Cost-cutting plan targets hundreds of US Mail processing facilities
The U.S. Postal Service could close or merge with nearby locations in the next year as part of a three-year, $15 billion cost-cutting plan. The consolidations would affect four processing centers in Maryland: Cumberland, Easton, Gaithersburg and Waldorf. The Virginia sites are Lynchburg, Norfolk and Roanoke.
The cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service has announced plans to eliminate dozens of processing centers. If the plan is enacted, parts of some states would have their mail sorted in another state. That possibility rattled Sens. Barbara A. Mikulski and Benjamin L. Cardin, both Maryland Democrats, who blasted plans to move some sorting responsibilities from Eastern Maryland to Delaware.“There is absolutely no statistical or empirical data to justify consideration of this idea,” they said in a letter sent Thursday to Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe.
But in an interview, Donahoe said his advisers spent the past few months studying the feasibility of shuttering as many as 264 sites by reviewing network delivery models. The study determined that six sites would require further review, 35 would remain open and the affected sites would start closing or merging at some point after a moratorium on closures ends in mid-May. Donahoe said the consolidation plans remain “very fluid.” “None of this is set in stone,” he said. Making the announcement this week, he said, would permit affected workers to begin weighing their options. “Some people will retire, some may become letter carriers, some maintenance employees may be vehicle mechanics, depending on how things work,” he said. “We are still awaiting some decisions from a legislative perspective that may lead to some changes. But if we don’t get legislation, we would have to start closing locations.”
Legislative action is expected next month when the Senate begins consideration of a bipartisan reform plan that would permit the Postal Service to close thousands of post offices, end Saturday mail delivery and recoup billions of dollars paid into federal and postal retirement accounts.
Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), who led a push to delay any further postal consolidations until May, called the new plans “deeply flawed” because closing processing centers would further slow mail delivery.
“Slowing down mail delivery service will result in less business and less revenue,” Sanders said. The Postal Service hopes to eventually operate a delivery network with fewer than 200 processing facilities, and closing the 223 sites could mean the loss of as many as 35,000 mail processing jobs, mostly through attrition, as part of a broader goal of trimming 150,000 positions by next year. The cutbacks also mean the Postal Service would no longer be able to guarantee overnight delivery of some first-class mail....(edited)
Cliff Guffey, president of the American Postal Workers Union, encouraged his members to continue pressing lawmakers and customers to voice their opposition to the changes.“We face an uphill battle, so it is crucial that union members continue to make their voices heard,” Guffey said
ed.okeefe@washingtonpost.com
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
12 Faults in New Mortgage Deal
The Top Twelve Reasons Why You
Should Hate the Mortgage Settlement
by Eve Smith "Naked Capitalism"
1. We’ve now set a price for forgeries and fabricating documents. It’s $2000 per loan. This is a rounding error compared to the chain of title problem these systematic practices were designed to circumvent. The cost is also trivial in comparison to the average loan, which is roughly $180k, so the settlement represents about 1% of loan balances. It is less than the price of the title insurance that banks failed to get when they transferred the loans to the trust. It is a fraction of the cost of the legal expenses when foreclosures are challenged. It’s a great deal for the banks because no one is at any of the servicers going to jail for forgery and the banks have set the upper bound of the cost of riding roughshod over 300 years of real estate law.
2. That $26 billion is actually $5 billion of bank money and the rest is your money. The mortgage principal writedowns are guaranteed to come almost entirely from securitized loans, which means from investors, which in turn means taxpayers via Fannie and Freddie, pension funds, insurers, and 401 (k)s. Refis of performing loans also reduce income to those very same investors.8. If the new Federal task force were intended to be serious, this deal would have not have been settled. You never settle before investigating. It’s a bad idea to settle obvious, widespread wrongdoing on the cheap. You use the stuff that is easy to prove to gather information and secure cooperation on the stuff that is harder to prove. In Missouri and Nevada, the robosigning investigation led to criminal charges against agents of the servicers. But even though these companies were acting at the express direction and approval of the services, no individuals or entities higher up the food chain will face any sort of meaningful charges.
3. That $5 billion divided among the big banks wouldn’t even represent a significant quarterly hit. Freddie and Fannie putbacks to the major banks have been running at that level each quarter.
4. That $20 billion actually makes bank second liens sounder, so this deal is a stealth bailout that strengthens bank balance sheets at the expense of the broader public.
5. The enforcement is a joke. The first layer of supervision is the banks reporting on themselves. The framework is similar to that of the OCC consent decrees implemented last year, which Adam Levitin and yours truly, among others, decried as regulatory theater.
6. The past history of servicer consent decrees shows the servicers all fail to comply. Why? Servicer records and systems are terrible in the best of times, and their systems and fee structures aren’t set up to handle much in the way of delinquencies. As Tom Adams has pointed out in earlier posts, servicer behavior is predictable when their portfolios are hit with a high level of delinquencies and defaults: they cheat in all sorts of ways to reduce their losses.
7. The cave-in Nevada and Arizona on the Countrywide settlement suit is a special gift for Bank of America, who is by far the worst offender in the chain of title disaster (since, according to sworn testimony of its own employee in Kemp v. Countrywide, Countrywide failed to comply with trust delivery requirements). This move proves that failing to comply with a consent degree has no consequences but will merely be rolled into a new consent degree which will also fail to be enforced. These cases also alleged HAMP violations as consumer fraud violations and could have gotten costly and emboldened other states to file similar suits not just against Countrywide but other servicers, so it was useful to the other banks as well.
