Sisters and Brothers:

Simone Gordon and the IWW Starbucks Workers Union [StarbucksUnion.org] need your solidarity now. Ms. Gordon is homeless and on welfare after Starbucks demoted her from shift supervisor to barista on New Year’s Day and cut her schedule to a stunning five hours per week. Simone’s store manager, Graham Higgins, falsely accused Ms. Gordon, who is African-American, of being racist against white people and stated that she wasn’t fit to be a leader in the store. The allegation that Ms. Gordon is racist is so patently absurd that we won’t even dignify it with a response. Suffice it to say, Simone Gordon, who has a white grandparent, opposes all forms of discrimination.

The IWW is continuing in our support for the Crichton workers' and students' fight to save their jobs and courses. We're stepping up our fight by picketing or leafleting every major event Glasgow University is hosting on its main campus, in an effort to raise the visibility of our campaign, and we are pursuing other initiatives to force a climbdown on the decision to close the campus. However to make our presence really felt we urge you and your friends to take a few minutes out of your day to demonstrate the strength of feeling we have on this issue. Please help us by contacting the following people. It's vital at this stage that public pressure, from civil society groups and so on, is actually visibily increasing on this issue.

Contact the Principal, Sir Muir Russell and complain at the decision.
Email: principal@gla.ac.uk; Tel: 0141 330 5995

Contact the Scottish Funding Council and urge them to help Glasgow University find a resolution to this problem
Email: rmcclure@sfc.ac.uk

Contact Fiona Hyslop, Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning, and urge her to act quickly to help resolve the situation.
Email: Fiona.Hyslop.msp@scottish.parliament.uk

POINTS TO NOTE IN YOUR COMMUNICATIONS:-

Glasgow University made a profit last year of £2 million.

The claims of the University that the Crichton Campus loses £800,000 a year have been dismissed as laughable by MSPs from across all the political parties.

The University hopes to spend the money it will gain from closing its part of the Crichton campus (liberal arts) on recruiting just 3 researchers to boost the University's image. Money which should have been directed to the Crichton campus has went to fund a new business school at the main Glasgow campus.

In a previous job, as Scotland's most powerful civil servant, Sir Muir Russell presided over the building of the Scottish parliament, which was supposed to cost £50 million, but in fact cost £400 million more
than this. This man is clearly not very shrewd with money, and this casts doubt on his claims that the Crichton is not viable, and indeed on what his plans are to do with this cash instead.

Dumfries and Galloway has no other Higher Education facility, and suffers economically from a gap in graduates, and graduate jobs, as well as a skewn age demographic as young people leave Dumfries and Galloway for the central belt to find education and work.

Hashmeya (pictured, right, with a written message of thanks to the IWW for its solidarity with workers in Iraq)  is a  native of Basra and  a 25-year veteran in the Iraqi Department of Electricity.   While she is the first woman to rise democratically from the ranks to represent a national  Iraqi labor union, she emphasizes that she is not alone -  that  there are many dedicated and committed union women in the forefront of the Iraqi labor movement.

Ten days ago, two top leaders of Iraq's labor movement, Hashmeya  Muhsin Hussein , President of the Electrical Utility Workers Union, General Federation of Iraqi Workers (EUWU-GFIW))and Faleh Abood Umara, General Secretary of the Federation of Oil Unions (FOU) spoke throughout the San Francisco Bay Area as part of an Iraqi labor tour of the US.   They spoke urgently of Iraqi labor's unified demand for the end of the brutal US occupation and sought for the support of US labor in rejecting the imposition of the Oil Law which the US is using to force the surrender of Iraqi oil resources to foreign corporations  as the price of their withdrawal.

New York, NY- Less than three months after the National Labor Relations Board hit Starbucks with a 30-count legal complaint, the federal agency has once again accused the coffee giant of breaking the law in a continuing effort to undermine the IWW Starbucks Workers Union [StarbucksUnion.org]. Based on an independent investigation into the company’s conduct, the Board has alleged that Starbucks fired outspoken union barista, Isis Saenz, for protected organizing activity.

“It’s beyond dispute now that Starbucks is waging one of the most relentless anti-union operations in the United States today,” said Stuart Lichten, the IWW’s attorney on the case. “If Wal-Mart has a soul mate in the union-busting arena, it’s Starbucks.”

Bristol train driver, Patrick Spackman, sacked for swearing by First Great Western, has referred the Morning Star to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

On 6 June the Morning Star, self-styled "daily paper of the left", reported Mr Spackman's sacking for swearing, which the company claimed had been "threatening."

However, two days later, the paper claimed that he had, in fact, been sacked for "violent harassment in the workplace against a respected senior lay union representative."

Mr Spackman responded: "This is completely untrue. I complained to the Morning Star but haven't even had the courtesy of an acknowledgment from them. So I've referred the matter to the PCC who now have a copy of my dismissal letter which clearly shows why I was sacked. I look forward to a public apology and retraction from the Morning Star."

Mr Spackman, who intends to take his dismissal to employment tribunal, is being represented by the Industrial Workers of the World, the union generally referred to as "the Wobblies."

A union spokesperson commented: "Someone seems to have set the Morning Star up here. But a bit of basic checking would have avoided the problem. Needless to say, the 'union representative' referred to by the Morning Star is not a member of the IWW".