Southwark anti cuts demo Tuesday 6pm

[katanita]

Not personally affiliated with Southwark Unison, but saw this via Southwark Save our Services and am planning on going. Are others coming along to this tomorrow?

http://www.southwarkunison.co.uk/wp/?page_id=490

[Loz]

Not me. Unison's alternative to save ?33M is to "sack wasteful consultants as well the bottomless pit of private contractors. No privatization, bring services back in-house" and to spend the Council's reserves. All they are really worried about is ensuring their membership doesn't decrease.

[katanita]

Perhaps, or perhaps their members are just concerned for their jobs and the impact of cuts on society. But personally am not that interested in Unison's motives for calling this demo and I don't think it will be only Unison members there. For me, there is huge value in showing the numbers of people who care about what is happening and give the council at least pause for thought if not the ammunition to stand up to central government. Maybe naive, but I can't just stand by and watch valuable public services being taken to bits.

[Marmora Man]

Maybe naive, but many people stood by and watched as the last government inflated the cost of valuable public services, using money borrowed from the future (ie us today and our children) without improving either their efficiency and effectiveness.

I'm with Loz - Unison is after protecting jobs not services.

[peterstorm1985]

I won't be joining this march simply because I don't see the point in making a noisy (glad I don't live there) complaint, without offering a realistic solution. Southwark have to cut services because they don't have enough money. It's that simple.

Unisons's "sack wasteful consultants as well the bottomless pit of private contractors. No privatization, bring services back in-house" is easily said, but they provide no evidence of waste that could be cut out (I don't doubt there is some, but consultants are most commonly used to do short term specialist work that would otherwise need a member of staff that would be similarly expensive due to their under-utilisation), or calculations of how the financial savings can actually be achieved.

And let's not forget that all those consultants and private contractors are people too; some of them lowly paid. They just don't happen to be paying any union dues to Unison.

The only real way to ensure there are no cuts would be to massively increase council tax. March for that anyone?

[Huguenot]

I remember a recent debate where it transpired rubbish collectors were part of the 'consultants to be overthrown'.

It transpired the guys in question were both cheaper and better than the previous council lot.

I wanted better service for my money, so the union based protest was disingenuous at best.

Protest is good, when it's appropriate. The OP implied they didn't care about the details, so it doesn't seem bright.

[V511]

I speak as someone who has never been a union member and would never be, but criticising unions for trying to save their members jobs is like criticising turkeys for not voting for Christmas.

What do people think unions should be doing in these circumstances?

The more that ordinary members of the public actively engage with the broad organised movement opposed to the cuts, the greater the possibility of changing their focus, pace and depth.

This economic policy is by the governments own admission, a gamble. There is no conclusive proof that a deficit reduction policy is the correct one for the present circumstances. Economists diverge on the cuts vs stimulus debate. Is it of no coincidence that the economic policy chosen is the one that correlates exactly with the political philosophy of Conservatism which is to favour a smaller central government and public sector?

My point being that these cuts are a choice - economically and politically, they are not an inescapable essential truth.

Small steps and actions like joining demonstrations such as these, add weight and support to the voices challenging that view.