9. There is plenty of evidence of widespread abuses that appear not to be on the attorney generals’ or media’s radar, such as servicer driven foreclosures and looting of investors’ funds via impermissible and inflated charges. While no serious probe was undertaken, even the limited or peripheral investigations show massive failures (60% of documents had errors in AGs/Fed’s pathetically small sample). Similarly, the US Trustee’s office found widespread evidence of significant servicer errors in bankruptcy-related filings, such as inflated and bogus fees, and even substantial, completely made up charges. Yet the services and banks will suffer no real consequences for these abuses.As we’ve said before, this settlement is yet another raw demonstration of who wields power in America, and it isn’t you and me. It’s bad enough to see these negotiations come to their predictable, sorry outcome. It adds insult to injury to see some try to depict it as a win for long suffering, still abused homeowners.
10. A deal on robosiginging serves to cover up the much deeper chain of title problem. And don’t get too excited about the New York, Massachusetts, and Delaware MERS suits. They put pressure on banks to clean up this monstrous mess only if the AGs go through to trial and get tough penalties. The banks will want to settle their way out of that too. And even if these cases do go to trial and produce significant victories for the AGs, they still do not address the problem of failures to transfer notes correctly.
11. Don’t bet on a deus ex machina in terms of the new Federal Foreclosure Task Force to improve this picture much. If you think Schneiderman, as a co-chairman who already has a full time day job in New York, is going to outfox a bunch of DC insiders who are part of the problem, I have a bridge I’d like to sell to you.
12. We’ll now have to listen to banks and their sycophant defenders declaring victory despite being wrong on the law and the facts. They will proceed to marginalize and write off criticisms of the servicing practices that hurt homeowners and investors and are devastating communities. But the problems will fester and the housing market will continue to suffer. Investors in mortgage-backed securities, who know that services have been screwing them for years, will be hung out to dry and will likely never return to a private MBS market, since the problems won’t ever be fixed. This settlement has not only revealed the residential mortgage market to be too big to fail, but puts it on long term, perhaps permanent, government life support.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
GOP Strangles NLRB
(GOP) Crippling the Right to Organize
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
UNLESS something changes in Washington, American workers will, on New Year’s Day, effectively lose their right to be represented by a union.
Two of the five seats on the National Labor Relations Board, which protects collective bargaining, are vacant, and on Dec. 31, the term of Craig Becker, a labor lawyer whom President Obama named to the board last year through a recess appointment, will expire. Without a quorum, the Supreme Court ruled last year, the board cannot decide cases.
What would this mean?
Workers illegally fired for union organizing won’t be reinstated with back pay. Employers will be able to get away with interfering with Union Elections. Perhaps most important, employers won’t have to recognize unions despite a majority vote by workers. Without the board to enforce Labor Law, most companies will not voluntarily deal with unions.
If this nightmare comes to pass, it will represent the culmination of three decades of Republican resistance to the Labor Board — an unwillingness to recognize the fundamental right of workers to band together, if they wish, to seek better pay and working conditions. But Mr. Obama is also partly to blame; in trying to install partisan stalwarts on the board, as his predecessors did, he is all but guaranteeing that the impasse will continue. On Wednesday, he announced his intention to nominate two pro-union lawyers to the board, though there is no realistic chance that either can gain Senate confirmation anytime soon.
For decades after its creation in 1935, the Labor Board was a relatively fair arbiter between labor and capital. It has protected workers’ right to organize by, among other things, overseeing elections that decide on union representation. Employers may not engage in unfair labor practices, like intimidating organizers and discriminating against union members. Unions are prohibited, too, from doing things like improperly pressuring workers to join.
The system began to run into trouble in the 1970s. Employers found loopholes that enabled them to delay the board’s administrative proceedings, sometimes for years. Reforms intended to speed up the board’s resolution of disputes have repeatedly foundered in Congress.
The precipitous decline of organized labor — principally a result of economic forces, not legal ones — cemented Unions’ dependence on the board, despite its imperfections. Meanwhile, business interests, represented by an increasingly conservative Republican Party, became more assertive in fighting unions.
The Board became dysfunctional. Traditionally, members were career civil servants or distinguished lawyers and academics from across the country. But starting in the Reagan era, the board’s composition began to tilt toward Washington insiders like former Congressional staff members and former lobbyists.
Starting with a compromise that allowed my confirmation in 1994, the Board’s members and general counsel have been nominated in groups. In contrast to the old system, the new “batching” meant that nominees were named as a package acceptable to both parties. As a result, the board came to be filled with rigid ideologues.
Under President George W. Bush, the board all but stopped using its discretion to obtain court orders against employers before the board’s own, convoluted, administrative process was completed — a power that, used fairly, is a crucial protection for workers. In 2007, in what has been called the September Massacre, the board issued rulings that made it easier for employers to block Union organizing and harder for illegally fired employees to collect back pay. Democratic senators then blocked Mr. Bush from making recess appointments to the board, as President Bill Clinton had done. For 27 months, until March 2010, the board operated with only two members; in June 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that it needed at least three to issue decisions.
Under Mr. Obama, the Board has begun to take enforcement more seriously, by pursuing the court orders that the board under Mr. Bush had abandoned. Sadly, though, the board has also been plagued by unnecessary controversy. In April, the acting general counsel issued a complaint over Boeing’s decision to build airplanes at a nonunion plant in South Carolina, following a dispute with Boeing machinists in Washington State. Although the complaint was dropped last week after the machinists reached a new contract agreement with Boeing, the controversy reignited Republican threats to cut financing for the board.
In my view, the complaint against Boeing was legally flawed, but the threats to cut the board’s budget represent unacceptable political interference. The shenanigans continue: last month, before the board tentatively approved new proposals that would expedite unionization elections, the sole Republican member threatened to resign, which would have again deprived the board of a quorum.
