March together this Saturday against the austerity offensive

Tamil Solidarity request everyone to join the march this Saturday 20th. Show your solidarity against austerity and privatisation.
Please join the Tamil Solidarity stall in the march.
March will start from from Embankment.
Contact Keerthikan at 07778327044 (He will be at the Tamil Solidarity stall outside Embankment)

Statement from UNISON
Stop privatisation of your public services
The government wants to put more public services out to be provided by contractors. But experience shows that outsourcing public services can mean that service quality drops.
That’s why UNISON’s new billboard and newspaper adverts are making the case against privatising more services.
Download the ads

The current outsourced market for public services already has an annual turnover of £82bn, but this is growing all the time. In a widely-quoted report, research analysts Seymour Pierce have estimated that this could rise to £140 billion by 2015.

UNISON believes that putting the profit motive into public services does not help provide quality services – instead the need to drive costs down and still make a profit for shareholders can mean that standards drop. For example:

– official figures show that profit-making care homes and domiciliary care services are less likely to meet minimum regulatory standards on service quality

– outsourcing hospital cleaning led to job cuts and downward pressure on standards that has contributed to the rise in hospital acquired infections

– the privatisation of school meals provision resulted in kitchens being closed, less use of fresh ingredients and a worsening of nutritional standards.

Yet the government wants more of your vital services to be handed over to private contractors. We believe this is wrong. If you do, here’s some ways you can help:

Join UNISON’s Million Voices for Public Services Campaign

Below is the sytatement from NSSN (National Shops Stewards Network

March together this Saturday against the ConDem austerity offensive…then strike together!

We have spent the last few months helping to build for Saturday’s TUC demonstrations in London, Glasgow and Belfast. We also lobbied the TUC conference last month for the unions to follow up the October 20 mobilisations with a 24 hour general strike to defeat the ConDems’ austerity offensive. We were delighted that the motion of the POA prison officers union was passed at the TUC conference calling for co-ordinated action, including the consideration of a general strike. Since the TUC, we produced a model motion backing up this decision which has been taken to shop stewards committees, union branches and trades councils and debated and passed by many of these. This will continue after the demonstrations. The TUC are now discussing with member unions the practicalities of such action.

The government’s Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (ERR) Bill sits alongside the attack on PCS facility time agreement as a serious turn in the ConDems’ assault on workers and their unions. It is further evidence that if they are not stopped, this weak and divided government will stagger on, inflicting ever more hardships on our class. This Bill merely reinforces the urgency for this and emphasises that whatever happens on Saturday, it’s a new stage of the struggle not the end of the campaign against austerity.

We would encourage everyone to take part in the protests and invite others too. On Saturday, the NSSN will be giving out tens of thousands of our leaflets and thousands of our placards calling for a 24 hour general strike. We’ll also be distributing our new NHS bulletin, the 2nd we’ve produced. We are organising meetings and conferences around the country after Saturday on this and directly related consequences of the austerity cuts, like the NHS cuts & regional pay. See our website FB, twitter for daily updates.

Have a great day protesting against this government of the fat cats and their attempt to make us pay for the bankers’ crisis. But please pick up our leaflet and the bulletin that the NSSN has produced to defend the NHS. Better still pick up a handful for your work colleagues or your trade union branch. Come to one of our meetings and take the model motion to your next union meeting and keep the pressure up on the union leaders. Coventry Unison also unanimously agreed to support this alongside several other trades councils and union branches and the Unite Youth, Community and Not for Profit NISC also supported a motion about a general strike.

March together today…then strike together to stop the ConDem cuts!

Rob William Chair NSSN