Red Pepper » Tim Hunt

G4S: Private muscle for hire

admin — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 12:00:20 +0000

G4S’s recent Olympics debacle was little more than a sub-plot in the story of a company that has always courted controversy, from minor problems such as the failure to fulfil contracts to much more serious allegations ranging from manslaughter to sexual misconduct. Despite this, G4S has continued to grow, winning public contracts in the UK and abroad.
The British/Danish-owned company is currently estimated to be worth £1 billion and operates in more than 120 countries. Its 625,000 workers make it the world’s third‑largest private sector employer. It carries out a host of security-based tasks for the military, private businesses, airports and seaports, as well as running prisons and immigration services.
It is at the forefront of the drive towards the privatisation of such services worldwide. As John Grayson, an independent researcher and campaigner with the South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group wrote recently, ‘The contracting out of these services to private companies erodes the already very limited forms of accountability and furthermore fundamentally corrupts the political system by undermining any notion of a public good.’
This privatisation is achieved through a network of lobby groups and strategic appointments. In the first year of the coalition government G4S met with ministers no fewer than 17 times. It currently runs six of the country’s 14 private prisons and is bidding for more. Company employees assisting in such bids include former home secretary John Reid and a number of former senior civil servants.
The company is also heavily involved in the imprisonment and deportation of refugees and asylum seekers. It runs three detention centres, including the Pease Pottage centre, which holds children and families. In July 2010 the immigration removal centre Brook House, which was run by G4S, was described as ‘fundamentally unsafe’ by prisons inspector Dame Anne Owers. She found there had been 105 assaults, mostly against staff, and 35 incidents of self-harm by detainees over a six-month period. There had been serious problems with bullying, violence and drugs.
In 2010 the company received more than 775 complaints in relation to its detention and deportation of immigrants, including allegations of assault and racism. Twenty-five were upheld, a high number considering they were only subject to internal investigation. In 2011, the prisons inspector found conditions in a G4S-run immigration centre to be ‘objectionable, distressing [and] inhumane’.
Most worrying was the case of Jimmy Mubenga. In 2010, the Angolan detainee died after being restrained by G4S guards, three of whom were arrested on suspicion of manslaughter. G4S has since lost the deportation contract, but charges were dropped against the security guards and no one has been held officially accountable for Jimmy Mubenga’s death.
Globally the company profits from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. On its website it boasts that ‘G4S has an unparalleled heritage in Iraq, providing protective security, stabilisation and post-conflict reconstruction services to government and commercial organisations since 2003.’
In Afghanistan in 2009 a number of allegations were made against G4S subsidiary ArmorGroup, which was contracted to protect the US embassy. These included abuse by supervisors, who engaged in sexual misconduct and lewd behaviour; the sacking of a manager following his attempts to fix problems; withholding information from the US Congress about employees who went to brothels in Kabul known to house trafficked women; and misleading the US government by claiming experience and assets the company did not have.
The company also operates throughout the occupied territories in Israel/Palestine. It provides equipment and maintenance services for checkpoints, roadblocks and the separation wall. The equipment provided to the police and military includes body scanners and x-ray machines. In the private sector it provides thousands of armed guards to businesses operating in a number of settlements. G4S also provides a number of Israeli prisons with equipment and personnel.
In the UK the company is bidding to take over many police functions. The Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire police authorities are all discussing using it to provide ‘backroom’ services, outsourcing 1,191 staff with a total spend of £77 million across the three forces. G4S already provides functions to several forces, including Lincolnshire police.
Police can look forward to some of the treatment metered out to other staff around the world, including union busting (USA) and poverty pay rates (Malawi and South Korea). Meanwhile, chief executive Nick Buckles received an annual salary and shares worth £2.4 million and a possible annual bonus of £1.2 million last year.
Illustration of Nick Buckles by Ben Jennings

Event: Tackling tax havens

louise — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 18:24:14 +0000

Building on the success of their recent Olympic tax avoidance campaign Ethical Consumer magazine is this month hosting an event on the issue of tax justice. Campaigners and experts will join members of the public to discuss the impact of tax havens the world over and talk about what action can be taken to halt their use.

Speakers include tax expert Richard Murphy whose highly influential blog, Tax Research UK, has helped bring the issue to the attention of the public and begin to force the debate. He’ll be joined by Chris Jordon from leading campaign group ActionAid as they discuss the impact of tax avoidance on the developing world and the need for country by country reporting.

The debate will later move onto a local level with UK Uncut discussing the success of their street level actions and continuing campaign against the UK’s worst corporate tax avoiders.

Tim Hunt and Leonnie Nimmo will then talk about Ethical Consumer’s exciting new tax justice campaign. They are hoping to follow the lead of French campaigners and work alongside local councils to introduce criteria into public sector procurement that will stop public contracts going to companies that use tax havens.

Organiser Tim Hunt said, ‘The tax justice movement is really gaining momentum from the introduction of country by country reporting in Norway to procurement criteria in French municipalities.

