The World Development Movement is raising the alarm that a new wave of corporate trade deals threaten to increase global inequality, undermine democracy and hand public service provision to multinational companies.
Email your MP today and seek support for full transparency on the TTIP negotiations - to protect democracy, public services and the environment by opposing this aggressive new trade deal.
When the stars go off
Tall chimney-sirens sound
Daily with fast steps
Marching to the mill
Who looked backwards
And told us so lovingly
"Do not fight with anyone"
Global trade union body Public Services International (PSI) is warning that the proposed Trade in Service Agreement (TISA) will put public healthcare, broadcasting, water, transport and other services at risk. The proposed deal could make it impossible for future governments to restore public services to public control, even in cases where private service delivery has failed.
Rosa Pavanelli General Secretary of PSI said 'this is an attempt to secretly extend the most damaging parts of the infamous GATS agreement that previously sparked global protests. The aim of public services should not be to make profits for large multinational corporations. Ensuring that failed privatizations can never be reversed is free market ideology gone mad'
http://www.world-psi.org/en/psi-special-report-tisa-versus-public-services
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/louis-belanger/talks-on-liberalizing-ser_b_5224373.html
#IWMD14 ‘Every year workers and their trade unions remember the many thousands world wide that die in workplace accidents each year. We remember those workers that die of occupational diseases. Many of these accidents and deaths because of diseases can be prevented by appropriate laws, controls and sanctions. And while we remember the workers that have died, we also recall those who are responsible for putting pressure on workers to work unsafely, our employers, and those politicians that support the employers such as Commission President Barroso. He is complicit in many of these deaths and diseases by not actively pursuing a European health and safety strategy’ says EPSU in a hard hitting statement to mark International Workers Memorial Day pointing out the stark truth that the European Commission is pursuing a deregulation agenda along the same lines of the UK’s so called red tape challenge:
http://www.epsu.org/a/10390
1.
‘He who’s never known tempting distance,
the momentum of moving,
the wonder of danger,
the tipsiness of space
and the weariness of wandering -
Unmasking Austerity: Opposition and Alternatives in Europe and North America, by Dexter Whitfield, Spokesman Books (eBook)
Unmasking Austerity: Opposition and Alternatives in Europe and North America exposes how austerity policies have fuelled the fire of recession rather than stimulated growth. It identifies key lessons from organising and action against such policies, and urges a rethink of trade union, community and social movement strategies to overcome austerity. Unmasking Austerity examines the deeper causes of the financial crisis, and exposes the manufactured crises, which are being used to dismantle hard-earned labour rights and the welfare state.
A radical alternative strategy includes economic stimulus, reconstruction of public services, faster fundamental reform of banks and financial markets, the elimination of corporate welfare that enriches big business, and strategies to increase labour’s share of national income.
http://www.european-services-strategy.org.uk/unmasking-austerity/
Today marks the first anniversary of the Rana Plaza textile factory collapse when almost 1200 workers – mostly young women – were killed in the worst industrial disaster in Bangladesh’s history. In its aftermath the TUC and the international trade union movement mobilised to secure an Accord - which has now been signed by more than 150 companies that employ factory workers and ensures that 1619 factories in Bangladesh have safety inspections and work with unions to correct safety hazards. However the TUC points out that problems with Bangladesh labour law mean that workers are still facing significant repression:
http://www.tuc.org.uk/international-issues/labour-standards/tuc-tells-employers-%E2%80%98pay-now%E2%80%99-bangladesh-factory-collapse
The
rapid growth in Academy schools has led the NUT from having to deal with 153 employers in England (local authorities) to something approaching 4,000, where, on average, each NUT division (branch) has to deal with 26 separate employers. UNISON has much to learn from the NUT’s organising strategy outlined by General Secretary Christine Bower in a series of Morning Star articles coinciding with the union’s Easter conference. It is clear the at the
NUT is taking some inspiration from the example of the
2012 campaign of the Chicago Teachers Union which engaged with broad sections of its membership and reached out to communities outside the union's ranks to challenge the free market school reform agenda.
