Open Planning Meeting – Monday 13th October – Half Remaining Council Jobs To Be Axed

The next open planning meeting of Birmingham against the Cuts will be on Monday October 13th at 6.00 pm in the UNISON Birmingham Branch office at 19th Floor McClaren Tower Priory Queensway. Note the adjusted time which is to suit the new opening hours of the building. If you arrive late and find the door locked ring me on 07538557155.

The provisional agenda is as follows:

1. Attendance and apologies

2. Plan to cut 6000 jobs by 2018
A) Service papers
B) Consultations
C) Industrial Action tomorrow and ?
D) Joint campaigns
E) Public Meeting
F) Media campaign
G) Leaflet

3. NHS
A) Action today
B) Good Hope Hospital
C) Community Mental Health Partnership for 0-25yr olds

4 Children’s Services
A) Letter to Albert Bohr
B) Meeting October 23rd

5. Adult Care mutual

6. Libraries – public service mutual and future campaigning plans

7. Children’s Care letter and public meeting 23 October

8. Leisure Services

9. TUC demo October 18th

10. Conference on Council Governance October 28th

11. Date and content of next meeting (November 10th.)

12. Any other business

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Midlands Strike Rally – Victoria Square – 10th July 11:30am

There will be a national strike day on Thursday 10th July with public sector workers protesting against the continued squeeze on their living standards brought about by pay freezes, pension cuts and below the rate of inflation pay rises under the Tory/Lib Dem coalition’s austerity agenda. TUC analysis shows that the average public sector worker is £2,245 worse off in real terms since this government took office. In local government, wherealmost two thirds of the workforce are paid below £21k a year and around half a million workers are paid less than the Living Wage, workers will have experienced a real terms pay cut of 18% by the end of 2014. The strike involves PCS, Unite, Unison, the NUT and the Fire Brigades Union.

Thursday 10th July

11:30am

Victoria Square, B1 1BB

Speakers: Christine Blower (General Secretary, NUT), Dave Prentis (General Secretary, Unison), Joe Morgan (GMB) and speakers from PCS, Unite and the FBU.

Accessibility: Birmingham City Centre is step free. The nearest train station is Snow Hill Station, followed by New Street and Moor Street. There is a single person accessible public toilet in Victoria Square, and accessible toilets are also available in Paradise Forum, around 100m from the rally site.

 

 

DPAC lobby July 9th

 

Disability and benefit campaigners have organised a vigil outside Birmingham Administrative Court to support a legal challenge to the PIP 20 metre descriptor. They would like anyone who can to attend to show how important this case is to disabled people.

This harsh tightening of the rules to claim the mobility component is yet another attack on the welfare state and disabled people. This government is making it harder for disabled people to claim vital financial support to keep them in work, at a time when the richest in society have had a 15% increase in their wealth.

Come and join the vigial outside Birmignham Administrative Court, Bull Street, from 1pm-2pm on July 9th

Peoples’ Assembly National Demonstration – June 21st – Coach Details

The People’s Assembly has called a national demonstration “No More Austerity, demand the alternative” on Saturday 21st June.

The demonstration will Assemble 1pm, BBC HQ, Portland Place (Tube: Oxford Circus) and March to Parliament

There will be coaches going from Birmingham, the Black Country and Coventry.
Tickets will be £10 waged, £5 unwaged, children free.

To book your seat please reply to this email with the following details:
Name
Organisation
Phone number
no. of tickets

or call Pete on 07977 057 902

Final arrangements are still being made for pick up points and times.

Local Election Hustings – Wed 14th May

WEDNESDAY MAY 14th 7.30pm

BIRMINGHAM COUNCIL HOUSE

ALL PARTIES AND INDEPENDENTS INVITED TO SPEAK ONGOING ANTI-CUTS STRUGGLES ALSO INVITED

What Way Forward For Birmingham

Agenda For Birmingham Against The Cuts Planning Meeting – Monday 12th May

The next open planning meeting of Birmingham against the Cuts will be on Monday May 12th at 6.00 pm in the UNISON Birmingham Branch office at 19th Floor McClaren Tower Priory Queensway. Note the adjusted time which is to suit the new opening hours of the building.
Everyone is welcome to attend.