We hope that this event will inspire more people to take action against those companies avoiding tax and to start to pressure local councils in making positive changes to their procurement procedures here in the UK. In this time of great austerity we need corporations paying their fair share of tax to help ensure the survival of our public services.’

The event, ‘Tackling Tax Havens: From the Cayman Islands to Your Local Council’, takes place on Friday 28 September 2012 at the Amnesty International UK Human Rights Action Centre (17-25 New Inn Yard London EC2A3EA).

You can register now by emailing Tim Hunt via this web form: http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/contactus.aspx or for more details call 0161 226 2929 or visit the website www.ethicalconsumer.org/aboutus/membersarea/agms.aspx

Remploy: Factories floored

admin — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 10:00:39 +0000

‘The stakes are high, workers are willing to strike to save their jobs, and they have to because the government simply aren’t listening,’ says Phil Davies, national secretary of the GMB union. He is talking about the thousands of workers battling plans to close 36 of Remploy’s 54 factories this summer, with compulsory redundancies for 1,752 people. Of these, 1,518 are disabled. The remaining 18 sites will close soon after unless buyers can be found. With only a handful returning a profit, most are unlikely to do so.
Set up in 1945, the state-owned company Remploy is the UK’s leading specialist employer of disabled people, with some 3,000 people on its payroll. Despite pleas from unions, workers and their families, Remploy executives say they have no alternative but to press ahead with the closures and sell offs, arguing that their hand has been forced by cuts in government funding. The company is making a loss of more than £50million per year, although union officials say this could be reduced to £7million.
Glen Holdom, GMB officer for Remploy staff, says of the plans that ‘taking jobs from disabled people should not be tolerated in a civilised society. It will not improve the country’s financial situation – it may well make it worse.’ Len McCluskey, general secretary of the Unite union, has denounced the action as ‘barbaric . . . the government has sunk to a new low.’
So far there have been 60 expressions of interest in the factories from private companies, but many potential bidders are said to have asked for more financial support if they are to take on the risk of the loss-making units. To sweeten the deal, private companies have been offered a short-term £10 million subsidy of up to a third of the wages of the disabled workers.
Unions are unhappy that there has been no consultation and that the identities of bidders have not been revealed. ‘We’re entitled to know who has bid for the factories. It’s our members’ livelihoods at stake,’ says Phil Davies. ‘It’s open season for the asset stripper – we’ve not heard of a single bid where someone wants to take over lock, stock and barrel.’
Life after layoffs
Despite unemployment standing at a 16-year high, the government is expecting the employees facing redundancy to find jobs in mainstream employment. The accounts of those who lost their jobs in the first round of Remploy layoffs, started in 2008 by the Labour government when it shut 28 factories, tell a different story.
In an interview with the Daily Express two former employees, Beverly and Robert Stevens, who accepted voluntary redundancy in 2008, told of the reality of life outside the factories. Mrs Stevens, 49, said she and her husband had been on work placements and gone for interviews but their search for jobs proved fruitless. ‘We have completed various placements with various employers,’ said Mrs Stevens, ‘all of which are happy to use our skills for a short space of time but none of which are willing to employ us and pay our wages.’
Mr Stevens had work placements as a kitchen assistant and shelf stacker at a major supermarket, which failed to offer a job after three years of service. Mrs Stevens had placements as a receptionist and an administration assistant.
She believes their chance of getting mainstream jobs is ‘nil’. ‘Neither of us wants to have to remain on benefits for the rest of our working lives. We have always worked until the closure of the factory.’ Eighty-six per cent of those who lost their jobs during this period remain unemployed.
Other stories are equally distressing. Tony, a worker at Barking Remploy, told the GMB, ‘We don’t want to leave here and be sitting around at home doing nothing. If it shuts down I don’t know what job I’m going to find. I have a job here where we have friends for life.’
His mum Cathy added that Tony was born with a learning disability and went to a special school. ‘He worked in the mainstream before he came to Remploy but was treated very badly, and had a very unhappy time. He came to Remploy 13 years ago. He works really hard and adores his job. It would be devastating for him and the family if the factory closes.’
Similar stories are echoed many times over by former and current Remploy employees.
Justifying the closures
It is perhaps unsurprising that the safe environment and financial security that the Remploy factories provide is not to this government’s taste. Less predictably, they have other critics too. Last year Liz Sayce, then chief executive of Radar, the Royal Association for Disability Rights (now Disability Rights UK), controversially called Remploy factories ‘ghettoes’ operating a ‘glass ceiling … with non-disabled people largely running the organisation and disabled people working in it’.
A government-commissioned report released by the charity is now being used to justify the closures. The work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith was quoted as saying the state should not fund ‘Victorian-era segregated employment’. The Department for Work and Pensions added that: ‘For many, Remploy factories can lead to institutionalisation and isolation of disabled people.’
Tracy Lazard from the Inclusion London charity says that fighting the closures is in no way an endorsement of segregated employment. But she argues that ‘at a time of recession, when non‑disabled people cannot find jobs and when benefit cuts are pushing genuine disabled claimants off benefits and into poverty, it is irresponsible to remove meaningful employment from thousands of disabled people.’
Phil Davies goes one step further. He says that some national charities, including Scope, Radar and Mencap, have acted in a ‘disgraceful manner’. He believes that the charities have tried to ‘feather their own nests’. He says that ‘last time there were people laid off from Remploy they were given placements. Where were they placed? Inside charity shops as free labour and that’s what they are hoping for again.’
Need for reform
It is clear from public meetings and internet message boards that there is a need for reform. Specifically there is much ill feeling towards management at the organisation. Campaigners feel that Remploy workers have been mismanaged by non-disabled people. Senior managers took home £1.8 million in bonuses in 2011 while the factory floor workers were under pay restraint. The average wage of senior management currently stands at £50,000 a year compared with £13,000 for the average worker, with some earning as much as £205,000 per year.
Martin, a Remploy worker, argues that: ‘Remploy is top heavy with non-disabled directors and senior managers who make no contribution to the Remploy factory network.’ Phil Davies agrees: ‘About 80 per cent of senior management are able bodied . . . And they have bled the company dry.’
Unions and workers have now released an alternative strategy for Remploy. By streamlining the management and other measures, they say it could save around £43million per year.
This is the fifth such document that trade unions have produced over the past 20 years as the organisation has come under threat from various governments. It sets out 10 key points for reducing costs and restructuring the organisation, making it less top heavy and more responsive to the needs of its disabled employees. These include the re-establishment of links with the armed forces to provide work for troops injured in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a greater emphasis on community links with the introduction of crèche facilities and space for small local businesses.
With the government expected to dismiss the alternative plan out of hand, thoughts are turning to the possibility of more radical action. Following a 79 per cent vote in favour of industrial action the workers have been out on strike. There is even talk of occupying the factories.

