...in the NEW WORKER
WORKERS at Severn Trent Water are furious with their employers.
On the very day they gave an overwhelming “thumbs down” to an 8.75 per cent pay offer with strings, Severn Trent announced 15 per cent boost in profits to £249 million and increased dividends to shareholders by 18 per cent.
Those profits are at least 30 per cent above the level agreed with the Government on privatisation. Yet Severn Trent may raise its charges another 15 per cent.
Many water company executives gave themselves pay rises in excess of 50 per cent last year and company chairpersons are raking in pay packets between £110,000 and £150,000 a year.
“Severn Trent’s pay offer would have left 700 employees receiving less than the European low pay threshold whilst top executives have been getting rises of over £30,000”, Nalgo regional water officer Richard Burden said on behalf of the joint unions.
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SEVEN Mongolian workers have gone on hunger strike in protest at the Government’s sell-off plans.
Employed by the public television repair company, in the capital Ulan Bator, the seven hunger strikers are demanding that workers should be given the option of buying their own company before it is sold.
Last year the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party followed Gorbachov’s road and paved the way for the restoration of capitalism in what had been the world’s second socialist state.
Now in coalition with non-communist parties set up by the reform leadership, the party is spearheading the drive to dismantle the socialist system.
Seventy per cent of the public sector is to be sold, including the vast herds of Mongolian cattle, which will be sold to private ranchers.
Once a major meat exporter Mongolia now faces food rationing and shortages of all kinds.
