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Twin Cities GMB Expresses Solidarity with Scottish Parliament Workers

The Twin Cities GMB has written a letter to Scottish Parliament Members expressing our solidarity with the affected workers in the current dispute there, whose struggle has been endorsed by both the local IWW and the National Union of Journalists. Full text below the fold...
 
 
Industrial Workers of the World

Twin Cities General Membership Branch


TO:

Tommy Sheridan MSP

Rosemary Byrne MSP

George Reid MSP (Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament)

Scottish Parliament
Holyrood, Edinburgh
EH99 1SP, United Kingdom

CC: Barbara Scott

14 December 2006

The Twin Cities General Membership Branch (GMB) of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) supports the IWW and the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) at the Scottish Parliament in their industrial dispute with Tommy Sheridan MSP and Rosemary Byrne MSP. We call for:
  • an immediate return of all misappropriated funds to the employees resources group, an apology from the two MSPs, and for the Scottish Parliament to accept its culpability in conspiring with Sheridan and Byrne to unilaterally abrogate workers' collective contracts, thus forcing them into redundancy.
  • The workers in question, who are employed by the Scottish Parliament as Caseworkers, Researchers and Parliamentary Assistant's for the SSP group, gained a major improvement in their employment situation when the May 2005 contract pooling MSP employment funds was won. These are collective gains; precisely the kind that we value the most and must protect.

The workers have made it very clear, and the Twin Cities GMB reaffirms, that this is not a political dispute but an industrial one. It is untenable that politician-employers could unilaterally, with the connivance of the Scottish Parliament, discard these collective gains for the sake of a political dispute. Workers' rights are not subject to political machinations.


By removing £24,000 from the pooled resources of the employment group, Sheridan and Byrne are forcing workers to choose between the needs of individual welfare and collective rights. This is unacceptable. Sheridan and Byrne had opportunities to act in accordance with their stated beliefs and force the Scottish Parliament to provide their new party with separate funding, but instead chose to abandon their workers.

We stand in solidarity with these workers, against the employers and the politicians who would harm them. We know they are in the right. An injury to one is an injury to all, and therefore we demand an apology for ourselves as a working class, just as we demand restitution for the workers involved in this particular dispute.

Our sisters and brothers who work in the Scottish Parliament have their rights; these cannot be taken from them. What we demand as we stand in solidarity with them is that these rights be respected.


Solidarity,

The Twin Cities General Membership Branch
Industrial Workers of the World