Glasgow

The details are:

* 3% (=2,097) of Glasgow Housing Association houses are up for ballot (November 2008) on second stage transfer to a community based housing association.

* 30% (=20,985) of GHA houses are in Local Housing Organisations that are still progressing (at a snails pace) through the various stages of the GHA's processes towards potential second stage transfer someday.

The action disrupted both refuse and recycling collections throughout the city affecting 15,000 households. Workers at the Queenslie and Eastern depots took the un-official action, claiming the council had failed to meet overtime payments of up to £4000.

The BBC reported that sixteen mechanics and 40 cleansing drivers also came out in 'wildcat' support, disrupting refuse collections.

Glasgow City Council attempted to brand the strike "unofficial and illegal."

The day care workers are employed in ten centres across Glasgow offering support and care to people with a physical and learning disability. Their day to day work involves supporting a wide range of people, from those with a mild learning disability who need help accessing community resources and employment, to those with complex needs who require a high level of care.

On sentencing ICL Plastics Ltd and ICL Tech Ltd to fines of £200,000 on 28th August 2007, Lord Brodie stated the following in relation to mitigating factors:

"This is not a case of failure to heed warnings or where a decision was taken to run a risk in order to save money. The companies apparently have a good safety record prior to May 2004, going back to the 1960’s."

The deal will mean most staff move up one grade, "role profile" five to six by August 2008. Around 600 workers were on strike, with support from workers in other sections of the council, all of which were regraded following the "single status" review.

A pay review by Glasgow City Council could lead to workers losing up to £1,000 per year. The workers were originally balloted for work to rule, but following threats of legal challenges by GCC they began all out indefinite strike action last week (23 July).

Thousands of workers at Glasgow mail centre were on an unofficial strike when thirteen drivers who refused to cross the picket line of the official strike at Edinburgh airport were suspended.

Thirteen workers who had refused to cross a picket line at Edinburgh airport were sent home, and up to 5,000 colleagues walked out in support. The CWU said a deal was offered to bosses which would have averted the unofficial action but it was rejected. The strike began at Glasgow Mail Centre at midnight last night, followed by delivery offices shortly afterwards.

"It was perhaps a natural development that one of the strongest branches of the Advocates of Industrial Unionism should be in the Singer Sewing Machine Works at Kilbowie, Clydebank, which employed some 12,000 workers. Singers was primarily an American firm, but it had established itself in Europe, and exerted an effective monopoly in the manufacture of sewing machines.

Glasgow Housing Association is set to demolish most of its flats in Maryhill over the next nine years.

The demolition decision was rubber stamped at an 11th February meeting of the GHA’s Local Housing Organisation committee in Maryhill – a group of selected local tenants.

Most of the cleared land will be sold to developers to build private houses for sale.

To be demolished:

Fears are that the same story will be repeated again.

Six years on, after being moved out of their homes to temporary decants, there is still no sign of any social rented housing in the Botany. And the Botany tenants have now been told that even if they ever are let back in, it will only be to 4 storey closes, rather than the back and front doors they were promised.

John Taylor Caldwell 1911-2007

Born on the 22nd of January 1891 in the district of Partick in Glasgow, William C. McDougal spent nearly seventy years actively promoting libertarian non-sectarian socialism. He joined the Glasgow Anarchists around the age of nineteen and served as secretary to them holding Sunday meetings at the foot of Buchanan Street.

The Wee Man is Dead!

Robert Lynn has snuffed it. In the heart of Glasgow - the Calton - hundreds of people are genuinely mourning the loss of one of its best loved sons.

Glasgow Green lies in the centre of the City, it is the oldest of Glasgow’s parks. Its origin lies in the Common Lands of the Burgh. Since the 1100s the area of the Green has been used for all manner of purposes from peat cutting, pasturing, slaughtering cattle, executions, walking, talking and playing.

Apprentices for some time had felt that they were drastically under paid and no more than a form of cheap labour. Apprentices’ wages ranged from 8/- to 19/- a week. In his first year he would be paid from 8/- to 12/- per week, a last year boy would receive 16/- to 19/-. Apprentices of 23 years of age would be paid 20/- per week.

The objectives of the strike were overtly political; they were to secure a reduction of weekly working hours to 40 in order that discharged soldiers could find employment, and to stop the re-emergence of an unemployed reserve, thereby maintaining the strength of labour against capital.

See also a history of Red Clydeside, 1915-1920

During the First World War, rent increases across Glasgow provoked massive working class opposition, mainly from women organised in tenants’ groups. Their struggle against profiteering landlords during extremely difficult circumstances is a valuable example of how collective action really gets results.