This short book is the important story of the 2001 week-long wildcat strike at JeffBoat, at one of the US’s oldest shipyards on the Ohio River in Indiana. Terry Tapp, who worked there during this time, describes the build up to the unofficial strike and the strike itself. You can get some sense of the place and barge production from the glossy promotional video on the company website.
With postal workers taking to the picket lines last month, Mark Dolan, a prominent CWU activist, writes about strikes, rank and file organisation and 30 years working in the post office
I left school at 16 and became a telegram boy for Royal Mail. When I got the job it was regarded as a bit of a privilege as it was part of the civil service. I was probably one of the last to join as a telegram boy. I used to deliver them on a pedal bike, then on a scooter. The idea was that when you were 18 you progressed to sorting letters on the shop floor and going out on deliveries.
Recent disputes have shown a growing confidence and militancy among workers, argues Moira Nolan.
In a summer of iconic images, two much-pictured events may prove to have a lasting impact on class struggle in Britain in the coming months: the chaos at Heathrow Airport following the solidarity walkouts by BA workers and the hilltop protests by their fellow T&G members, the Gate Gourmet workers. These two events sum up both the injustice of working life in Blair's Britain and the power of workers to do something about it.
Strikes and solidarity are needed to bring the Gate Gourmet bosses' union busting operation to a standstill, argues The Walrus.
One of the most interesting aspects of the Gate Gourmet dispute has been the way it has taken the lid off what goes on at Heathrow airport - the biggest workplace in Britain. Concerted attempts by parts of the media and by the BA boss, Rod Eddington, to whip up an outcry over unofficial strike action have not been at all effective - mainly because the overwhelming impression has been that of a wildcat management acting in the most despicable fashion against a workforce made up almost entirely of Asian workers.
The victorious postal strike has put unofficial action back on the agenda, writes Martin Smith. Postal workers describe their success.
'Your world has turned upside down, and if you strike it will turn upside down again.' So warned Royal Mail chairman Allan Leighton, shortly after post workers narrowly rejected a national strike ballot over pay. The post workers' world has not turned upside down - but Leighton's surely has. An unofficial strike by over 35,000 workers has produced one of the biggest victories the British trade union movement has seen in over 20 years.