Audio: May elections – Jenny Jones interview

Michael — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:53:21 +0000

Last week we travelled to Green Party HQ in Shoreditch, London to interview Green Party mayoral candidate Jenny Jones. We wanted to get her views on some of the big issues facing Londoners – and her broader worldview.

While she did little to refute the case of those who call the Green Party’s understanding of capitalism ’wishy washy’, she did have some interesting things to say about housing and pay ratios.

Below you can listen to the interview in five bite-size sections and read our commentary and responses under each one:

The City, anti-capitalism and the Occupy movement

listen on Audioboo

It’s fair to say that Jenny was a little evasive over how she might begin to change the relationship between the City and the rest of London. She did say that she wanted do away with the City of London’s ‘Corporation’ status (which make it a borough with its own separate rules), but she gave little detail of how this might be achieved. She also mentioned supporting loans to small businesses.

On the Greens as an anti-capitalist party she said ‘we are anti-capitalist because we believe in fair trade not free trade’. According to Jenny, when the Greens’ leader Caroline Lucas said the party is anti-capitalist, what she meant was that she ’just wants a fairer society’. This doesn’t necessarily suggest, in and of itself, that the Greens are in any sense anti-capitalist at all. Jenny admits that this sounds ‘wishy washy’. (Perhaps we should ask Caroline?)

She wants this fair society because in an unfair society, ‘even the rich aren’t happy because you have riots’.

When she talked about the Occupy movement, we asked how she reconciled the contradiction between being part of this non-hierarchical movement that has spoken out against political parties and being part of the Green Party.

Jenny argued that party politics is a different route to the real democracy which the Occupy movement believes is the problem, and added that ‘you can’t get more non-hierarchical than the Green Party’.

Police and protest

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On the police force, her big concept was politeness (Excuse me, sir, do you mind if I arrest you, knee you in the chest, strangle you and racially abuse you?) She also said the police should have showed kindness to Mark Duggan’s family.

In her final analysis, the problems could be solved by more lefties joining the force. Hardly heavyweight.

Transport

listen on Audioboo

This is the area where Jenny seemed strongest. A Green mayor would reduce bus and tube prices and keep any future increases below the level of inflation, she said. This, she added, would be funded by putting up the congestion charge, particularly for the most polluting vehicles, then after three years introducing a pay-as-you-drive system.

Boris cut the road safety budget and this has lead to more injuries. Ken Livingstone, meanwhile, has offered Jenny the job of promoting walking and cycling.

She added that air pollution is currently shocking in London and that it’s way over the EU limits. She would ask that fines be imposed by the EU to help combat the problem.

Housing

listen on Audioboo

This was another strong suit. Jenny described the current housing system as dysfunctional and called the government’s council housing sell off ‘stupid’.

She believes social cleansing is ‘already happening’ and that the government is ‘making it worse’. To tackle the problems, she wants to build 15,000 affordable new homes every year – but these would only be affordable for those on around £23,000 a year.

Those at the lower end of the income spectrum, she says, would be helped by encouraging councils to build more social housing. She would also encourage the use of community land trusts, which Boris promised but did not deliver.

Greens in power

listen on Audioboo

In this final part we talked about the Greens’ record in office here in the UK.