Mr. Obama needs to make this an election-year issue; if the board goes dark in January, he should draw attention to Congressional obstructionism during the campaign and defend the board’s role in protecting employees and employers. A new vision for labor-management cooperation must include not only a more powerful board, but also a less partisan one, with members who are independent and neutral experts. Otherwise, the partisan morass will continue, and American workers will suffer.
By William B. Gould, NY Times
William B. Gould IV, a law professor at Stanford, was chairman of the National Labor Relations Board from 1994 to 1998.
Editor: This Board member thinks there are "neutral Labor experts"?
After the Rethuglian attack on Labor Unions since 1970, there are only
Union Busting Experts working for management, and rank and files'
Union Building Experts. Obama must appoint Commissioners during
the Recess.
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
UNLESS something changes in Washington, American workers will, on New Year’s Day, effectively lose their right to be represented by a union.
Two of the five seats on the National Labor Relations Board, which protects collective bargaining, are vacant, and on Dec. 31, the term of Craig Becker, a labor lawyer whom President Obama named to the board last year through a recess appointment, will expire. Without a quorum, the Supreme Court ruled last year, the board cannot decide cases.
What would this mean?
Workers illegally fired for union organizing won’t be reinstated with back pay. Employers will be able to get away with interfering with Union Elections. Perhaps most important, employers won’t have to recognize unions despite a majority vote by workers. Without the board to enforce Labor Law, most companies will not voluntarily deal with unions.
If this nightmare comes to pass, it will represent the culmination of three decades of Republican resistance to the Labor Board — an unwillingness to recognize the fundamental right of workers to band together, if they wish, to seek better pay and working conditions. But Mr. Obama is also partly to blame; in trying to install partisan stalwarts on the board, as his predecessors did, he is all but guaranteeing that the impasse will continue. On Wednesday, he announced his intention to nominate two pro-union lawyers to the board, though there is no realistic chance that either can gain Senate confirmation anytime soon.
For decades after its creation in 1935, the Labor Board was a relatively fair arbiter between labor and capital. It has protected workers’ right to organize by, among other things, overseeing elections that decide on union representation. Employers may not engage in unfair labor practices, like intimidating organizers and discriminating against union members. Unions are prohibited, too, from doing things like improperly pressuring workers to join.
The system began to run into trouble in the 1970s. Employers found loopholes that enabled them to delay the board’s administrative proceedings, sometimes for years. Reforms intended to speed up the board’s resolution of disputes have repeatedly foundered in Congress.
The precipitous decline of organized labor — principally a result of economic forces, not legal ones — cemented Unions’ dependence on the board, despite its imperfections. Meanwhile, business interests, represented by an increasingly conservative Republican Party, became more assertive in fighting unions.
The Board became dysfunctional. Traditionally, members were career civil servants or distinguished lawyers and academics from across the country. But starting in the Reagan era, the board’s composition began to tilt toward Washington insiders like former Congressional staff members and former lobbyists.
Starting with a compromise that allowed my confirmation in 1994, the Board’s members and general counsel have been nominated in groups. In contrast to the old system, the new “batching” meant that nominees were named as a package acceptable to both parties. As a result, the board came to be filled with rigid ideologues.
Under President George W. Bush, the board all but stopped using its discretion to obtain court orders against employers before the board’s own, convoluted, administrative process was completed — a power that, used fairly, is a crucial protection for workers. In 2007, in what has been called the September Massacre, the board issued rulings that made it easier for employers to block Union organizing and harder for illegally fired employees to collect back pay. Democratic senators then blocked Mr. Bush from making recess appointments to the board, as President Bill Clinton had done. For 27 months, until March 2010, the board operated with only two members; in June 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that it needed at least three to issue decisions.
Under Mr. Obama, the Board has begun to take enforcement more seriously, by pursuing the court orders that the board under Mr. Bush had abandoned. Sadly, though, the board has also been plagued by unnecessary controversy. In April, the acting general counsel issued a complaint over Boeing’s decision to build airplanes at a nonunion plant in South Carolina, following a dispute with Boeing machinists in Washington State. Although the complaint was dropped last week after the machinists reached a new contract agreement with Boeing, the controversy reignited Republican threats to cut financing for the board.
In my view, the complaint against Boeing was legally flawed, but the threats to cut the board’s budget represent unacceptable political interference. The shenanigans continue: last month, before the board tentatively approved new proposals that would expedite unionization elections, the sole Republican member threatened to resign, which would have again deprived the board of a quorum.
Mr. Obama needs to make this an election-year issue; if the board goes dark in January, he should draw attention to Congressional obstructionism during the campaign and defend the board’s role in protecting employees and employers. A new vision for labor-management cooperation must include not only a more powerful board, but also a less partisan one, with members who are independent and neutral experts. Otherwise, the partisan morass will continue, and American workers will suffer.
By William B. Gould, NY Times
William B. Gould IV, a law professor at Stanford, was chairman of the National Labor Relations Board from 1994 to 1998.
Editor: This Board member thinks there are "neutral Labor experts"?
After the Rethuglian attack on Labor Unions since 1970, there are only
Union Busting Experts working for management, and rank and files'
Union Building Experts. Obama must appoint Commissioners during
the Recess.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Worker-Owner Co-Ops Spreading
Worker-Owners of America, Unite!
Ross MacDonald
By GAR ALPEROVITZ
Published: December 14, 2011
THE Occupy Wall Street protests have come and mostly gone, and whether they continue to have an impact or not, they have brought an astounding fact to the public’s attention: a mere 1 percent of Americans own just under half of the country’s financial assets and other investments. America, it would seem, is less equitable than ever, thanks to our no-holds-barred capitalist system.
But at another level, something different has been quietly brewing in recent decades: more and more Americans are involved in co-ops, worker-owned companies and other alternatives to the traditional capitalist model. We may, in fact, be moving toward a hybrid system, something different from both traditional capitalism and socialism, without anyone even noticing.
