SOAS occupiers win!
After 12 days of taking over the directorate at SOAS university in solidarity with cleaners facing redundancy, students have dismantled their occupation declaring a massive win.
After a long series of negotiations between contractor Elior, SOAS and university union UCU, the university has reversed its controversial plan to close catered social space the Refectory. All redundancies will be reversed and the outsourced catering staff are now set… Continue reading
SOAS occupiers ramp up the noise as bosses squirm at cuts talks
Students who have occupied the directorate building at SOAS for the last 11 days against attacks on staff jobs at the university’s Refectory are following up a big rally held yesterday with a revolutionary fiesta tonight, keeping up pressure on administrators.
Yesterday’s event saw students and catering workers joined by the IWGB, which has itself been organising strongly with university cleaning staff who are often on similar outsourced… Continue reading
SOAS open day targeted as occupation over job cuts escalates
Following an occupation of the directorate offices at SOAS, supporters of staff who have been threatened with the sack as the university closes down its Refectory community space are targeting management where it hurts — their open day.
Under the banner Troll SOAS, the SOAS Justice For Workers group is planning to tell students visiting today all about the last few years of conflicts with university… Continue reading
France: National rally called to back workers who have occupied and booby-trapped factory
CGT union delegates have called for a national rally in support of workers at GM&S who have occupied their workplace and threatened to blow it up rather than let the site be shut down.
The workers, who occupied the car component factory in the Creuse region, north of Limoges on Thursday night, have already destroyed some equipment and used gas and petrol canisters to booby-trap the building, which they say… Continue reading
Argentina: Hotel Bauen eviction called off at last minute
Famed worker-occupied building Hotel Bauen got a stay of execution last night after the National Chamber of Appeals in Buenos Aires allowed an injunction against its eviction, just hours before the site was due to be forced out.
In its comments the court overturned an order by María Paula Hualde that Bauen’s 140 workers had no right to appeal their eviction. It said she had “erred” in rushing… Continue reading
Students, Class and Wildcat Strikes: Why free education must have a basis in working-class struggle
Reaching its second day on Friday, the wildcat strike and picket at the School of Oriental and African Studies was successful in putting further pressure on management to lift the suspension of union representative Sandy Nicoll.
The suspension comes in response to Nicoll’s alleged support for the occupation there and its resilience against increasing repression from university management. Two days ago director and former cabinet member Valerie Amos escalated the… Continue reading
Could the occupation of London Metropolitan signal the rise of a working-class student’s movement?
In Cameron’s adventurous second term, the privatisation of culture has continued on a dramatic scale. Everywhere cultural avenues for poor people are severed. Public museums, art galleries and libraries, particularly those in predominantly working-class Labour boroughs, have had their funding cut. As they demolish our estates to make for upmarket flats, centres of working-class culture are reduced to their market rate.
At London Metropolitan University’s Aldgate campus, management are completing… Continue reading →