The provisional agenda is as follows:

Take Part In Boycott Workfare Week Of Action This Week

Next week sees a week of action against workfare, as the government introduces the harshest forced labour scheme yet seen – “community work placements”. These placements are full time, lasting for 6 months and build upon the failure of the “Community Action Programme” pilot scheme which had no effect on the chances of someone finding work.

Workfare is the system whereby unemployed and disabled people are forced to work for charities, community organisations and companies under threat of having their benefits stopped entirely for up to three years for unemployed people and losing 70% of their benefits indefinitely for disabled people.

Bedroom Tax Demo – 5th April – One Year On

Hated, unjust and unworkable. One year on the Bedroom Tax is still there – but only just. Campaigning locally and nationally has had an effect.

* In Scotland the Tax has been defeated.

* Pressure has meant the Labour Party has promised they will abolish the tax.

* Birmingham City Council has admitted 3000 people in long term tenancies had benefits taken away in error and they will be given a rebate.

*Court cases have ruled in favour of disabled couples having separate rooms if they wish, and in favour of separated parents needing a room for visiting children, and that a room must be in use as a bedroom to count as a bedroom. These cases could see hundreds of thousands given rebates due to unlawfully having their benefit cut

Protest for benefit justice

Saturday 5th April

1:00pm, Waterstones, High St, City Centre

Reject Butcher Bore’s Budget – City Budget Day Noisy Protest – Tuesday March 4th

Reject Butcher Bore’s Budget – City Budget Day Noisy Protest

Tuesday March 4th
12.30 -2.00 pm
Victoria Square
Birmingham

Leaflets are available from Unison Local Government, Godfrey Webster or email BirminghamAgainstTheCuts@Gmail.com

The proposed city council budget for 2014-2015 is a disaster for the people of Birmingham. Cuts of £86 million or 9% of the controllable budget will see children’s homes shut, leisure services privatised, adult care packages downgraded and privatised. Cuts to district budgets are 30% this year rising to 50% next, meaning libraries, neighbourhood offices, leisure and play centres face decimation. Cuts to the grant to Centro will see less mobile people forced to pay extra for ring and ride. Around another 1000 jobs will be lost, with many expected to carry on working unpaid as volunteers.

This is just a taster of what is to come if the government’s future spending plans are allowed to happen. Free local services will be a thing of the past. Those who cannot afford to pay will have to beg for charity as in the nineteenth century.
BATC says it doesn’t have to be like this. Britain is still one of the richest countries in the world but the rich are taking a larger and larger share of national income. They see local government as just a potential market for their corporations (eg Capita), with services that can’t make a profit thrown to the wall. The Labour council should not be carrying out this process, but should be leading a nationwide fight to prevent it.

National Budget Day Protest – Wed 19th March

“Austerity for Ever”
No Way!
National Budget Day Protest
Wednesday March 19th
5.00 -7.00 pm

Outside Waterstones, High St. Birmingham

Leaflets available from Unison Local Government Offices, Godfrey Webster or Contact BirminghamAgainstTheCuts@Gmail.com

Nationally, the economic picture continues to look bleak. Unemployment figures are falling as more people are pushed onto working tax credits, self-employment and part time work rather than JSA. Living standards have shown their longest continuous fall since records began as inflation outstrips wage increases. Growth continues to elude this government, who can’t see how austerity kills growth, preventing the deficit from falling.

The alternative is to take advantage of historically low interest rates to invest in some of the things we need to solve the housing crisis and make big steps towards removing our dependency on oil and combatting climate change. That means a new programme of house building, replacing the council houses we’ve lost since Thatcher, ones which are rented securely and at an affordable price, with the investment paid back over time. It means building huge amounts of renewable energy production in the forms of wind, tidal, wave, hydro and solar generation, replacing what we are losing as North Sea gas and oil dries up.

The jobs created doing this will stimulate the economy, increasing government tax intake and reducing spending on social security, reducing the cost of the investment further and with the return to come on renting housing and selling energy, the investment will prove to be profitable and sustainable for future generations.