Welsh News

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 Joe Fathallah Over 3,000 farmers and agricultural workers descended on Cardiff on 28 February to protest outside the Senedd (parliament) against the Welsh government’s proposed changes to the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS). The plans would mean that, to continue to receive the subsidy, without which small farms could not exist, farmers would have to give up 10% of their ...

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 ...

By John Williams Even by Welsh Labour standards, the current Welsh Labour leadership election- that will decide the next First Minister of Wales has been uninspiring. Vaughan Gething has been in the news a lot recently, so most people in Wales know him by now, but it takes a while to remember the name of the other AM standing- Jeremy ...

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 ...

By Alec Thraves Tata Steel bosses have declared the start of a legally obliged, 45-day formal consultation process which could culminate in the initial loss of 2,423 jobs across the UK, with 1,929 of those in Port Talbot, representing exactly half the workforce. Tata’s phoney war is over after TV Narendran, the global chief executive of Tata Steel and the ...