Since the 2006 there has been a dramatic resurgence in the workers movement in Egypt, the largest Arab country in terms of population with a population of over 80 million people, and where 17 per cent of the workforce are industrial workers. President Hosni Mubarak has held Egypt in an iron grip since 1981, utilizing emergency laws for 25 years to ban opposition parties and independent unions. Egypt is a key US ally in the region receiving the second highest level of US subventions, Israel of course being number one. Since 1979 US economic aid to Egypt has totaled $30 billon and there has been a similar figure for military aid. In the first multi-candidate presidential elections in 2005, in which Mubarak still won with 88 per cent of the vote, there has been something of a relaxation of the dictatorship with various opposition forces emerging including  the long term opponent of the military regimes of Gamal Abdel Nasser 1956-70, Anwar Sadat 1970-1981 and Mubarak- the Muslim League. Read more...

According to the media some 128,000 out of 200,000 Czech education workers struck on Tuesday 4 December - around 65 per cent the total workforce. In some regions this figure reached 90 per cent. Furthermore many teachers who in the end didn’t join the strike have declared their supported it. In addition a number public meetings took place, the biggest one in Prague with around 600 trade unionists present. Read more...

France once again ground to a halt yesterday, less than a month after a highly successful rail strike paralysed the country. This time the strike was just as effective. Train drivers at the state-owned SNCF rail company stopped work on the night of Tuesday 13 November, and the shutdown was extended yesterday to the Paris Metro. 300 kilometres (190 miles) of traffic jams were reported on roads heading into Paris, twice the usual size. Read more...

Many people will assume that, after months of struggle and various deceptive manoeuvres by the employers’ side, the beginning of negotiations must mean that the rail bosses have made some kind of movement towards the union. Certainly workers are used to the leaders of the main trade union confederation, the DGB, exaggerating the importance of even the smallest compromises in order to find a reason for calling off militant action. In the case of the train drivers’ strike, however, that is not the case. Read more...

Despite the opposition of thousands of French workers, who took to the streets in protest, right wing President Nicolas Sarkozy drove through parliament a law aimed at crippling the right to strike in public transport. The law requires workers to declare themselves as strikers 48 hours before taking action, and obliges unions to maintain a minimum level of service. They even have to facilitate the deployment of scabs to break their own strikes! Read more...

Throughout the 1984 miners’ strike, Workers Power has fought for the TUC to call a general strike. We have argued that it is necessary in order to secure a victory for the miners and to smash the entire Tory offensive that the MacGregor closure plan is merely one part of. We have been justified by events. At the time of writing, the miners have been for three months a focus of solidarity action from militants throughout the labour movement and an encouragement for other sections of workers to go into struggle. If mass solidarity action or a general strike has not yet occurred, it is because of the treachery of the official leaders of our movement, and the cowardice, muddle headedness and confusion of the left reformist and centrist “opposition” to them. To put it bluntly, the TUC has been given a free ride! Read more...

“The deal can be seen as a victory for the unions but not a total one,” said the BBC’s correspondent in Lagos about the recent general strike that rocked two month old Umaru Yar’Adua’s presidency. The four-day general strike started on 20 June and won widespread support throughout the country. Read more...

Jeremy Dewar reviews Rampart of resistance: why workers lost their power and how to get it back, Sheila Cohen, Pluto Press, London, 2006, 248pp Read more...