She admits that the Greens have the luxury of opposition almost everywhere – but where it’s possible to act like all other political parties, they’ve done just that. She admits this in as much as she argues that the only other option than following the mainstream agenda is to resign.

She says the difference is that only the Green Party has a philosophy, and that this ensures that they stick to manifesto promises when in power. But at the moment we’re seeing the results of the Tories’ neoliberal philosophy – and the Lib Dems’ Orange Book philosophy too.

Finally she addresses the Greens’ performance in Brighton. She said it was important as it demonstrated the Greens’ ability to take tough decisions. And she defended the council on their decision not to challenge the government over its cuts agenda, adding that challenging it through an illegal budget would have been ‘good for no-one’.

This left the question of how the Greens are different once in office largely unanswered. She was, however, categorical when she said that council tax levels in London would be kept at current levels on her watch.

Manchester rambler

admin — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 04:31:28 +0000

‘This was once a graveyard,’ Morag tells me as we walk past St John’s Gardens in the city’s ‘regenerated’ Castlefield area. ‘Most of the green spaces in the city centre were.’ She adds that Angel Meadow, a park at the other end of town, is ‘the site of a mass cholera grave’.
Her tour of Manchester is very different to the official, sanitised version of its history – the one the council and its PFI marketing companies and development agencies espouse. ‘You get the industrial revolution and then the IRA bomb and the redevelopment that followed,’ she says. ‘It’s as if there’s nothing in between. But lots of things are happening, all at the same time.’
Morag is part of the Loiterers Resistance Movement (LRM), a Situationist-inspired psychogeography group that roams the city sharing knowledge and experiences of the ever-changing urban environment. The LRM tries to piece Manchester’s lost stories together by interacting with the city and other people. ‘I want to complicate the official narrative and deviate from the official tour,’ she says. ‘For me the city is about multiple narratives, diversity and personal history.’
She continues: ‘The dominant narrative is one of triumph [of the Industrial Revolution]. They never talk about the squalor.’
On one official walk they don’t even mention the famous Suffragette sisters the Pankhursts, she tells me – and ‘they never mention the Burns sisters’.
I look at her blankly, revealing my ignorance. ‘They were companions of Engels,’ she says. ‘They helped him gain access to the slums while he was writing about and living in Manchester. A dandy like him couldn’t just walk in there, he would get killed.’
We head down an old cobbled side street off Oxford Road. Among the gaudy new facades of the bars that line the street sits an ornate doorway dating from the 1920s – and some superb graffiti.
This is the first example of what Morag describes as ‘resonances’: the blurring between the past and the present. History, she says, ‘is not linear… things seep out of the past into the present.’ These resonances are what the LRM is all about. Their aim is to connect people with them, to give individuals a better sense of their environment, themselves and others.
At the end of the road is what she really wants me to see. It’s a plaque commemorating Little Ireland, one of the many slums that defined 19th century Manchester. Morag is clear she doesn’t want to fetishise the bleak conditions that were prevalent here – but nor does she want to ignore stories that are often hidden from the official histories of Manchester and other industrial cities. ‘There was one toilet here for 400 people,’ she says, grimacing.
‘These places still exist,’ she says. ‘We’ve just globalised them.’
We continue our walk, crossing Whitworth Street and then heading onto the path alongside the canal, passing new flats and converted mills along the cobbled towpath. This is one of Morag’s favorite places – one of the few areas in the city that’s free from the constant bombardment of advertising. But we are still, it seems, constantly watched by CCTV. ‘We asked for the footage once after walking down here,’ she says, ‘but most of the cameras were turned off.’
Morag tells me how the LRM play a game called ‘CCTV bingo’ by walking in the gaze of one camera until they find another. ‘It’s sooner than you think.’ This game-playing is central to the LRM. It may be silly and fun, Morag says, but such games help to give you ‘an emotional relationship with the city’.
Last year the group made an edible model of the city. ‘We took over 400 photos of buildings around the city and then constructed them out of cake,’ says Morag. ‘It wasn’t topographically accurate,’ she adds dryly. The cakes were then devoured in an afternoon. ‘The city is always changing,’ she says with a smile.
‘Whatever the council do with places like this, people will always adapt and appropriate them.’
The LRM meet every first Sunday for some sort of wander around Manchester. It’s free and everybody is welcome. You can follow and contact Morag on Twitter @lrm and Tim @timinmanchester

