As you may have seen, the New Era tenants have declared victory after the investors who wanted to buy their estate and raise rents gave up, and they’ve been promised no rent increases in 2015 and a “living rent” policy going forward. You can read more about their great victory here. In other heartening news, direct action prevented an eviction in Liverpool this week, Marie Curie agreed to end two workfare placements that they’d been tricked into accepting in the belief that they were voluntary, Brighton Solidarity Federation are celebrating another win against wage theft at a Hove bar, and Dorset IWW have posted the story of how they were able to help a worker beat disciplinary action.
If, like me, you find this kind of thing encouraging and you’d like to see more of it, there’s a few things you can do: in London, there’s a leaflet distribution day tomorrow as part of an organising campaign among warehouse workers, it’s pretty close now but you might still be able to get involved if you email angryworkersworld@gmail.com. Even if it’s too short-notice to help out tomorrow, it’s an ongoing campaign so there should be other opportunities to help out. In Manchester, there’s a protest against workfare exploiters Mustard Tree on Monday. In other workfare news, Haringey Solidarity Group have been making good progress towards pressuring North London Hospice to pull out of workfare, but they’re not totally out of the scheme yet, and so HSG look set to continue picketing the North London Hospice charity shop until they’ve totally stopped using forced labour. Finally, Newcastle SolFed are trying to build on their record of successful direct action by finding more fights to take on, so you can help them out by spreading the word about their new promotional website, especially if you know anyone in Newcastle.