Some 130 million Americans, for example, now participate in the ownership of co-op businesses and credit unions. More than 13 million Americans have become worker-owners of more than 11,000 employee-owned companies, six million more than belong to private-sector unions.
And worker-owned companies make a difference. In Cleveland, for instance, an integrated group of worker-owned companies, supported in part by the purchasing power of large hospitals and universities, has taken the lead in local solar-panel installation, “green” institutional laundry services and a commercial hydroponic greenhouse capable of producing more than three million heads of lettuce a year.
Local and state governments are likewise changing the nature of American capitalism. Almost half the states manage venture capital efforts, taking partial ownership in new businesses. Calpers, California’s public pension authority, helps finance local development projects; in Alaska, state oil revenues provide each resident with dividends from public investment strategies as a matter of right; in Alabama, public pension investing has long focused on state economic development.
Moreover, this year some 14 states began to consider legislation to create public Banks similar to the longstanding Bank of North Dakota; 15 more began to consider some form of single-payer or public-option health care plan.
Some of these developments, like rural co-ops and credit unions, have their origins in the New Deal era; some go back even further, to the Grange movement of the 1880s. The most widespread form of worker ownership stems from 1970s legislation that provided tax benefits to owners of small businesses who sold to their employees when they retired. Reagan-era domestic-spending cuts spurred nonprofits to form social enterprises that used profits to help finance their missions.
Recently, growing economic pain has provided a further catalyst. The Cleveland cooperatives are an answer to urban decay that traditional job training, small-business and other development strategies simply do not touch. They also build on a 30-year history of Ohio employee-ownership experiments traceable to the collapse of the steel industry in the 1970s and ’80s.
Further policy changes are likely. In Indiana, the Republican state treasurer, Richard Mourdock, is using state deposits to lower interest costs to employee-owned companies, a precedent others states could easily follow. Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, is developing legislation to support worker-owned strategies like that of Cleveland in other cities. And several policy analysts have proposed expanding existing government “set aside” procurement programs for small businesses to include co-ops and other democratized enterprises.
If such cooperative efforts continue to increase in number, scale and sophistication, they may suggest the outlines, however tentative, of something very different from both traditional, corporate-dominated capitalism and traditional socialism.
It’s easy to overestimate the possibilities of a new system. These efforts are minor compared with the power of Wall Street banks and the other giants of the American economy. On the other hand, it is precisely these institutions that have created enormous economic problems and fueled public anger.
During the populist and progressive eras, a decades-long buildup of public anger led to major policy shifts, many of which simply took existing ideas from local and state efforts to the national stage. Furthermore, we have already seen how, in moments of crisis, the nationalization of auto giants like General Motors and Chrysler can suddenly become a reality. When the next financial breakdown occurs, huge injections of public money may well lead to de facto takeovers of major banks.
And while the American public has long supported the capitalist model, that, too, may be changing. In 2009 a Rasmussen poll reported that Americans under 30 years old were “essentially evenly divided” as to whether they preferred “capitalism” or “socialism.”
A long era of economic stagnation could well lead to a profound national debate about an America that is dominated neither by giant corporations nor by socialist bureaucrats. It would be a fitting next direction for a troubled nation that has long styled itself as of, by and for the people.
But at another level, something different has been quietly brewing in recent decades: more and more Americans are involved in co-ops, worker-owned companies and other alternatives to the traditional capitalist model. We may, in fact, be moving toward a hybrid system, something different from both traditional capitalism and socialism, without anyone even noticing.
Some 130 million Americans, for example, now participate in the ownership of co-op businesses and credit unions. More than 13 million Americans have become worker-owners of more than 11,000 employee-owned companies, six million more than belong to private-sector unions.
And worker-owned companies make a difference. In Cleveland, for instance, an integrated group of worker-owned companies, supported in part by the purchasing power of large hospitals and universities, has taken the lead in local solar-panel installation, “green” institutional laundry services and a commercial hydroponic greenhouse capable of producing more than three million heads of lettuce a year.
Local and state governments are likewise changing the nature of American capitalism. Almost half the states manage venture capital efforts, taking partial ownership in new businesses. Calpers, California’s public pension authority, helps finance local development projects; in Alaska, state oil revenues provide each resident with dividends from public investment strategies as a matter of right; in Alabama, public pension investing has long focused on state economic development.
Moreover, this year some 14 states began to consider legislation to create public Banks similar to the longstanding Bank of North Dakota; 15 more began to consider some form of single-payer or public-option health care plan.
Some of these developments, like rural co-ops and credit unions, have their origins in the New Deal era; some go back even further, to the Grange movement of the 1880s. The most widespread form of worker ownership stems from 1970s legislation that provided tax benefits to owners of small businesses who sold to their employees when they retired. Reagan-era domestic-spending cuts spurred nonprofits to form social enterprises that used profits to help finance their missions.
Recently, growing economic pain has provided a further catalyst. The Cleveland cooperatives are an answer to urban decay that traditional job training, small-business and other development strategies simply do not touch. They also build on a 30-year history of Ohio employee-ownership experiments traceable to the collapse of the steel industry in the 1970s and ’80s.
Further policy changes are likely. In Indiana, the Republican state treasurer, Richard Mourdock, is using state deposits to lower interest costs to employee-owned companies, a precedent others states could easily follow. Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, is developing legislation to support worker-owned strategies like that of Cleveland in other cities. And several policy analysts have proposed expanding existing government “set aside” procurement programs for small businesses to include co-ops and other democratized enterprises.
If such cooperative efforts continue to increase in number, scale and sophistication, they may suggest the outlines, however tentative, of something very different from both traditional, corporate-dominated capitalism and traditional socialism.