Web freedom

admin — Mon, 23 May 2011 19:20:40 +0000

An Open Web
Anonymous Collective
Floss Manuals
This book is a call to arms. Its collaborative writers want you, and all web users, to join the fight to preserve and build upon the ideas and ideals of the world wide web. But the web is thriving, I hear you shout. Not so, say the authors.
The starting point of the book is Wired magazine’s 2010 proclamation: ‘The web is dead.’ To comprehend this statement you first have to understand the distinction between the web and the internet. The former is ‘free’ and ‘open’ with the documents themselves linking together to form a huge web of information using a standard and open language (http). The latter is the physical connection on which this information travels. More and more the internet is being used to deliver traditional one-way forms of communication – for instance, streaming and commercial transactions. The authors believe, as do many others, that this is causing untold damage to the ideas and ideals of the web.
The book makes some lofty claims. ‘What threatens the web’s freedom, likewise impinges on your own.’ ‘This book will take the view that the open web is an essential technology and cultural practice for the future of the internet and human society.’ But it does give you a clear(ish) idea of how commercial interests are taking over yet another global commons, trampling it underfoot in search of profit, and leaving a much less rich and diverse virtual landscape behind.
In its mission the book covers a number of topics, including the right to access the internet, the right to anonymity (with a bit of a pop at Facebook), free software generally and how you can take action. Some of the work is purely theoretical, but much is translated into practical advice with lots of good examples and links. The ‘ten things you can do now’ section is really interesting and useful. For example, I found out about Adblock Plus, which stops adverts appearing in your browser – it’s great.
The process by which the book was created is also interesting. It was written in a five-day ‘sprint’ in Berlin by a collective of just six people from all over the world, with contributions via Skype from as far away as Syria.
At times the book will seem impenetrable to many readers (including me) who are unfamiliar with the techy language. But stick with it and re-read – it’s well worth the effort.
Tim Hunt
The book is hosted online by Floss Manuals and available in a number of formats, including pdf. http://new.flossmanuals.net/an-open-web/

Seeking sanctuary

admin — Sun, 15 May 2011 18:45:50 +0000

There are three narratives that dominate the discussion of refugees in the UK. On the right there are the self-contradicting narratives of the ‘scrounging layabout’ and the ‘job stealer’, while the left often succumbs to the liberal view of the ‘victim’ in need of charity.
One project helping to challenge these stereotypes is City of Sanctuary. It is facilitating conversations between people who may hold those right-wing views and the migrants themselves while at the same time ensuring that refugees become active participants in creating a better life for themselves and their peers.
The project started in Sheffield six years ago. Since then it has grown into a network of 15 towns and cities, with the core aim of ‘welcoming asylum seekers and refugees’. But it is now also doing much more.
Structure and dynamics
Each city project shares three main characteristics: to highlight the contribution of asylum seekers to host communities; to form relationships with people in the host community; and to develop a culture of hospitality and welcoming. But key to the movement’s success is the fact that each area has its own ‘structure and dynamics’.
As Penny Walker, co-ordinator of Coventry City of Sanctuary, explains: ‘Each city is set up differently: some as charities, some as loose networks. In Coventry we are a network of organisations… We look at what needs doing and where and each organisation applies for different bits of funding.’
‘It is truly a people-led movement,’ she adds. Local people play a key role – it is their existing projects, clubs and societies that offer a welcoming arm to those who need it.
Sarah Eldridge, Sheffield co-ordinator, says: ‘It taps into feelings that are already there. Sheffield has a long history of welcoming refugees. For instance, in the 1970s many people came from Pinochet’s Chile.’ It’s the simple things like inviting people to local chess clubs or cultural events that make the difference, she explains.
Over 100 groups are now part of the network. They have worked alongside the Children’s Society, who go with refugees into local schools to share their experiences with pupils. They have also worked with Ice and Fire drama group and the Co-op to put on events with asylum seekers so that local people can learn about the experience of refugees.
Refugees lead
It’s the refugees themselves who are taking the lead – and beginning to mould City of Sanctuary into a movement that mixes a DIY ethos with a broad base.
A good example is in Coventry, where a group of migrants and refugees, with the help of City of Sanctuary, set up and now run a hate crime helpline. As well as answering calls from people who have suffered racist abuse, they also help people who have suffered due to disability or other hate crimes, reaching out far beyond their comfort zone. Those involved also visit vulnerable groups and individuals, such as those taking English classes, letting people know they don’t have to suffer alone or in silence.
This trend is typified by Forward, a Zimbabwean refugee. He arrived in the UK in 2002 and is now heading up Bristol’s project. As an English-speaking journalist, he found it relatively easy to make the move the UK, but understands that for others the move is not so simple. He recently helped to organise a human rights day where people talked about ‘their experiences in Bristol and their journeys’. This he felt was important both for local people who could gain a better understanding, and also for the refugees who were able to tell their own stories.
Challenges
The process has not been without its challenges, but these are beginning to take new forms. In past the model sometimes hasn’t translated for cultural or political reasons, while in other cases it has been difficult to instil what has been described as an ‘intangible’ idea.
Now things are different. ‘All the good work done over many years is now under threat due to government cuts and at a really bad time,’ says Penny Walker. ‘It comes on the back of what seems like an increase in the amount of hatred, and the recession has had an impact on this, especially to do with jobs. Good projects are under threat as well as council services.’
Sarah Eldridge agrees. ‘The economic climate is a challenge. People feel insecure and unsettled, losing jobs and money.’ She believes that under such circumstances people find it ‘harder to extend the hand of welcome to people different from themselves’.
But this has only stiffened their resolve. As Penny Walker puts it, ‘the recession means we have to carry on and do even more.’ She believes that City of Sanctuary is and must be one part of something much wider.
‘We need to give individuals practical help, but we also need to be campaigning,’ she says. ‘It’s about more than just the person in front of you. It’s about the global situation, the arms trade, the draconian asylum system and the UK’s role in the world. We need to change people’s hearts and minds – but also the systems that make people destitute.’

