State Repression Of Unions.

  An appeal from IUF:

Fijian union leaders arrested after a strike at Starwood hotels

      Fiji is governed by a harsh military dictatorship which maintains a permanent crackdown on civil, political and trade union rights. Six leaders of the island’s hotel workers union now face trial on criminal charges – while their union is negotiating with the employer!

   
      We sent you this message two weeks ago, but the charges still hang over them. Please take a moment to respond by sending a protest message. Your voice makes a difference. On January 9, six union leaders from the National Union of Hospitality Catering and Tourism Industries were arrested and charged as a result of what the government claims to have been an "unlawful strike" that took place on New Year's Eve at Sheraton Fiji Resort and Westin Denarau Island Resort and Spa (owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.) at Narewa village, Fiji. Workers in fact held a spontaneous protest against the unilateral removal of their staff benefits.

     The military government declared the strike illegal and arrested the leadership of the union. Now they are out of jail but harsh bail conditions prevent them from exercising their role and their rights as union leaders.

       Although it is believed Starwood played no direct role in their imprisonment, the Company was responsible for workers taking action as a result of management's unilateral withdrawal of workers' benefits.

    CLICK HERE to urge Starwood management to use their influence to persuade the authorities to drop the case against union leaders.

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Workers Know Your History, - Spies for Peace.

      An anniversary that can be looked back it with pride as it was an exercise in exposing a government plan to set up unelected military control of this country in the event of a nuclear attack. It all came to light March 1963 by the efforts and enterprise of a group known as "Spies for Peace".

    50 years on and what devious plans have our millionaire cabal in those Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption got planned for us behind our backs? What other master plan have they got in place to safeguard their wealth and power in the event of some national disaster? You can rest assured that it is there. It is just a matter of how do we find out and how do we counter their last grasp at power. Where are the "Spies for Peace" today, or perhaps those "Spies for Freedom".   This from Wikipedia:

The Spies for Peace was a group of anti-war activists associated with the Committee of 100 who publicized government preparations for rule after a nuclear war. In 1963 they broke into a secret government bunker, Regional Seat of Government Number 6 (RSG-6) at Warren Row, near Reading, where they photographed and copied documents. The RSGs were to include representatives of all the central government departments, to maintain law and order, communicate with the surviving population and control remaining resources. The public were virtually unaware what the government was planning for the aftermath of a nuclear war until it was revealed by the Spies for Peace.
They published this information in a pamphlet, Danger! Official Secret RSG-6. Four thousand copies were sent to the national press, politicians and peace movement activists and copies were distributed on CND’s Easter march from Aldermaston.
The pamphlet said it was “about a small group of people who have accepted thermonuclear war as a probability, and are consciously and carefully planning for it. ... They are quietly waiting for the day the bomb drops, for that will be the day they take over.” It listed the RSGs and gave their telephone numbers. Most of the pamphlet was about RSG-6, which the Spies for Peace described in detail. They said that “RSG-6 is not a centre for civil defence. It is a centre for military government”, and they listed the personnel who were to staff it. The pamphlet described emergency planning exercises in which RSG-6 had been activated, including a NATO exercise in September 1962, FALLEX-62. Spies for Peace asserted that the exercise demonstrated the incapacity of the public services to cope with the consequences of nuclear attack and that the RSG system would not work. The exercise, they said, “proved once and for all the truth of the 1957 Defence White Paper that there is no defence against nuclear war.” In a hint at the source of their information, the Spies for Peace said that FALLEX-62 “convinced at least one occupant of one RSG at least that the deterrent is quite futile”. The pamphlet claimed that at the time of the Cuba Missile Crisis, a month after the NATO exercise, RSG-6 was not activated. The pamphlet objected strongly to the fact that the RSG network had not been publicly debated, that its staff were unelected and that they would have military powers.^[1]
The 1963 Aldermaston issue of the CND bulletin Sanity included the Spies for Peace revelations and several hundred demonstrators left the Aldermaston route and headed for RSG-6 where they set up a picket. The Spies for Peace made front page news but the press was later prevented by an official “D-Notice” from saying any more about the matter. The police tried to prevent any further distribution of the information but failed to do so. RSGs in Cambridge and Edinburgh were also picketed.
Although several people were arrested, the original spies were not identified or caught. Since the death of Nicolas Walter it has been revealed that he was one of the Spies for Peace.^[2]

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