It’s easy to overestimate the possibilities of a new system. These efforts are minor compared with the power of Wall Street banks and the other giants of the American economy. On the other hand, it is precisely these institutions that have created enormous economic problems and fueled public anger.
During the populist and progressive eras, a decades-long buildup of public anger led to major policy shifts, many of which simply took existing ideas from local and state efforts to the national stage. Furthermore, we have already seen how, in moments of crisis, the nationalization of auto giants like General Motors and Chrysler can suddenly become a reality. When the next financial breakdown occurs, huge injections of public money may well lead to de facto takeovers of major banks.
And while the American public has long supported the capitalist model, that, too, may be changing. In 2009 a Rasmussen poll reported that Americans under 30 years old were “essentially evenly divided” as to whether they preferred “capitalism” or “socialism.”
A long era of economic stagnation could well lead to a profound national debate about an America that is dominated neither by giant corporations nor by socialist bureaucrats. It would be a fitting next direction for a troubled nation that has long styled itself as of, by and for the people.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
London Strike Spreads to 1000 Cities
'Biggest strike in a generation' for Britain's public sector workers
More than two thirds of British schools were shut on Wednesday as an estimated two million public sector workers staged a one-day walkout in a row over pension reforms.
Unions claimed the strike, which saw thousands of hospital operations cancelled and caused delays at British airports, was the biggest industrial action in the UK for more than thirty years.
Employees responsible for delivering many of Britain's public services are angry over plans to raise their retirement age to 67 and force workers to increase their monthly pension contributions.
The government insists that workers must face up to a stark new reality. The British economy is barely growing and is feeling the effects of the eurozone crisis, not to mention the UK's own debt problems.
Ministers claim that workers in the public sector, which includes Britain's largest employer, the National Health Service (NHS), have seen their standard of living rise dramatically over the last ten years, while those on the private sector payroll have seen average incomes fall.
Public opinion divided
But some workers say the government has exaggerated just how generous public sector pensions are, in an attempt to split public opinion.
"The average pension for people working in the NHS is 8,000 pounds (9,340 euros; $12,554) a year," said Jackie Hall, a child psychotherapist for the NHS. "It's made out as if the rest of the country is financing something which is exorbitant. But it's actually something very modest and really well earned," said Hall, who joined Wednesday's march through central London with her colleagues.
More than 25,000 people turned out for the rally on the banks of the River Thames, just a short walk from London's famous Houses of Parliament.
Union officials hoped that despite battling a coalition government determined to cut Britain's enormous public deficit, the one-day strike would help force officials to rethink their offer.
"We've been in negotiations with the government since January," said Karen Jennings, assistant deputy secretary of Unison, Britain's largest public sector union. "It was only the day before we announced our ballot that the government went to parliament and made some concessions," she added.
Economic outlook worsens
But in a warning that unions may be too optimistic, UK Chancellor George Osborne told parliament less than 24 hours earlier, that additional austerity measures were necessary to bring down Britain's debt levels.
Public sector workers, he said, could expect just a one percent annual pay increase between now and 2014. Osborne said he had no option but to bring forward plans to increase the retirement age.
Workers attending the London rally say morale in many parts of the UK's public sector is at an all-time low.
"I'm now facing a time when I'm reconsidering my career because I'd be much better off in the private sector," said Judith McAteer, a teacher from the London borough of Lewisham.
"Conditions are getting worse and the only thing you had to look forward to was a decent pension. But that's being taken away from us as well," added McAteer who moved to the British capital from Northern Ireland because of a lack of employment prospects.
Despite those worries, analysts warn that Britain's public sector faces even tougher times. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that another 330,000 jobs will have to be lost before 2015 in addition to nearly half a million positions already earmarked to be cut.
Women bear the brunt
Unions say that women will be disproportionately affected by the reforms as many are employed as nurses, teachers and social workers.
"Women are looking after people every day of the week. They're the cohesive side of society," said Karen Jennings from the union Unison. "I think people, and the female voter in particular, will make sure that the government rues the day if they don't concede," she warned.
Unlike many health workers, Britain's 400,000 nurses did not take part in the strike. Nurses unions, who are due to ballot their members about industrial action in January, are equally worried about the government's plans to increase pension contributions.
Union leaders says it is the equivalent of a three percent tax increase, at a time when inflation in the UK has reached more than five percent and Britain's sales tax was raised to 20 percent.
"What the government is saying to us is 'you can pay more, work longer and get a lot less at the end of it'," said Faith Thornhill, who works at University College Hospital in London.
The nurse, who joined a picket line for striking workers warned ministers that they may end up with a much bigger pension bill: "A lot of us can't afford the increase and may have to leave the scheme," said Thornhill. "If that happens and the scheme collapses, we'll be more reliant on our state pension and it will cost the government more."
Minimal Disruption
More than a thousand similar rallies were held all over the UK. An estimated 20,000 people marched through the streets of Manchester, another 10,000 protested in Glasgow.
Despite fears that the one-day strike would bring much of Britain to a standstill, commentators said the disruption was minimal. Border officials arranged alternative cover for customs officers at UK ports and airports. Contingency plans at hospitals and local government offices helped keep services running.
About a third of council staff in England and Wales were not at work on Wednesday.
Prime Minister David Cameron played down the impact of the walk-out described the strike as a "damp squib" while Trades Union Congress general secretary Brendan Barber said the strike was "a terrific success".
Author: Nik Martin
Editor: Joanna Impey
<http://mobile.dw-world.de/english/ua.2/mobile.A-15569126-1433.html>
More than two thirds of British schools were shut on Wednesday as an estimated two million public sector workers staged a one-day walkout in a row over pension reforms.
Unions claimed the strike, which saw thousands of hospital operations cancelled and caused delays at British airports, was the biggest industrial action in the UK for more than thirty years.
