Anti-Co-Op/Atos Contract picket outside
the Co-Op Bank and the end of the picket at the Co-Op supermarket.
The placards say, 'The Co-operative not-so-good for everyone'.
On Thursday 22nd a dozen
people, including members of benefit claimants' groups Black Triangle
and the Crutch Collective, Clydeside Industrial Workers Of The World,
Glasgow Anarchist Federation, Glasgow Solidarity Federation as well
as other individuals took part in the hour long picket of the Co-Op
Bank and supermarket on the same street in central Glasgow.
We gave out leaflets to Co-Op customers
and the hundreds of people going pass on their way home from work.
The leaflet highlighted the Co-Op's four year occupational health
contract with Atos. Atos continue to make huge profits by continuing
to assess most sick and disabled benefit claimants as fit for work,
ignoring contrary medical evidence, to comply with Government targets
for benefit cuts. The cuts are being imposed to make the poor pay
again for the latest crisis in capitalism caused by the rich. We
asked people to contact the Co-Op to tell the company, that sells
itself as ethical, that they will be losing their custom until they
cancel their contract with Atos.
Most interest came from older women who
perhaps know from experience what the Co-Op is really about. Maybe
they know the reality of the Co-Op's claim that they have always been
ethical, because they have always provided affordable prices to those
in need. In past generations the Co-Op mostly employed women. Their
exploitative employment practices are still the same as any other
business. Historically the Co-Op has played a significant role in
the daily lives of many working class people. But it's contribution
to working class emancipation has been marginal at best and at worst
has added to illusion that such an aim can be achieved within the
capitalist system. Like any other business it is open to the
pressures that come with the fluctuations of the marketplace and has
made workers redundant when the markets are down. Like any other
bosses the Co-Op management have made older workers redundant, using
the excuse that they would be incapable of coping with the
introduction of new technology, that was never introduced, because
managers had nothing better to do than manage workers like cogs in a
machine.
Co-Op management tried to placate us
with more empty words about ethics, rather than taking action against
Atos. They have refused to rule out Atos from the bidding process
for their new occupational contract, that starts next year, despite
the unethical behaviour of Atos being well documented. If the Co-Op
were interested in ethics they would have already publicly rejected
an Atos bid. Their decision on who to award the new contract to will
be based primarily on cheapness even though the profitable Co-Op do
not have to do this out of economic necessity.
Atos and the police have been
monitoring anti-Atos activity to try to manage dissent towards
ineffectiveness. Now the Co-Op are up to it as well to help their
Atos partners. The communications from Co-Op management, the hiring
of extra security staff and the ludicrous number of police present
for the picket show that the Co-Op are extremely worried about their
ethical image, no matter how fake, even from the dent that can be
caused to it by a relatively small group and one action. We must be
doing something right. Just imagine what actions against the Atos
contract by larger groups in more that one place could do.
Claimants Resisting Unfair Treatment
Cuts and Harassment
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