Local Anti-Cuts Round-Up

Below are several things members of anti-cuts campaign may like to get involved in:

CARE HOMES BRISTOL

On Thursday 26th July up to 200 people attended a demonstration at the Council House in Bristol, called by BADACA, over the council’s proposals to close care homes. Details are as follows:

Bristol City Council intend to close eight of its remaining care homes and seven council-run day centres. The services will be privatised; service standards will decline; there will be less public accountability; jobs will go. The private providers will pay lower wages and spend less on training. By getting these services on the cheap, the council will save money at the expense of the elderly and vulnerable. The council calls this “modernisation”: everyone else calls it cuts. And, of course, in the last year, the remaining council-run home care service has been privatised and grants to voluntary groups running services like lunch clubs and day centres have been slashed.

The demo was attended by carers, residents, workers at the homes and supporters of BADACA and Bath Anti-Cuts Alliance. Members of the council were addressed by members of the demo.

The first two care homes are planned to close before the end of this year. BADACA is working with those effected, both residents and staff, to prevent this happening. The next full council meeting on Tuesday September 18th will be a key event. BADACA and others will be holding the largest possible lobby of this meeting to tell the council that Bristol doesn’t accept these closures. Please spread the word about this.

Lobby of Bristol City Council Meeting – Tuesday 18th September
Venue: Council House, College Green, Bristol BS1 5TR
Time: 5.00pm
Map: Here

Come to the council meeting and tell councillors what the people of Bristol think of their plans to cut services for the elderly and vulnerable. For more information email admin[at]bristolanticutsalliance.org.uk.

ATOS

The Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) Campaign have called for five days of action against Atos starting on Monday 28th August.

It plans to target Atos during the Paralympics. Atos is the main sponsor of the games. A local protest against Atos offices are planned for Tuesday 29th August. More details to follow.

More info from DPAC.

LOCAL NHS

Staff at the RUH in Bath have warned that they will consider strike action over proposals to cut their pay and working conditions. The next Bath Anti-Cuts Alliance organising meeting on the 4th September, at 8pm in the upstairs of the Ram pub in Widcombe, will be discussing how we can support these workers. More details to follow.

Stop Workfare: New companies named and profits up

FROM BOYCOTT WORKFARE:
Bowing to public pressure, yesterday Holland and Barratt pulled out of the government’s workfare scheme, and now seem only able to afford to offer apprenticeships that pay £2.60 per hour. What they forgot to mention was that whilst using 1,000 unpaid jobseekers over the last year throughout its 250 stores, Holland and Barrett unexpectedly made a pretax profit surge of 19.4% to £60m.
Poundland, who are still in the scheme, have recently announced that profits are up 27% this year. The question is, with a potential workfare workforce of 2.6 million unemployed rising, and tens of thousansds of people already sent to work without pay, how many millions of pounds are all the other organisations profiting from workfare making?

In the meantime, why not pay a visit to some of the companies revealed today as part of the Week of Action?

Barclays Bank
The AA
Amigo
Compass group – Leeds General Infirmary
Costa Coffee
Food Court at Leeds General Infirmary
Queensland Multi-Media centre/Bridge to Success
The Range
Ty Hafan charity shop
ISS facilities
PKD Sporting Solutions Ltd
The Big Bargain company
Eleanor lions hospice shop
RSPCA
Travis Perkins
Butlins
Princess Yachts (!)
Harvester
Grosvenor Casinos

If you’re hitting your high street to take action this week, here’s a reminder of some of the other places you might like to pay a visit:

Age Concern, Age UK, Argos, Asda, Barnardos, B&Q, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research, Holiday Inn, Greggs the Bakers, Hilton Hotels, Marriot Hotels, McDonald’s, PDSA, Pizza Hut, Poundland, Poundstretcher, Primark, The Range, RSPCA, Salvation Army, Shoe Zone, Sue Ryder, Superdrug, Tesco, WHSmith, Wilkinsons, The Works.

The Arcadia Group is also involved. It includes Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Topman, Topshop, Wallis.
Sadly there’ll be others, so please let us know what you find out during the week. Our top tips for workfare sleuthing are here.

There’s loads of stuff planned throughout the week of action and more still to be announced, so let us know what you’re planning and send us your photos and stories afterwards.

Good luck everyone – we’re making a real difference!

Anti-Workfare Action Against Smiths

Yesterday, 12 activists from Bath Anti-Cuts Alliance, alongside supporters from Bristol Anarchist Federation, Bath People’s Assembly and elsewhere, picketed W.H. Smiths on Union Street in Bath, due to the company’s inclusion in the Con-Dem government’s controversial Workfare scheme. 

Workfare means unemployed people being sent to do up to six months’ full-time work for one of many ‘Workfare Provider’ high street companies signed up to the scheme, such as Argos, Asda, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Superdrug, and Tesco, to name a few. Even though we already have an agreed minimum wage in this country, somehow these workers – unpaid and involuntarily – aren’t worth such a wage; instead, they are in apparently apprenticeships, even though the retail outlets they may be lucky enough to end up in after they’ve done their time require no more aptitude than that of your average school-student.

But no, Workfare isn’t about providing skills or opportunities – the vast majority of Workfare placements do not lead to paid positions. It’s about providing labour to big companies on the cheap, and undermining existing workers’ hard-won wages; why pay someone a proper wage when you press-gang someone else for free? It’s also about the taxpayer subsidising multi-million pound businesses; more than they already do, that is. But mainly it’s about easy money for those who’ve already got lots: after all, Holland & Barrett (who have only just publicly dropped the scheme) netted an unexpected pre-tax profit 19.4% due to Workfare, and Poundland’s profits shot up 27%.