Employees responsible for delivering many of Britain's public services are angry over plans to raise their retirement age to 67 and force workers to increase their monthly pension contributions.
The government insists that workers must face up to a stark new reality. The British economy is barely growing and is feeling the effects of the eurozone crisis, not to mention the UK's own debt problems.
Ministers claim that workers in the public sector, which includes Britain's largest employer, the National Health Service (NHS), have seen their standard of living rise dramatically over the last ten years, while those on the private sector payroll have seen average incomes fall.
Public opinion divided
But some workers say the government has exaggerated just how generous public sector pensions are, in an attempt to split public opinion.
"The average pension for people working in the NHS is 8,000 pounds (9,340 euros; $12,554) a year," said Jackie Hall, a child psychotherapist for the NHS. "It's made out as if the rest of the country is financing something which is exorbitant. But it's actually something very modest and really well earned," said Hall, who joined Wednesday's march through central London with her colleagues.
More than 25,000 people turned out for the rally on the banks of the River Thames, just a short walk from London's famous Houses of Parliament.
Union officials hoped that despite battling a coalition government determined to cut Britain's enormous public deficit, the one-day strike would help force officials to rethink their offer.
"We've been in negotiations with the government since January," said Karen Jennings, assistant deputy secretary of Unison, Britain's largest public sector union. "It was only the day before we announced our ballot that the government went to parliament and made some concessions," she added.
Economic outlook worsens
But in a warning that unions may be too optimistic, UK Chancellor George Osborne told parliament less than 24 hours earlier, that additional austerity measures were necessary to bring down Britain's debt levels.
Public sector workers, he said, could expect just a one percent annual pay increase between now and 2014. Osborne said he had no option but to bring forward plans to increase the retirement age.
Workers attending the London rally say morale in many parts of the UK's public sector is at an all-time low.
"I'm now facing a time when I'm reconsidering my career because I'd be much better off in the private sector," said Judith McAteer, a teacher from the London borough of Lewisham.
"Conditions are getting worse and the only thing you had to look forward to was a decent pension. But that's being taken away from us as well," added McAteer who moved to the British capital from Northern Ireland because of a lack of employment prospects.
Despite those worries, analysts warn that Britain's public sector faces even tougher times. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that another 330,000 jobs will have to be lost before 2015 in addition to nearly half a million positions already earmarked to be cut.
Women bear the brunt
Unions say that women will be disproportionately affected by the reforms as many are employed as nurses, teachers and social workers.
"Women are looking after people every day of the week. They're the cohesive side of society," said Karen Jennings from the union Unison. "I think people, and the female voter in particular, will make sure that the government rues the day if they don't concede," she warned.
Unlike many health workers, Britain's 400,000 nurses did not take part in the strike. Nurses unions, who are due to ballot their members about industrial action in January, are equally worried about the government's plans to increase pension contributions.
Union leaders says it is the equivalent of a three percent tax increase, at a time when inflation in the UK has reached more than five percent and Britain's sales tax was raised to 20 percent.
"What the government is saying to us is 'you can pay more, work longer and get a lot less at the end of it'," said Faith Thornhill, who works at University College Hospital in London.
The nurse, who joined a picket line for striking workers warned ministers that they may end up with a much bigger pension bill: "A lot of us can't afford the increase and may have to leave the scheme," said Thornhill. "If that happens and the scheme collapses, we'll be more reliant on our state pension and it will cost the government more."
Minimal Disruption
More than a thousand similar rallies were held all over the UK. An estimated 20,000 people marched through the streets of Manchester, another 10,000 protested in Glasgow.
Despite fears that the one-day strike would bring much of Britain to a standstill, commentators said the disruption was minimal. Border officials arranged alternative cover for customs officers at UK ports and airports. Contingency plans at hospitals and local government offices helped keep services running.
About a third of council staff in England and Wales were not at work on Wednesday.
Prime Minister David Cameron played down the impact of the walk-out described the strike as a "damp squib" while Trades Union Congress general secretary Brendan Barber said the strike was "a terrific success".
Author: Nik Martin
Editor: Joanna Impey
<http://mobile.dw-world.de/english/ua.2/mobile.A-15569126-1433.html>
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Students Back Workers' General Strike
UK Students begin wave of occupations to back public sector strikes
David Willetts abandons Cambridge University speech as protesters take over lecture hall to oppose £9,000 tuition fees. Occupied lecture halls and buildings would act as bases for students to plan further action backing strikes by about 3 million public sector workers – expected to be the biggest day of industrial action since the winter of discontent in 1979.
Police at the student protest over university tuition fees and public sector cuts in London on 9 November, when the Met warned baton rounds could be used.
Students are planning a wave of campus occupations and protests in the run-up to nationwide strikes next week, the Guardian has learned.
Occupations called by the student group National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) ahead of the trade union day of action on 30 November have already happened at Birmingham and Cambridge universities.
Higher education minister David Willetts had to abandon a speech on the Idea of University on Tuesday night after students heckled him from the stage and began occupying Cambridge's largest lecture hall.
The occupations, in opposition to the government's white paper on education reform, which would formalise the £9,000 rise in tuition fees, are expected to break out across the country.
NCAFC said that occupied lecture halls and buildings would act as bases for students to plan further action backing strikes by about 3 million public sector workers – expected to be the biggest day of industrial action since the winter of discontent in 1979.
The group's co-founder, Michael Chessum, said: "It's all terribly unpredictable. We may well see actions and occupations popping up all other the country today and in the coming week."
In front of an audience of more than a hundred, Willetts was forced to sit in a corner of the stage of Lady Mitchell Hall, as students read out a prepared statement.