Atos: tick-box tyranny

admin — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 12:41:47 +0000

Successive governments have fed us the line that they want to help those with disabilities to become ‘more independent’ by giving them the ‘incentive and opportunity’ to work. To help them in this noble aim, they have enlisted a company called Atos.
But this public-private partnership acts less like a professional carer aiding a client and more like a Metropolitan police officer tipping a disabled person out of their wheelchair.
Atos uses a computer system to assess disabled people’s ‘fitness to work’ for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). This assessment consists of tick-boxes on a screen, and it doesn’t allow for any medical or qualitative evidence. In fact it often undermines medical evidence.
Claimants complain they are asked irrelevant questions – for example, sufferers of depression are asked if they can load and unload a dishwasher. The system nets the company a massive £500 million from its seven-year contract with the DWP, but as you might expect with this sort of unscientific approach to assessment, the company’s record is terrible. There are 8,000 tribunals hearing ‘fitness to work’ appeals every month across the UK – and 40 per cent of decisions are being reversed.
In November, this poor treatment of claimants was recognised in the House of Commons following the release of Professor Malcolm Harrington’s report on work capability assessments. The report concluded: ‘Atos has damaged the public perception of medical assessments, and has also created a serious risk of maladministration of incapacity benefit checks.’
MPs called on the government to ‘act swiftly so that medical assessments are more localised, humane and sympathetic’. But the system remains unchanged.
Despite its poor record, Atos – a French multinational with offices all over the world – keeps on winning contracts. It has expanded quickly by buying up smaller companies, including KPMG Consulting and Sema Group in the UK.
In total Atos now employs 50,000 staff and operates in 50 countries. The company is deeply involved in military applications: it has contracts with the Chinese, French, Dutch and UK militaries.
Atos eats up tax revenue by ensuring that the firms it takes over lobby for and win government contracts – all the while setting up subsidiaries in tax havens, as Ethical Consumer magazine has revealed.
In Britain, Atos has 6,500 staff and is one of the top 20 suppliers to the state. As well as the DWP contract, it has two substantial IT contracts with the NHS, one with the Ministry of Defence Veterans Agency and one with the Scottish government, delivering more than 100 projects annually. Last year the NHS alone paid the firm more than £36.5 million.
Beyond IT, the company claims to be the biggest provider of medical services in the UK after the NHS, with 2,500 staff on its books. This includes direct provision of healthcare services, including two NHS walk-in centres in Manchester and Canary Wharf in east London, as well as GP and nursing services for NHS Tower Hamlets. It also provides various services to individual NHS trusts.
Atos was also at the forefront of the now defunct ID cards scheme. It advocated the use of automated fingerprint identification software, used by the US Department of Homeland Security among others.
As if all that isn’t enough, the company even provides software and communication technology for oil and gas exploration, and has been selected to provide the Dungeness B nuclear power plant in Kent with a new computer system.
With its tentacles in so many pies, it’s perhaps no surprise that Atos is doing pretty well. In the first quarter of 2010 alone, its revenue hit the 1,231 million-euro mark, while last year the company had revenue in excess of 5 billion euros.
After all, hoovering up taxpayers’ money is a lucrative business.