And so, Bathonians were outside their local Smiths yesterday afternoon, handing out literature and holding a banner spelling out ‘Workfare is Slavery’, turning away would-be customers at the door and receiving passersby’s support, who already know that Workfare is plain dirty. On the same day, people took action elsewhere in the U.K., such as Brighton, Hastings, Liverpool, London, Oxford, Poole and York.

Revolution it was not, but, hyperbole aside, the Workfare program is yet another Tory wet dream doomed to failure – it’s been slow-going, but Holland & Barrett have just taken their place as another high-profile company keen to distance themselves from it, as did Maplin, Burger King, Sainsburys, Waterstones, Boots and others before them. Soon it will be Smiths, and then another, and then another.

This is the nature of people power: it’s often hard-going, it’s often dull and undramatic, it requires commitment and patience, but we can and will win.

See here for Bath Anti-Cuts Alliance’s leaflet against Workfare

See here for Boycott Workfare’s leaflet offering basic advice for claimants on the Workfare scheme

Stop Workfare Update - New Target: WHSmiths!

Adapted from Boycott Workfare:

Week of Action already a Success! Major Blow for Government as Holland & Barrett pull out of Workfare!

Before it even starts, the Week of Action has had a major success: Holland & Barrett who have been using workfare on a huge scale (1,100 placements a year amongst a workforce of 3,500) that “the 60 people currently undertaking the work experience scheme will be the last to complete the eight week placement. After this time Holland & Barrett will not participate further in that scheme.”

Unable to acknowledge people’s ethical concerns about them using an unpaid workforce on a massive scale, they have made the hilarious claim that the decision is due to the threat to customer and staff safety from our peaceful protests planned this weekend! These follow regular pickets called by Sol Fed who co-ordinated a national campaign against the company’s involvement in workfare.

But Holland & Barrett aren’t totally off the hook yet. They continue to use the current 60 workfare placements until these finish. Their announcement indicates that they intend to replace workfare with apprentices, which would allow them to pay a wage of just £2.60 an hour, far below the living wage.

Nevertheless, their announcement shows that our protests can push back workfare in the UK. 

Holland & Barrett is just one of hundreds of businesses, public sector employers and charities profiting from replacing paid work with workfare. Protests will continue this week to target other brands still involved. These include British Heart Foundation, who have boasted that they have at least one workfare placement in every store, Argos, Superdrug, ShoeZone, Asda, Tescos, Wilkinsons, The Works, the list goes on.

As a result of this move, activists in Bath Anti-Cuts Alliance, B.A.R.F.. and others will instead be targeting WHSmiths for their involvement in the scheme - the times for the demonstration haven't changed.

NHS Subsidises Private Hospital in Bath

http://nhsvault.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/circle-bath.html

Solidarity Demo With Carillion Cleaners

Activists from Bath Ant-Cuts Alliance joined Goan cleaners, GMB unionists, and members of both Swindon Anarchist Group and Bristol Anarchist Federation yesterday afternoon, the 4th of July, as they held a solidarity demonstration outside Swindon’s Great Western Hospital. Between ten and 30 strong throughout the day, and receiving much honking support from passing motorists, the protest was held in support of the ten Carillion whistle-blowers currently subject to disciplinary procedures.

For background, Carillion, who run the domestic cleaning contract for GWH and elsewhere, have been criticised for the culture of institutionalised racism that has infested the company for years. One element of this racism is their informal tradition of ‘gift giving’, in which the mainly South Asian workforce are required to offer either cash or goods to their supervisors in order to attain the holidays, shift changes or overtime to which they are lawfully entitled; when this corruption was reported back in 2009, the staff were not believed. Then in December 2011, when 109 workers filed the same grievance, the company conducted a sham investigation before straight-facedly claiming there was nothing to investigate. It was only after the GMB union carried out their strike (now having racked up 20 days of strikes), and another five months of renewed investigation, and three sacked managers, that the company partially admitted their error.

Adding insult to injury, now, after all the cover-ups and foot-dragging, Carillion have had the gall to take the ten workers brave enough to give evidence about the company’s shake-downs, and accuse the cleaners themselves of offering bribes!

But these dirty bastards have more skeletons in their closet; their hatred of unions led them to dismiss and blacklist engineer Dave Smith –former UCATT safety rep – after he raised concerns about asbestos and poor toilets. His name was added to an unlawful blacklist of 3,000 trade unionists, preventing them from securing future work. For their trouble, he took the company to court.

In the future, in the case of the Carillion cleaners, expect more strikes, and more lost contracts and embarrassment for Carillion. The campaigners refuse to back down!

See also the following links:

http://union-news.co.uk/2012/05/blacklist-hero-tells-carillion-strikers-dont-give-up-battle-for-justice
http://union-news.co.uk/2012/07/whistleblowers-who-exposed-corruption-at-carillion-find-themselves-in-the-dock

Boycott Holland & Barrett: Stop Workfare

Activists from Bath Anti-Cuts Alliance, BARF and others will be outside Holland & Barrett health foods on Saturday the 7th July, due to their practice of employing unpaid, coerced slave labour, as part of the Con-Dem’s controversial ‘Workfare’ scheme. Despite slavery’s apparent abolition in the British Isles back in 1833, the unelected Con-Dems and their buddies in the business world have concocted this new plot to squeeze out more profit from the people they’re meant to serve and undermine the jobs of other workers lucky enough to still have jobs. Wilburforce will be turning in his grave.

The protest will mark the first day of the national Stop Workfare week of action – running until the 14th July – and will coincide with other actions in the westcountry, and up and down the country. Meet at 11am at the pillars near the Abbey Churchyard and Stall Street in Bath.

See Boycott Workfare for more information.

workfare2