Sack ATOS not disabled people!

It's an incredible irony that the Remploy office (not the Fforestfach factory) in Swansea and the GMB (one of the unions representing Remploy workers) office share the same building as ATOS. While Remploy workers and their trade unions, are facing a fight to save their factories and jobs, ATOS is the firm repsonsible for forcing increasing nombers of disabled people off incapacity benefits through new, harsher work capability assessments.

There have been revelations in the Guardian today that doctors working for Atos, a French, private sector firm, are required to sign the UK Official Secrets Act. The article raises concerns that this may be a measure aimed at preventing future whistleblowers exposing concerns with the administration of the tests.

"Atos Healthcare defends blanket security policy for government work amid concerns that whistleblowers may be silenced" Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/apr/12/atos-doctors-sign-official-secrets-act

 There is a further irony, the IT wing of ATOS is a partner of this year's Paralympics. For many disabled activists this is an insult as Atos is seen as the government's axe to cut beenfits for disabled people. Some, such as John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle, have called for a boycott of the Paralympics unless Atos withdraw from their £100 million contract to administer the work capability assessments. John McArdle is a Scottish Anti-Cuts Coalition (Scottish socialist and anti-cuts candidates, aligned with TUSC), local council candidate in Edingburgh.

Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidates say:

• No cuts in benefits, jobs and public services.
• Sack Atos and scrap the Work Capability Assessment.
• A living wage and provision of respite services for all family carers.
• Provide free health and social care services to all who need them.
• Central government and councils to stop using children and family members as a substitute for professional social services.
• Oppose the closure of the Remploy factories - expand them to create employment.

Homelessness rises as cuts bite and councils dispose of housing

According to an article in WalesOnline, 

"Swansea has the highest rate of people seeking housing help in England and Wales, with six families in every 1,000 households approaching the council between October and December last year." Full article: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2012/04/04/homelessness-increases-in-wales-thanks-to-continued-downturn-91466-30686950/

Falling household incomes, due to the recession and directly as a result of government policies such as wage freezes, reduced pensions and public sector job losses mean workers can no longer keep up payments on mortgages. The expiry of limited-duration cheap mortgage rates also mean that home owners are seeing the cost of their mortgages shooting up at a time when they can least afford it, despite low interest base rates.

Often the only choice for young workers is now between the private rented sector and staying at home with their parents, given the lack of available council housing. Around the country councils run by all political parties have disposed of their council housing, through stock transfers. In the process they have eroded the conditions of housing workers and the security of council tenants. The Liberal-Democrats were defeated in their attempt to transfer out housing in Swansea, despite spending thousands on consultants to try to convince tenants to vote for it. However Labour has carried through this part-privatisation measure in neighbouring Neath and Port Talbot. The costs of private renting are shooting up because of  the enormous demand, as more and more workers can't afford the huge deposits now needed for mortgages and can't get council housing.

The previous Labour bailed the banks out with £billions of our money and demanded nothing in return. While chief executives continued to receive their obscene bonuses, the banks refused to lend to working class people. Worse still, some of the banks that were majority-owned by the government were among the quickest to repossess the homes of working class families struggling to pay their mortgages. Rather than propping up banks that contributed to the financial crash, they should have been fully nationalised under workers control and their resources used to provide working class families with affordable mortgages and councils with affordable loans to provide services in working class communities.

MPs' perks - it doesn't have to be this way!

Yesterday's Guardian revealed how all-party groups of MPs and Lords have received gifts, travel and donations to the tune of £1.8million in the past year.

This includes funding for the all-party parliamentary choir - presumably to sing the praises of capitalism! The serious question is how much influence do firms' money buy? How much trust can you have in a parliamentary group on healthcare funded by giant corporations that leach of the NHS?

"Contributions totalling more than £117,000 for "associate membership" – at £8,400 a time – of the all-party group on health, from companies including AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and actuaries Milliman."
Quote from: http://m.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/apr/10/mps-lords-perks-revealed-parliament?cat=politics&type=article

It doesn't have to be this way! Swansea TUSC supporters took time out from our election campaign to lend a hand in the campaign to secure the re-election to Coventry Council of Dave Nellist. When Dave was a (Militant) Labour MP in Coventry he took only a worker's wage, donating the rest of his MP's salary back to the working class and trade union movement.

Vote TUSC on May 3 to end the gravy train.
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Benefits Fraud... by greedy corporations.

A Tory newspaper publishes a story about benefit fraud. Nothing new there! Only this time, the story in today's Telegraph is about the private firms that have muscled in on back-to-work welfare services, sensing easy profits.

A4e, the company that was awarded £440 million of government contracts to help get unemployed people into work and whose then chairman, Emma Harrison, was picked by the Tories as "Families Champion", after the Department of Work and Pensions had already found out about suspected fraud allegations, has made all the headlines after the arrest of several of its staff. However this just seems to be the tip of the iceberg - it now seems that over 100 allegations of fraud have been made agianst other firms, besides A4e, in what is obviously a very profitable business.

