Last night’s inaugural Worcester Against the Cuts meeting at St Andrew’s Church on Pump Street detailed the impact that the Coalition Government’s £83bn cuts are going to have on local jobs and services – unless people campaign against them.
l-r: Sean McCauley; Mark Davies – Chair; Kim Foster; Dave Marshall
Sean McCauley from the NUT in Worcestershire told the meeting that 120 beds at Worcester Royal Hospital and 1,000 local council jobs are due to be cut. There will be 1,500 fewer places and 23 fewer lecturers at Worcester Technology College because of a £1mn cut in its funding. Sean said: “It’s a myth that we’re all in this together – 55% if the directors of the FTSE 100 companies received a pay rise, which was on average £5mn each. £120bn tax has been avoided this year yet George Osborne has announced £83bn cuts. We need to tell people that there is an alternative and we need a united campaign against the cuts.”
Dave Marshall from Regional Organiser for the RMT (rail union) and from St. Johns, told the meeting that today (2/11/10) tube workers will be on strike. The head of Network Rail, Ian Coucher, had earned £10mn over 8 years, yet Network Rail are looking to get rid of 1,500 staff. Dave said: “The proposed job cuts would result in tracks being inspected every eight weeks instead of two. Cutting costs on railway services costs lives. The cuts affect everybody: less routes; increased fares and reduced safety. The cuts are nothing to do with deficit reduction – the Tories don’t like the idea of public services. They have been very effective at causing divide amongst public and private sector workers. A worker is a worker: public or private. We need a coalition to fight this Coalition.”
Kim Foster from Youth Fight For Jobs a TUC backed group committed to fighting against youth unemployment, spoke of “the ipod generation: Insecure, Pressured, Over-Taxed and Debt-Ridden” and said: “The three main parties have nothing to offer youth today. Meetings like these are important, as they give youth the knowledge and education to fight the cuts constructively.”
This is in protest at the deepest cuts to public spending since the 1920s announced by George Osborne in his Comprehensive Spending Review on October 20. Trade Unionists and community campaigners will meet to hear speakers describe how a concerted campaign can force councils and NHS bosses to reject the cuts and the government to retreat.
Pete McNally, a Malvern train driver, local chair of the National Shop Stewards’ Network and co-founder of Worcester Against the Cuts said, “The Tories aren’t responsible for the deficit but they repeatedly defend a system that leads to crises that leads to workers having to pay.”
There will be a conference to build the campaign against the cuts on Saturday 27th November (10am – 1pm) at St. Peter’s Church, St. Peters, Worcester.
For more information contact:
Sean McCauley 0781 483 6909
Pete McNally 0776 176 9412
Neil Laurenson 07805 871 163
We need a non-party political movement across Britain to challenge the corrupt media and political classes who are destroying our social democracy while feeding our money to financial gangsters on Wall street and in the City of London.
We should ask for the United Nations to step in and hold a full and transparent inquiry into the way a few rich criminals can pull off fraud on the scale of the 1929 and 2008 Wall Street Crashes and ruin the western economies while getting off Scot-free themselves.
We were deliberately got into debt in a classic case of old fashioned usury….but notice how “we” still have plenty of money to fight wars to keep USA/Israel in control of the world`s resources.
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