OPPOSE THE SOUTH WEST PAY CARTEL

Join the protest on Saturday 1st December, assembling at 11:00 at College Green and ending in a rally at Castle Park at 12:30.

The NHS that we know and love is under threat. One of the biggest challenges is the pressure to cut costs and make savings. This has resulted in 20 NHS Trusts across the South West, including University Hospitals Bristol Trust and North Bristol Trust, paying £200,000 of tax payer’s money to form the South West Pay Terms and Conditions Consortium which is proposing radical changes to pay and conditions and the creation of a regional pay system.

Plans published by these employers envisaging changes which could cut pay, terms and conditions for nurses and other healthcare staff by up to 15% demonstrate yet another example of how working people are being forced to bear the brunt of cuts to vital services.

This will be bad for the NHS, bad for patients and bad for all NHS staff across the UK.

Local pay hurts the local economy, compromises patient safety, seriously damages staff morale and creates instability in the workforce at a time when the NHS is going through unprecedented change.

PLEASE INVITE YOUR FRIENDS, UNIONS AND COMMUNITY GROUPS!

Bristol & District Anti-Cuts Alliance plans to ensure that as many people as possible from Bristol get to the TUC's 'A Future That Works' demonstration in London on Saturday October 20th. Many unions have arranged coaches from Bristol and surrounding areas. Details can be found on the BADACA website here.

In most cases these are free to members and their families. Some extend this to friends. Some others are not free but subsidised. There is also a link to information about all coaches from the South West. Book a seat now. If you have queries on the information provided please email admin@bristolanticutsalliance.org.uk.

A student film setting out the case for supporting the demonstrations can be seen here.

Facebook for 20th October here.

Information on TUC website here.

On Thursday 26th July, the LibDem Cabinet meets to discuss their final proposals for the closure and privatisation of the remaining council-run care homes and day centres for the elderly and vulnerable, cutting over £3 million from the budget. 200 people will lose their homes. 130 jobs will go. The council has already privatised the home care service and drastically cut grants to the voluntary sector. These plans will further undermine services and are totally unacceptable. Bristol City Council should retain all these care homes and day centres 'in-house', giving a proper publicly provided and publicly accountable service to users and their families. The G4S Olympic security shambles shows the reality of privatisation and outsourcing - poor wages, poor service, and huge profits. Join the lobby on Thursday. Support our petition and questions at the meeting.

An Evening Post article outlining the cuts can be seen here. The two council reports can be read here (Care Homes) and here (Day Centres)

Bristol & District Anti Cuts Alliance along with others will be lobbying councillors at the meeting, asking questions and submitting a statement and petition calling for a properly funded, publlcly run and accountable service.

Join us at the Council House from 5pm on Thursday 26th July

NO CLOSURES - NO PRIVATISATION – NO TO ALL CUTS

Yesterday, 12 activists from B.A.R.F., 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.