Student James Jackson said activists from Cambridge Defend Education read out a prepared statement which was repeated sentence by sentence by other demonstrators in the audience – a technique used by Occupy activists.
Making reference to recent student protests in which the Metropolitan police said baton rounds could be used to prevent disorder, the statement said: "You can threaten to shoot us with rubber bullets; you can arrest us; you can imprison us; you can criminalise our dissent; you can blight a hundred thousand lives … but you cannot break us because we are more resolute, more numerous, and more determined than you … Go home, David."
After sitting on the stage, they eventually forced the minister's departure.
"At first Willetts seemed to want to carry on," Jackson said. "After the second minute he sat in a corner then [the organisers] closed the blinds on him, still waiting for us to stop and leave. When we didn't, I think he decided it was time for him to go and so he just left."
Jackson, 21, who is reading art history, said that after Willetts' departure the group occupied the hall and were now receiving support from academics who were bringing them food and supplies.
Silkie Carlo, 22, studying psychology, who was also part of the action said : "Cambridge is serious about defending education. Particularly from an institution that is seen as upper middle class, the most privileged students, it's important that we understand that the rise in fees affect us and the progress of the university. We don't want to study in that kind of place."
In the early hours of Wedenesday, Birmingham students occupied an abandoned gatehouse on the northern edge of their campus, where they plan to hold a series of lectures.
by Shiv Malik
Guardian (London)
David Willetts abandons Cambridge University speech as protesters take over lecture hall to oppose £9,000 tuition fees. Occupied lecture halls and buildings would act as bases for students to plan further action backing strikes by about 3 million public sector workers – expected to be the biggest day of industrial action since the winter of discontent in 1979.
Police at the student protest over university tuition fees and public sector cuts in London on 9 November, when the Met warned baton rounds could be used.
Students are planning a wave of campus occupations and protests in the run-up to nationwide strikes next week, the Guardian has learned.
Occupations called by the student group National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) ahead of the trade union day of action on 30 November have already happened at Birmingham and Cambridge universities.
Higher education minister David Willetts had to abandon a speech on the Idea of University on Tuesday night after students heckled him from the stage and began occupying Cambridge's largest lecture hall.
The occupations, in opposition to the government's white paper on education reform, which would formalise the £9,000 rise in tuition fees, are expected to break out across the country.
NCAFC said that occupied lecture halls and buildings would act as bases for students to plan further action backing strikes by about 3 million public sector workers – expected to be the biggest day of industrial action since the winter of discontent in 1979.
The group's co-founder, Michael Chessum, said: "It's all terribly unpredictable. We may well see actions and occupations popping up all other the country today and in the coming week."
In front of an audience of more than a hundred, Willetts was forced to sit in a corner of the stage of Lady Mitchell Hall, as students read out a prepared statement.
Student James Jackson said activists from Cambridge Defend Education read out a prepared statement which was repeated sentence by sentence by other demonstrators in the audience – a technique used by Occupy activists.
Making reference to recent student protests in which the Metropolitan police said baton rounds could be used to prevent disorder, the statement said: "You can threaten to shoot us with rubber bullets; you can arrest us; you can imprison us; you can criminalise our dissent; you can blight a hundred thousand lives … but you cannot break us because we are more resolute, more numerous, and more determined than you … Go home, David."
After sitting on the stage, they eventually forced the minister's departure.
"At first Willetts seemed to want to carry on," Jackson said. "After the second minute he sat in a corner then [the organisers] closed the blinds on him, still waiting for us to stop and leave. When we didn't, I think he decided it was time for him to go and so he just left."
Jackson, 21, who is reading art history, said that after Willetts' departure the group occupied the hall and were now receiving support from academics who were bringing them food and supplies.
Silkie Carlo, 22, studying psychology, who was also part of the action said : "Cambridge is serious about defending education. Particularly from an institution that is seen as upper middle class, the most privileged students, it's important that we understand that the rise in fees affect us and the progress of the university. We don't want to study in that kind of place."
In the early hours of Wedenesday, Birmingham students occupied an abandoned gatehouse on the northern edge of their campus, where they plan to hold a series of lectures.
by Shiv Malik
Guardian (London)
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Wide Strike in Britain Planned
UK Unions to Back Public Workers' Strikes
Nurses at the GMB have voted for walkouts over pension reform. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Britain's three largest trade Unions are set to back Strike action by public sector Workers on 30 November after teaching assistants, refuse collectors and nurses at the GMB voted for walkouts over pension reform, with members of Unite expected to follow on Thursday.
Up to 300,000 GMB members will join local government and NHS staff at Unison, the largest public sector union, in the biggest bout of industrial action in decades when more than two million people could take part. Unite is also expected to confirm a yes vote in a ballot of 150,000 workers after voting closed, in a move that would see the biggest powers in the labour movement swing behind mass walkouts and protests.
The GMB's national officer for public services, Brian Strutton, said: "It is now clear that millions of workers will be protesting on 30 November at the government's attack on jobs and pensions."
Strutton added that the government had in effect conceded it had got pension reform "wrong" after offering concessions in recent talks. "It is not too late for the government to pull back from this confrontation and scrap this attack on pensions," he said.
The GMB, which has members in the NHS, civil service and local governmentthroughout the UK, said members voted by more than four to one in favour of strike action with a turnout of 33%, similar to Unison's. It declined to reveal how many people were balloted.
Ucatt, which represents workers who maintain and repair buildings, also urged the government to water down its pension proposals and head off strikes as it announced that more than 3,400 members had backed strikes.
On Friday the NASUWT teachers' union will announce the result of a strike ballot for 227,500 teachers in England and Wales. Last week members of the National Association of Head Teachers voted for strike action over pension plans – the first strike vote in the union's 114-year history – raising the possibility of thousands of schools closing on 30 November. More than 20 unions could take industrial action, although the government is still in talks over reforms to pensions for public sector workers in the fields of education, health, the civil service and local government.
