonathan Golding (Cardiff East Socialist Party) On 29 February, members of Cardiff Socialist Party and Trades Council joined workers from the waste management department and members of Unite the Union to lobby the council cabinet for the reinstatement of Tom Watkins, a Unite rep of 15 years. Tom had served for 33 years at Cardiff Council in the street ...

Nationalisation Not Devastation! By Alec Thraves (Vice President, Swansea Socialist Party) Hundreds of steelworkers, trade unionists and Port Talbot residents marched through the town today to demand that Tata Steel steps back from its threat to sack 2,000 workers as it scales down the Tata plant at Port Talbot. Also today Newport workers marched to prevent job losses at the ...