By Peter Hadden

An attack on all Unison members

THE RIGHT wing leadership of Unison has gone ahead with the expulsion of RVH nursing convenor, Pat Lawlor (right), from the union.

The grounds given to justify this expulsion were that Pat, who is a member of the Socialist Party, sent an email giving support to striking Classroom Assistants and criticising the failure of the Unison leadership to back that strike.

By Owen McCracken

MANY TRANSLINK workers face an uncertain future after bosses refused to rule out job losses as part of a £11.5 million package of cuts to bus services in Northern Ireland.

By Gary Mulcahy

FIGURES RELEASED in January reveal Northern Ireland has seen the biggest annual rise in unemployment in 37 years. 12,000 extra people were without work in 2008 compared to 2007, with the total number officially unemployed now standing at over 36,000.

By Sarah Mair

LAST WINTER, over 500 elderly people in Northern Ireland died of the cold because they could not afford to heat their homes. This shocking statistic, which the utility companies want to hide from people, shows the real consequences of rising energy bills.

We demand a future! 

By Paddy Meehan, Socialist Youth 

IN NOVEMBER, it was announced that 15% of young people were officially unemployed. This figure, which does not include those on training schemes, will have undoubtedly risen since then with the massacre of job losses tearing through the retail sector. This summer, thousands of school and university students will be leaving education to look for work that simply isn’t there. Every week, announcements of factory and retail closures like Zavvi and Woolworths are dumping hundreds of young people onto the dole.

By Ann-Katrin Orr, UL Socialist Youth

ON 4 February, thousands of students marched through the streets of Dublin to vent their anger against the government’s plans to reintroduce college fees. This cannot be seen as the end but must be the start of a fight to force the government to back down. A mass campaign of thousands of college and school students, parents and staff must be built to achieve this.

By Liam Cullinane

FREE EDUCATION For Everyone (FEE), a national campaign of students opposed to the re-introduction of third-level fees, held its first national meeting on Saturday, the 31 January.

Socialist Youth members participated in the meeting, with students representing FEE campaigns in colleges such as UCC, Trinity, UCD, NUIG, UL and NUI Maynooth.

By Ciaran O’Neill, UU Coleraine Socialist Society

UNIVERSITY OF Ulster’s political protocol cuts across students’ rights to speak and organise. The protocol says that, “political leaflets … may not be displayed outside the closed environment”. This in effect means students are not allowed to politically organise and could be “sanctioned” by the union if they do.

By Richard Manton, Galway

ON 2 February, Bertie Ahern was due to speak at the Literary and Debating Society in NUI Galway. The event was cancelled due to a protest by Free Education for Everyone (FEE).

STUDENTS OVER the age of 18 in Belfast and other Further Education Colleges have to pay as much as £1,000 a semester for A-levels and GCSEs. The Socialist spoke to Socialist Youth member Colm Smyth, an A-level student in Belfast Metropolitan College, about crippling effect of fees on students in colleges.