wages

Except that’s actually a load of old bollocks. The good General and knight of the realm is being just a little misleading – I’m sure it’s unintentional, him being such a respected state figure and all - when he fails to point out that, unlike the average traffic warden, our boys in khaki also get a number of little perks.

Six unions representing 250,000 members working in colleges across England in jobs such as cleaning, catering and admin as well as professional roles are seeking a pay rise of 6% or £1,500 - whichever is the greater - to guarantee the lowest-paid workers a minimum wage of £7.38. However, employers have come back with an offer of 2.5%.

InBev, the world's second-largest beer producer by volume, said on Monday that it had struck a deal with its Belgian workers to end a round of industrial action that had hampered its operations. The company has said in a statement that the agreement was positive for both itself and its workers.

Workers at the hypermarket have been on strike since February the first.

The Grand Littoral branch of Carrefour is the only one in the country to have continued action after the national one-day retail strike. As a result Grand Littoral has been entirely closed for nine of the last eleven days.

The first strike was by workers at the Almoayyed Contracting Group, workers were protesting at salaries ranging from 60 to 85 Bahrain dinars (£82-116) They initially demanded a rise to between BHD 100 and BHD 120. The head of the group countered that workers were in fact being paid 75 to 150 dinars a month, he also claimed that only 300 workers joined the strike.

According to company spokesmen the strike is being observed by 14.2% of workers at GDF (compared to 13.4% November 20th) and 13.5% at EDF (28%). There have been four strikes in the last six weeks, with observance reaching 60% in October. At the demonstration during the last strike a cortege of some 50 liberated EDF vehicules with their numberplates covered took part.

The government had declared the strike illegal and had mobilised hundreds of soldiers to try to keep the railways open over the weekend. This would have been the fourth such strike in South Korea since 2000. The unions have yet to confirm why they cancelled the action, with many workers told while they were preparing pickets only an hour before the official debut of action at 4am

The assistants (AVSs) mostly work supporting disabled students. Of the 21 AVSs present at the first organisational meeting, only 6 worked full time, most of the other being on 3/4 part time contracts.

The 34000 striking workers belong to the GDL union and have refused the 4.5% pay offer already accepted by the two larger rail unions. They have further rejected a seperate offer of a one-off €2000 payment with a 10% rise, a condition of that offer is a two-hour increase in the working week.