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Phantom Classroom Assistants?
antrim |
worker & community struggles and protests |
opinion/analysis
Friday November 09, 2007 22:28 by Marty McK - does it matter if there is an organisation?
12 Days of Christmas - strikers anthem Should everyone return to the classroom and learn to count? Add up numbers published in press releases, is 7,000 classroom assistants a rounded up or down figure? Not by any stretch of the imagination are all classroom assistants members of a trade union. It is not pleasant to watch how mainland trade unions handle their NI region with endless ballots, it looks to an observer that there is no limit to ballots in the classroom assistant dispute? Why not do like NIPSA and have an independent scrutineer finish this endless run around. |
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Comments (9 of 9)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9Got to commend the writer above for such creative thinking in trying to expose the treachery that is taking place in this dispute.
T'is just the lowest of the low to see New Labour's puppies doing a sellout con trick with ELB management.
NIPSA's valiant Classroom Assistant strikers must think that they are being treated like lepers, awfully bad, as do we all, and the General Secretarian of NIPSA must sometimes during this dispute think he is a punchbag!
Ruane and her working class heroes need to wise up and give these ladies a deal!
Caitriona; wake up and get yer backside into gear and stop administering BAD British rule!
"Sinn Fein New Labour" should be the new name for this organisation.
Keep going Strikers, Break this bad Employer!!!
As a union member of NIPSA I applaud the class room assistants. At the same time I have grown to hate and despise GMB and UNISON. They are scabby management lick spittles. I wonder how kerr and mccoy sleep at night. Maybe a kinighthood is in the offing. We are not here to be partners with management we are hear to represent our members not do the bidding of the enemy.
I would urge anyone reading this who is in a national union to think long and hard about subscribing to organisations hell bent on screwing their members.
Ther was no offence intended to the memory of hunger strikers in the NIPSA protest last Friday. I suspect a SF smoke screen.
No one in NIPSA intended to offend the memory of hunger strikers when protesting at the SF HQ last Friday. If some were offended I would like to appologise. However I do suspect the real offence (And I must say I would be highly offended in the same situation) is in Ms Ruane being compared to M Thatcher! Who could fail to be offended! This is where some people seem to have missed the point, it WAS intended to insult Ms Ruane. If she doesn't want to be compared with Thatcher, she should stop acting like and even surpassing her. At the hight of the miner's strike even Thatcher didn't resort to the disgraceful propaganda the type of which we witnessed at the weekend. The personal attacks, the character assassination, and emotional blackmail was a deliberate attempt to bully working women and men away from legal and legitimate industrial action. Is this the shape of things to come, SF assuming the mantle of Union smashers??
According to the Andytown news, the reference to Thatcher were explained on the day so I can't see why the offence. I agree with Ed above, Ruane doesn't want to be compared with Thatcher she should engange with the unions more. (And not just lip service) I also noted on the day a lot of support for the Classroom assistants on the Falls, tooting of horns, and stopping to take leaflets etc Maybe that's what really is annoying SF.
"At the hight of the miner's strike even Thatcher didn't resort to the disgraceful propaganda the type of which we witnessed at the weekend."
Did you get carried away in hyperbole, or are you seriously misinformed? The secret war against the miners is a classic case study in the evolution of concerted state propoganda.
Maybe, behind the scenes you have a point. I was talking about having the brass neck to publish the propaganda up front and in everyones face.
Emm tough question to answer. I remember when I was a nipper and voteing time came their was always a white van at the end of our street filled with coats, wigs etc....emmm me thinks Iseen one near the GMB offices while their vote was being taken... questions asked " are you a voting classroom assistant?" "No im a caretaker/ cleaner or retired member of gmb"...."sure never mind vote yes anyway".....
To add to the point about insulting the Hunger Strikers. The only ones insulting the Hunger Strikers are Maggie Thatcher Ruane and Sinn Fein who can't seem to accept the fact that the working classes are wising up to their lies.
Sinn Fein loves mass rallys to the City Centre then why don't the Classroom assistants give them one?
Even worse than SF are the political parasites like the Socialist Party,a poisonous little sect with zero political credibility or mandate,who try to hi-jack this and every other industrial dispute for their own dishonest and sectarian ends.Aren;tcha just sick of 'em?