Both a borrower and a lender be

admin — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 23:10:46 +0000

The battle for the commons is all around us, with many struggles to ensure open access to goods, services, spaces and information (see ‘Viral Spirals’, Red Pepper Oct/Nov 2010). The fight to save public libraries should be seen as part of this, but in doing so we should not overlook the potential of a wider use of libraries and social lending to enhance the material prosperity, ecological soundness and equality of our societies.
Book lending has helped shape our society since the Public Libraries Act 1850 gave boroughs the power to establish free public libraries. The act was the first legislative step to provide universal free access to information and literature. This common approach was opposed by the Tories, who believed libraries would become centres for social agitation and subversion.
The proliferation of public libraries in the 19th century was a remarkable phenomenon, both a result of and playing a significant role in achieving the increasing literacy of the population. Today, there are more than 4,500 public libraries across the UK.
So why are common repositories of freely accessible resources, such as libraries, still important? Eco-socialist Derek Wall argues that ‘sharing provides a way of restoring economics to its original promise as a science that finds ways of matching scarce resources with unlimited human wants’. He says that, in its simplest form, it can ‘give prosperity without wrecking the global environment. If you make goods that last longer and you share more, then it’s a way of giving people more material prosperity’.
In addition to the traditional model of sharing information and culture epitomised by the public lending library, new forms of social lending relating to more physical things have also been developed. From public bike schemes to tool libraries, the ethos of sharing is alive and well. There are currently 33 tool libraries across the US, for example.
One of the biggest is in Berkeley, California, where it is part of the municipal library and has been lending tools for over 30 years. Set up in 1978 with government money for community development, it has since grown into a mainstay of the community, lending everything from monkey wrenches to cement mixers – and all free of charge. It is closely linked to the DIY section of the book library, helping people to skill up as well as lending them tools.
In the UK, the Activist Tat Collective loans out everything from tools to compost toilets. According to collective member Belinda Day, ‘We started out just getting stuff together for Climate Camp but we now have loads of tat. We’ve had to put together a database to keep track of everything. We have plumbing stuff, cooking utensils, electrics equipment, compost toilets and communication equipment.’
In a few short years the project has become a massive success. ‘So far we have lent stuff to the No Borders camp in Calais, a peace camp, Climate Camp, an animal rights gathering, Radical Roots, Earth First, Sheffield Bike Festival and numerous small events put on in different communities. We even lent out marquees for a wedding.’ They not only have their own equipment but also link up individuals who have tools to lend out with people looking to borrow them.
Like the Berkeley library, it’s as much about sharing the skills as the equipment. As Belinda says, ‘After Climate Camp at Heathrow we not only wanted to make sure resources were available to people to replicate what we had achieved but we also wanted to pass on skills to people to help make things happen.’ There is also a clear environmental element to the project: ‘We want to promote a more permaculture approach to events. Groups can now access our compost toilets – it’s really helped to get people thinking about how they are running their events.’
This environmental element is clearly also important to other commons projects. Over recent years in Spain there has been a big drive to get people to cycle instead of travelling by car. In Barcelona a bike scheme has massively exceeded expectations with almost 100,000 users – six times the number expected. This clear demand for such projects has led to a boom and there are now 60 cities in Spain with public bike schemes.
This isn’t to say the schemes are without problems. Many have suffered from lack of continuous funding and vandalism among other things. Using the experience of the Spanish model, the cycle advocacy group I Bike Manchester is trying a new approach. It is setting up a social centre, Pedal, where people can borrow bike maintenance tools, books and certain accessories such as bike trailers, as well as get free workshop space and lessons on how to fix your bike. But they won’t be lending out bikes.
Pedal organiser Vanessa Brierly says: ‘I love libraries and we’ll have a variety of lending facilities. However, we do feel that the ownership of a bicycle is important. Borrowing a bike suggests that it is a temporary method of transport, an immediate solution for the short term. We’d like people to use bikes and feel confident about making it a sustainable choice, one that is easy and always available rather than relying on our opening times. We also feel that if someone owns their bike they may feel more attachment to it and take time to gain the skills and knowledge to learn to repair and maintain it.’
With this in mind, the centre will be running an innovative ‘Earn a Bike’ programme. According to Vanessa, ‘It gives people the opportunity to share their time and skills rather than give money in exchange for a bicycle, parts and mechanical tuition. Basically, you volunteer your time in either the workshop, cafe, allotment, library or computer space for 18 hours then spend a further six hours receiving bike maintenance tuition while building the bike that you get to keep at the end.’
The centre will also be about more than just bikes. ‘We also see the social side of the centre as being an essential element,’ says Vanessa. ‘Cyclists often feel alienated in this city that is dominated by cars and car culture. We hope that Pedal can be a haven where cyclists can share experiences, skills and knowledge and help to build a strong and supportive cycling community in Manchester. Projects to target groups from low income or hard-to-reach groups, including asylum seekers, young offenders, homeless people and women, will also be our priority.’
Another sharing project that is up and running is Ecomodo in London. The organisers hope that this person-to-person lending service will ‘see a new era in satisfying our occasional needs and desires through rental rather than ownership’. The online service aims to encourage Londoners to borrow instead of buying for the benefit of the environment, their pockets and their communities. Items lent include lawnmowers, tents, golf clubs, inflatable mattresses, digital projectors and tools.
Meriel Lenfestey, co-founder of Ecomodo, says, ‘For many occasions in life such as throwing parties, doing DIY, going on holiday or getting a job done, we need tools and equipment for just a short period. It is wasteful and expensive to consume more and more when there is a far better alternative on our doorsteps.’
While the projects above provide important resources to various communities, they are still small in scale and limited in reach. At a time of huge cuts to public funding, projects encouraging sharing and common ownership will find it hard to scale up beyond their initial niche audience.
Yet maybe there is an upside to this lack of state funding. Projects such as Pedal in Manchester can provide an exciting glimpse of how we can act collectively and autonomously to create communal goods and services outside of the logic of the capitalist marketplace, and without making ourselves dependent on those who hold the purse strings of the state.

A neoliberal assault on women

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:25:36 +0000

Within hours of the 22 June announcements it was clear that the burden of the regressive emergency budget would fall disproportionately on women. A study published by the House of Commons Library in early July went some way to confirming this. The gender audit of the budget, commissioned by shadow minster for work and pensions Yvette Cooper, concluded that more than 70 per cent of the revenue raised from direct tax and benefit changes is to come from female taxpayers. This research excludes the effects of public service cuts; the full impact on women is set to be much worse.