The government is proposing to raise the retirement age and increase employee contributions, while switching the uprating of pensions from the higher RPI rate of inflation to the lower CPI rate. However, a recent offer of concessions included raising the accrual rate – a measure of the rate at which pensions grow – and pledging that anyone within 10 years of retirement from 1 April next year would not see a reduction in their pension pot. Government sources have also indicated that a day of mass action will not jeopardise further talks.
Meanwhile, NHS Employers, which represents major care providers such as hospitals,has
warned NHS staff that they would "poison the working atmosphere" inside the health service and "ruin" years of harmonious industrial relations by striking on 30 November.
Dean Royles, its director, adopted his toughest stance yet on the Day of Action when he spoke to 500 NHS bosses at the organisation's annual conference in Liverpoolon Wednesday. He also increased the temperature by highlighting the potentially damaging effect of strike action on patients.
"More yes-votes would be a further disappointment for the NHS and patients, and it's very likely industrial action would mean delays and distress for patients who need treatment," he said. "Whatever the rights and wrongs of this dispute – and whatever does or does not happen on 30 November – I want all parties involved to recognise that we have benefited from a very positive industrial relations climate, built on partnership working, in the NHS for many years. This has served our patients, our staff and employers really well.
"We must work together to preserve it. None of us would want anything to ruin it. Whether you agree with industrial action or whether you don't, we all know that even one day of strike action can poison the working atmosphere. We must come together, work together and find solutions together, locally and nationally, on behalf of our patients to ensure there is a positive working environment beyond 30 November."
A Department of Health spokeswoman said it urged NHS staff to "think carefully about the effect on patients of any action they may be considering. Pensions are important to everyone – but patients should come first". Ministers' recent concessions on future public sector pensions meant that "the NHS pension will remain one of the very best available, providing a guaranteed pension level for all employees".
The NHS has contingency plans to ensure that patients' quality of care is not affected on 30 November, which will see suitably-qualified staff redeployed to cover for those on strike, she added.
Nurses at the GMB have voted for walkouts over pension reform. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Britain's three largest trade Unions are set to back Strike action by public sector Workers on 30 November after teaching assistants, refuse collectors and nurses at the GMB voted for walkouts over pension reform, with members of Unite expected to follow on Thursday.
Up to 300,000 GMB members will join local government and NHS staff at Unison, the largest public sector union, in the biggest bout of industrial action in decades when more than two million people could take part. Unite is also expected to confirm a yes vote in a ballot of 150,000 workers after voting closed, in a move that would see the biggest powers in the labour movement swing behind mass walkouts and protests.
The GMB's national officer for public services, Brian Strutton, said: "It is now clear that millions of workers will be protesting on 30 November at the government's attack on jobs and pensions."
Strutton added that the government had in effect conceded it had got pension reform "wrong" after offering concessions in recent talks. "It is not too late for the government to pull back from this confrontation and scrap this attack on pensions," he said.
The GMB, which has members in the NHS, civil service and local governmentthroughout the UK, said members voted by more than four to one in favour of strike action with a turnout of 33%, similar to Unison's. It declined to reveal how many people were balloted.
Ucatt, which represents workers who maintain and repair buildings, also urged the government to water down its pension proposals and head off strikes as it announced that more than 3,400 members had backed strikes.
On Friday the NASUWT teachers' union will announce the result of a strike ballot for 227,500 teachers in England and Wales. Last week members of the National Association of Head Teachers voted for strike action over pension plans – the first strike vote in the union's 114-year history – raising the possibility of thousands of schools closing on 30 November. More than 20 unions could take industrial action, although the government is still in talks over reforms to pensions for public sector workers in the fields of education, health, the civil service and local government.
The government is proposing to raise the retirement age and increase employee contributions, while switching the uprating of pensions from the higher RPI rate of inflation to the lower CPI rate. However, a recent offer of concessions included raising the accrual rate – a measure of the rate at which pensions grow – and pledging that anyone within 10 years of retirement from 1 April next year would not see a reduction in their pension pot. Government sources have also indicated that a day of mass action will not jeopardise further talks.
Meanwhile, NHS Employers, which represents major care providers such as hospitals,has
warned NHS staff that they would "poison the working atmosphere" inside the health service and "ruin" years of harmonious industrial relations by striking on 30 November.
Dean Royles, its director, adopted his toughest stance yet on the Day of Action when he spoke to 500 NHS bosses at the organisation's annual conference in Liverpoolon Wednesday. He also increased the temperature by highlighting the potentially damaging effect of strike action on patients.
"More yes-votes would be a further disappointment for the NHS and patients, and it's very likely industrial action would mean delays and distress for patients who need treatment," he said. "Whatever the rights and wrongs of this dispute – and whatever does or does not happen on 30 November – I want all parties involved to recognise that we have benefited from a very positive industrial relations climate, built on partnership working, in the NHS for many years. This has served our patients, our staff and employers really well.
"We must work together to preserve it. None of us would want anything to ruin it. Whether you agree with industrial action or whether you don't, we all know that even one day of strike action can poison the working atmosphere. We must come together, work together and find solutions together, locally and nationally, on behalf of our patients to ensure there is a positive working environment beyond 30 November."
A Department of Health spokeswoman said it urged NHS staff to "think carefully about the effect on patients of any action they may be considering. Pensions are important to everyone – but patients should come first". Ministers' recent concessions on future public sector pensions meant that "the NHS pension will remain one of the very best available, providing a guaranteed pension level for all employees".
The NHS has contingency plans to ensure that patients' quality of care is not affected on 30 November, which will see suitably-qualified staff redeployed to cover for those on strike, she added.
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