May 2003

"A MASS campaign of opposition centered on mass non payment can render this new tax still born." We are going to have to pay water charges of around £400 per year, starting in 2006. The price will rise year by year. This is despite the fact that we already pay for our water through the regional rate.

THE CAMPAIGNS against bin charges around Dublin are gearing up for battle as the government is preparing to introduce a new “Protection of the Environment Bill” with powers to stop collection to non-payers. In the three and a half years since the bin tax was first introduced in Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council and subsequently in the other Dublin Councils, resistance against the double tax has been huge. Mass non-payment is a fact in all council areas, despite various intimidations and legal threats from the councils. The campaigns against the bin tax have thousands of members around the city and have organised many more in a principled stand of non-payment.

AT THE time of going to press it is still uncertain whether the Assembly elections are to go ahead. This is because of the failure to reach a last minute deal on re-establishing the Executive. Although the republican movement have shifted considerably, this has not been enough for either wing of the UUP. Given the growing opposition among Protestants to any new deal, it has been impossible for the UUP to reach agreement with an election only weeks away.

FOR THE first time since the momentous events in Genoa in 2001, the G8 summit - the world’s seven richest countries plus Russia - returns to Europe. Tens of thousands of trade unionists, anti war activists, environmentalists and many unorganised workers and youth will demonstrate in Evian, France against the agenda which drove the Iraq war.

THE SCOTTISH Socialist Party (SSP) is set to make gains in the second elections to the Scottish Parliament on 1 May. This election is being fought against the background of rising levels of poverty and inequality in Scotland. One-in-three children grow up in poverty, there is a crisis in the health service and thousands of manufacturing jobs have been lost.

AMID GROWING charges of vote rigging, Olusegun Obasanjo is the declared winner of Nigeria’s presidential election. How stable his rule will be is a very different question... Low paid, mainly women workers in hospitals, schools and childcare centres are fighting for wage increases of 5.5 per cent. 400,000 workers are involved in the dispute.

SOCIALIST PARTY member Carmel Gates will be standing for re-election as NIPSA President at this conference. Carmel explains the key issues facing NIPSA members.

ON 16 and 17 April, NIPSA members in the social work grades across the 11 community health trusts in Northern Ireland took strike action in support of a pay and grading claim designed to bring social workers’ pay into line with other health service workers whom they work with regularly in multi-disciplinary teams.

THERE HAS been no movement by the government and the employers to improve on their “final offer” which was overwhelmingly rejected by a special FBU Conference in April. Instead there have been threats from the government to impose a settlement.

CPSU MEMBERS face one of their most important conferences in years. Our members face attacks in An Post, the Department of Agriculture and in Social Welfare. The CPSU like other unions have been shackled into a national wage agreement by the leadership of ICTU. But on the ground our members are having to fight its effects.

PSEU Conference: Executive Under Fire .

CHRIS IS a young person employed to deal with enquiries from the public for the New Tax Credit system. Virtually every day, Chris takes abuse from angry callers on the phone accusing him of being “an over-paid civil servant bureaucrat” as well as some slightly more graphic insults.