Hitting the family hard

While all departments (apart from the NHS and overseas aid, they claim) face major cuts in their annual budgets, the immediate pain will be felt most by those with young children and single parents, nine out of 10 of whom are female.

The picture was gloomy even before the cuts: 52 per cent of single parent families are below the government-defined poverty line and in one survey more than half the mothers questioned said they are not adequately prepared to cope financially once the baby arrives. Benefits cuts are set to exacerbate the situation, with the coalition budget attacking women and single parents on several fronts.

First, income support will be cut for all parents – when their children reach school age they will be moved onto jobseeker’s allowance. This will mean that single parents will effectively be forced into work or face their benefits being cut off completely.

Second, the health in pregnancy grant, a £190 payment to all pregnant women beyond their 25th week of pregnancy, will be abolished next April. The government will also restrict eligibility to the Sure Start maternity grant to the first child only. The grant is a one-off £500 payment for those on a low income to help towards the costs of a new baby. The new ‘toddler tax credit’, which would have provided an extra £4 a week for families with children aged one or two, is also to be scrapped, along with the child trust fund. Child benefit has been frozen for three years – an effective cut in real terms.

All this means that the lowest income families with new babies will now be £1,293 a year worse off. Those with second children on the way will be hit even harder. And this before you take into account changes to housing benefit: lone parent families are three times as likely to live in rented accommodation as families with two resident parents.

Liz, a mother of two and a part-time NHS worker, told Red Pepper: ‘The impact on women who are lone mothers smacks of total ignorance of the knock-on effects on children. The expectation to work does not take into account the support needed to let this happen, particularly if service cuts will lead to further deterioration in provision. There’s the potential cost of a rise in mental health issues and child protection issues resulting from the lack of support.’

The education sector has already seen cuts that hit women disproportionately hard. Manchester’s Mule reported in June that workers at Manchester City College had described proposed cuts at the college as ‘fairly overt sex discrimination’ after crèche workers faced compulsory redundancies. A source told the paper: ‘It is an undisputed fact that most childcare arrangements fall onto the shoulders of mothers in society. By changing holidays and increasing working hours, the college has not taken childcare needs into account.’ The state was effectively turning back the clock and shifting the burden back on to women.

A similar situation arose last year at Sussex University, which announced cuts of £8 million over two years due to reductions in government funding. Among the 115 redundancies announced were plans to axe the campus nursery and crèche.

Employment problems

Even before the cuts were announced it was obvious that women would bear the brunt of the austerity measures focused on cutting back the public sector. Sixty-five per cent of workers in the public sector are women and around four in ten women work in the public sector, compared with fewer than two in ten men.

Most Whitehall departments face cuts of between 25 and 40 per cent and unions estimate that this will lead to around a million job losses over the next few years.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (see page 13) puts the figure slightly lower at 610,000 by 2016. The analysis by this newly independent body, set up by the Treasury, suggests just 4.92 million people will be working in the public sector in 2015-16, compared to 5.53 million today.

And the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) suggests that a majority of the staff likely to lose their jobs will be women in part-time work or on low wages.

Those remaining in work could also find it difficult. The CIPD has warned that there will likely be ‘ongoing real wage cuts in the public sector’, with the government announcing a two-year pay freeze for all but the lowest paid.

Ceri Goddard, the Fawcett Society’s chief executive, says: ‘Against a backdrop of unequal pay – women are still paid 16.4 per cent less for full time work and 35 per cent less for part time work than men – the impact on women will be huge.’

A difficult retirement?

The cuts will also have an impact on women into their retirement. The political blog Left Foot Forward reports that pensioner poverty is already ‘far more prevalent among women than men, with women’s average income in retirement just 62 per cent of the level that the average retired man will have to live on’. Public sector pensions currently improve women’s overall level of pension provision but with the loss of jobs will come loss of pension rights and the gender gap may widen further, plunging more women pensioners into poverty.

The BBC is now trying to close its final salary pensions, a move that could pave the way for similar cuts in the public sector. The corporation has proposed that pensions are based on how much an employee has paid in and that they increase by a maximum of one per cent per year rather than being linked to final incomes. Unions are now worried that this model will be adopted across the public sector, disproportionately affecting women in an area where there are already gross inequalities.

Katie, an NHS worker from Manchester, told Red Pepper: ‘They say the NHS is protected but we know cuts are coming. We’re all worried about our pensions because cuts there will have a huge long-term effect across the public sector.’

More to come

We have yet to see the true extent of the cuts, which could be as deep as 40 per cent for some departments. What we do know is that Osborne aims to cut £99 billion from annual government spending by 2016.

The emergency budget was just one aspect of the recent neoliberal attacks on the state, now dressed up as the ‘Big Society’, the depth of which Thatcher could only have dreamed. But in among the swinging axes and falling debris, there are the green shoots of a grass-roots recovery. Over the page we look at some of the organisations that are starting – or continuing – the fightback.