While politicians try to score cheap points off one another as to who knew what, Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition supporters will ask the obvious question - why not simply give the work to the best people for the job - government-employed civil servants? All planned further privatisations should be immediately halted and those that have already taken place should be reversed. End the profiteering on the backs of the unemployed.

Who I am and why I'm standing - Ronnie Job

My name is Ronnie Job and I'm one of the 2 Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidates for Sketty Ward. I'm standing in a ward where I helped set up the Sketty Anti Poll Tax Union in a previous battle in which millions of working class people defeated the Tories despite the lack of support from Labour. I'm a trade unionist; a UNISON shop steward and secretary of Swansea Trades Council. I am a socialist and I've been a member of the Socialist Party and its forerunner, Militant, for 25 years.

I'm standing in these elections because I want to see an electoral challenge to the myth that all the other parties seem to accept - that cuts are necessary and inevitable. As a trade unionist, I have found myself fighting many of the same battles under the current Tory/Lib-Dem coalition and the previous Labour one.

As a UNISON member with a local government pension, I have taken strike action to defend it under this government and the previous one. As a shop steward in Further Education (FE), I can see major battles to safeguard education on the horizon but I was also part of the campaign that had to fight to win extra funding for FE from the Assembly in 2009 when cuts threatened jobs across the sector. Through the Trades Council, I've been involved in solidarity for trade unionists threatened with similar cuts by Tories and Labour, such as PCS members in the civil service or disabled Remploy workers fighting factory closure programmes.

As a teenager, over 20 years ago, I helped in a successful election campaign to win a seat in Sketty for Labour. Like many other trade unionists and socialists though, Militant supporters left the Labour Party as the party moved to the right and distanced itself from trade union struggles. 13 years of Labour government saw further privatisation, cuts and left all the Tories' anti-union legislation in tact. Today, despite being in opposition, and despite being given £millions of our subs, by our trade unions every year, the Labour Party opposes workers forced to take action to defend themselves from vicious Con-Dem attacks, as 'not so red' Ed Miliband did on June 30 and November 30.

I think those that say that the Labour Party can be re-won by workers and trade unionists are mistaken so I'm standing to highlight the need for a new party to represent working class people. I'm standing because I want to show that there is an alternative to cuts and I'm standing because even one voice in the council chamber saying "working class people will not be made to pay for a crisis not of our making" can make a difference.

• No Council Cuts! Fight for all services, pensions, jobs and terms and conditions.
• Halt all privatisation of council services and transfers to arms length management organisations. Bring all privatised/transferred out services back in house.
• Free education for all, provided by properly resourced and rewarded staff. Reverse all cuts in EMA. Defend teachers' pensions.
• Save Remploy!

Join with me - vote Trade Union and Socialist Coalition on May 3.

We can't afford their cuts!

Remember when the Tories and their poodles, the Liberal Democrats, said that there was no need to worry about public sector job losses because the private sector would expand to fill the gap? Well guess what it isn't happening!

The UK numbers look bad but the situation here in Wales is particularly bad. A report by the Institute of Public Policy Research has estimated that another 7,000 jobs will be lost in Wales by the end of this summer. And they can see no prospect of unemployment in Wales falling much from its current level of 9.1% before the summer of 2013.

Add to the effects of unemployment the inevitable effects of regional pay on the Welsh economy, should the Tories succeed with their plans, and it becomes obvious that Wales can't afford the Con-Dems.

Neither can we afford to wait another 3+ years for a Labour government in the desperate hope that it does more for working class people than the last one did. To have that hope is to ignore the messages coming from Miliband, Balls and the rest of the Labour hieraerchy - that they won't reverse many of the Tories' cuts.

TUSC supporters aren't going to wait for what Labour may never deliver; we are trade unionists and anti-cuts campaigners who are fighting Tory cuts and their effects every day in our workplaces and communities. Part of that campaign is to stand candidates in the council elections in May to show that there is an alternative to the cuts that all other parties support to one degree or another. Vote TUSC on May 3 and join the fight against all cuts.
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Rich tax dodgers at it again!

Anyone driving in to Swansea from the East, along Fabian Way, can't miss the huge Amazon warehouse. Today Amazon has been named by the Guardian as the latest in a long line of tax dodgers by the Guardian. Despite making £3.3bn of sales in the UK last year and between £7.6bn and £10.3bn over the last 3 years, Amazon UK doesn't pay a penny of UK Corporation Tax because it is registered in Switzerland.

One more example of the £120bn+ that goes uncollected in tax from corporations and the super-rich and more proof that there is enormous wealth in our society and far from being "all in it together" the pwerful and wealthy continue to rake it in at our expense. So why should working class people pay for a crisis that was not of our making? TUSC say no to all cuts. Vote TUSC on May 3rd!