Sunday 24th February. The Occupation banners were flapping in an
icy cold breeze outside Bramber House of Sussex University, where a
fluctuating number of students (a core group of 50 plus various supporters) had
been occupying the top floor
conference room for 17 days in protest at the proposed privatisation of
virtually every non academic function and facility on the campus.
As I live nearby, have a daughter at the University, and
work on privatisation policy for the Public and Commercial Services union
(PCS), the least I could do was offer support. In response to an e-mail, the students
invited me to give a talk on privatisation and PCS’s campaigns against
it.
The privatisation at Sussex is one small – but now
extremely visible and significant – example of a wave of outsourcing across
the public sector. In many ways
privatisation of the UK’s public services is the core of this government’s
philosophy. Austerity has little to do
with “balancing the books”. With the
loss of the UK’s AAA Credit rating, a triple dip recession and increasing
public debt, austerity is clearly an economic failure.
But the Government’s
cuts are not driven by economic necessity.
They are a political project to reduce what remains of the British
welfare state to a patchwork of disconnected services delivered by private
firms or charities. Pension “reform” will make people pay more, work longer, die
sooner, and get less on retirement. Behind that lies the core agenda to
privatise, as Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, let slip when
he said “The changes will allow
the government to forge ahead with our ambitious plans for public sector
reform, since the new pension arrangements will be substantially more
affordable to alternative providers in the private sector bidding for public
sector contracts”.
The examples of public service privatisation
are too numerous to mention. My own
union, PCS, faces a host of outsourcings across the civil service –
government debt collection (after cutting debt management staff in HMRC),
Criminal Fine Enforcement, the National Benefit Fraud Hotline (to Vertex),
JSA online (to Capita), the helpline of the Equality and Human Rights
Commission (to Sitel, which does not recognise trade unions), Crisis Loans
and Community Care Grants (to local authorities, who may then outsource this
last safety net for the destitute), and the Forensic Science Service (a
privatisation slated by the police and the CPS!). There are many more.
Trade unions campaign against these, of
course, but often in an ad hoc and defensive manner, and with an eye on the
“twin track” approach – i.e. whilst we oppose privatisation in principle, we
have to recognise it may proceed and have a duty to secure the best possible
terms for our members (TUPE etc). This
is necessary, but not likely to turn the tide of privatisation, influence
political and media debate, or synchronise with other protests. By contrast, the imaginative,
attention-grabbing strategies of the student protestors, the Occupy movement,
UK Uncut etc do have that potential.
Sussex is a good example. It began in May 2012 as a “standard”
outsourcing – the University authorities led by Vice Chancellor Michael
Farthing proposed to outsource “Total Facilities Management”, which is
basically everything including
building management and maintenance services, cleaning services,
estates management, fire safety management, grounds maintenance, laundry
services, postal services, portering services, security services, waste
disposal services, and all catering operations. This will involve transferring 235 staff
to the private sector. The plans were declared with no consultation with the
NUS and scant communication with campus unions. Representations from the
students to negotiate and discuss alternatives were ignored.
Farthing and his managers were not expecting
what happened next. On 7th
February over 300 students occupied the top floor of the Bramber Building,
the campus conference centre. See it
and subsequent mass demos on Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qEA6BCF5-s8. By the evening of 7th
February students reported that uniformed dog handlers were wandering the
campus.
The students bedded down and started a
campaign that quickly went viral.
Through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube, Indymedia etc they got the
message out about their action. Solidarity and support flooded in. Thousands have now signed their Statement of Solidarity,
including Noam Chomsky, Ken Loach, MPs Caroline Lucas (Green), John McDonnell
and Peter Hain (Labour), Will Self, Owen Jones, Jonathan Miller, Tariq Ali,
Frankie Boyle, and Mark Thomas.
Caroline Lucas addressed the students from inside the occupation - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nevevw-5eNc. The Statement is also packed
with the signatures of Sussex University academics, as well as union officers
and other sympathisers.
A rolling programme of innovative events and
benefits has kept the issue live and spirits up. Mark Steel and Josie Long have done gigs.
Owen Jones and Laurie Penny drew massive applause for barnstorming speeches. And on 8th March Noam Chomsky is
due to Skype to the students in Bramber House! The occupation has garnered support from
students, workers and academics across the globe.
It also has enormous support on campus. The first thing I noticed when I arrived
were windows across the campus plastered with yellow A4 paper, the adopted sign of support for the
occupation. The yellow A4s are
everywhere, a visible rebuke to Farthing.
Management have instructed local union reps that they are not to sign
off e-mails sent from campus PCs with a message of support, but this has had
little effect. When I arrived, lugging a big bag of PCS anti-privatisation
and anti-austerity material, the security guards placed outside the main
conference room were friendly, even holding the doors open. The students told me that they were
sympathetic and didn’t hassle them.
The main conference room was like a M.A.S.H
tent. Sleeping bags were pushed into
corners, and walls were covered with leaflets and slogans. Several laptops were set up on a desk by
the balcony. A long chaotic table run
across the top of the room, overflowing with papers, books, food, pots and
pans, and a big simmering wok. I was
well wrapped up, but still felt cold.
Some students hugged sleeping bags around themselves as we sat
chatting. In the unusually cold weather, the heating system was apparently “faulty”
and the authorities were not rushing to fix it. There were two portable heaters, which made
hardly any difference.
It was a Sunday afternoon and the constantly
rotating cohort of occupying students were down to a hard core, but we pulled
up some seats and had a good discussion.
As well as bringing them a personal message of support for their
action from PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka, I told them about PCS’s
campaigns against privatisation and the more general anti-austerity
campaigning of trade unions. They were
not naive about efforts made to separate students and campus unions and were
determined to see that did not happen.
They were very clear on the links between
specific instances of outsourcing and the general policies of all governments
since Thatcher to shift the education curriculum towards a diet of business
friendly subjects whilst de-emphasising the humanities and social sciences, with
the aim of producing well schooled future employees burdened with debt and
unaware of past struggles or social injustice. They pointed to a new building
opposite – once intended for
Sociology, it now taught Business Studies.
When I left they were preparing for another
night on the floor of the conference centre.
What impressed me most was that they do not have to do this. Most
outsourced services will still be delivered, though probably not as well. The
transferred jobs are not theirs. But they are there to defend the principle
of an integrated higher education community that looks after all on campus
(students and staff), against that of fragmented services delivered for
corporate profit on the backs of outsourced and de-unionised workers.
Seeing the occupation for myself, I was
reminded of the end of the appropriately titled Appeal to the Young by
the anarchist writer Peter Kropotkin – “all of us together, we who suffer and are insulted daily, we are a
multitude whom no man can number, we are the ocean that can embrace and
swallow up all else. When we have but the will to do it, that very moment
will Justice be done: that very instant the tyrants of the Earth shall bite
the dust”.
John Medhurst PCS (personal capacity)
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