More immigration raids

Well, it’s an ongoing trend now for private companies to grass up migrant workers to immigration. I just received the below:

Dear friends and comrades,

Today the Cleaners at the Willis building were invited get by Mitie for a chemicals training course, when all the cleaners were ready for the course, immigration officers raided the room and detained 3 cleaners, 1 Ecuadorian and 2 Bolivians.

Show your solidarity and support these cleaners at the next demonstration in front of Willis building, for the reinstatement of the already sacked cleaners, including their UNITE rep and against the immigration raids.

Friday 17 July 1 p.m. in front of Willis Building, 51 Lime street or at 12:30 in Liverpool street station in front of Macdonalds.

No one is Illegal, papers for all!

http://freesoascleaners.blogspot.com/

http://www.mitie.co.uk/what-we-do

UCU/Unison joint strike action at London Met University today!!

Very remiss of me as I meant to post about this before and reading Jon’s blog reminded me.

Good luck and solidarity with the comrades from Unison and UCU on strike today.

See press release below:

 Dear fellow trade unionists,

This is to both update you on the situation at London Metropolitan University and to thank you for the many messages of support and help offered to our campaign over the last few months.

As you know, London Met UCU and London Met Unison have been conducting a major campaign to oppose our management’s insistence on the loss of 550 FTE posts – which may result in up to 800 job losses (1/4 of our entire workforce). Both unions have won overwhelming endorsement for industrial action in recent ballots, and UCU took an initial day’s strike action in May. However, as the threat of job cuts (including compulsory redundancies currently scheduled for the end of July) has so far not been lifted, we have decided we now need to escalate our action.

To that end we shall initially be taking a joint UCU/Unison university-wide one day strike next Tuesday (July 14th).

JOINT UCU/UNISON STRIKE – TUESDAY 14^TH JULY (BASTILLE DAY)

 Our picket lines will commence at 8am at each of our main campus buildings in Holloway Road. Moorgate, Aldgate East, and Whitechapel (see http://savelondonmetuni.blogspot.com/2009/07/support-our-pickets-tuesday-14th.html for details).

In addition we will be holding a mass rally from 12-1pm outside our Central House Building (just opposite Aldgate East tube on the District line), before sending a delegation to the Dept of Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS), in Victoria (opposite St James Park tube) to hand-in a 3,500+ petition, demanding a full public inquiry and a halt to the job cuts at London Met, to Peter Mandleson.

Please make every effort to join us in the morning on our picket lines and to send delegations (and banners) from your branches to our rally in the afternoon. Further updates will be posted on our blog: http://savelondonmetuni.blogspot.com 
We believe that the situation at London Met, though very specific on the one-hand re the serious financial mismanagement of our institution, is also far too generic re the response of university/college management generally to attack staff, students, and the very education ideals we believe in, to pay for either their own, or Government induced, financial crisis, or to use the threat of financial crisis to remould the shape of education institutions to the dictates of what can best be described as the failed neo-liberal market model of education. We are only the tip of the ice-berg, as the threat to jobs at 100+ institutions across both FE and HE indicates. This is therefore not simply our fight, but one of the first salvos in a much bigger fight for the sort of education system that all of us – students, staff, community, deserve.

Please join us.

In Solidarity.

Mark…

Mark Campbell
UCU Co-ordinating Committee – London Metropolitan University
UCU National Executive

‘Fit notes’ on trial

The proposed introduction of electronic medical certificates has received a mixed response from GPs, according to new DWP research.
New electronic ‘fit notes’, developed in response to Dame Carol Black’s March 2008 report Working for a healthier tomorrow, are due to roll-out across Great Britain in the Spring of 2010.

The evaluation of a trial of the new electronic sickness certificates (eMed3) was carried out by a small number of GP practices in Wales – was carried out with participating and non-participating GPs, practice managers, employers and employees.

The research found that GPs participated ‘at a very basic level’, some felt eMed3 was simple and easy to use but some doubted whether it really was any quicker than using the paper-based system.

Furthermore, amongst non-participating GPs, the electronic certificates was widely seen as tinkering at the edges of a system that was not working very well, and the benefits of eMed3 generally seen as fairly marginal.

And more importantly some GPs questioned the motivation behind collecting data electronically.

Amongst some younger GPs there was a suspicion that this initiative was a precursor to a more intrusive system and that individual practices and GPs might find themselves under scrutiny at some point in the future. There was also some concern that patient confidentiality might be breached accidentally and, furthermore, that personal medical information might be used against the interest of the patient.

Quite!

http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/WP70.pdf