Fighting on to free the Campsfield 9! After Labour's minimum wage sell-out The trial has just begun in Oxford Cown Court of the "Campsfield 9", asylum seekers facing charges of "riot" after being involved in disturbances in the Campsfield detention centre outside Oxford. The charges have been raised on the initiative of Home Secretary Jack Straw. All nine defendants, incarcerated without charge, are black. Three are teenagers. The campaign for their release continues. ISLINGTON Council sacked twelve striking workers on May 27, signalling the determination ot management and the Council's leadership to get tough on workers and the unions which represent them. The strikers are Housing Needs Officers, who work with homeless people and deal with rehousing applications. The strike was in response to the dismissal, under cover of a restructuring of the Housing Needs Section, of eight workers.
All the Housing Needs Officers had been made to reapply for their own jobs, and put through interviews and written including the UNISON branch secretary, Rob Murthwaite, who is blind.
He refused to sit the test on the grounds that it would put at him at a serious disadvantage. Under disability discrimination legislation, disabled workers should not be required to sit such tests.
Initially, members within Housing Needs boycotted the selection procedure, and tests and interviews were postponed, but it did eventually take place.
A number of jobs within the section were advertised in the Guardian before the procedure had been completed, and in the light of what has occurred since, this suggests some anticipation that there were going to be dismissals. The union was at this point balloting the section for strike action against the restructuring.
Equal opportunities Eight workers, mostly black and ethnic minority