Joint statement on campaigning against welfare cuts
Public and Commercial Services Union, Black Triangle Campaign and Disabled People Against Cuts
PCS, DPAC and Black Triangle Campaign are united in opposing the government’s austerity programme, which seeks to force people to pay for the failure of the finance system and of the government to regulate it.
The government is making unprecedented cuts across the public sector and is removing people’s social, economic and civil rights.
The welfare state which was established to provide social security to those unable to work is being systematically dismantled through privatisation and £30 billion of cuts announced to date.
This is not about balancing the books. Over the same period, the government has also given away £30 billion in tax breaks to business.
This is an ideological assault on the welfare state.
Disabled people are being disproportionately and brutally affected by these cuts, which include to Employment and Support Allowance, and the Disability Living Allowance, the imposition of the Work Capability Assessment (carried out by Atos) and the proposed abolition of the Independent Living Fund.
It is shameful and immoral that private companies are making profit from disabled and unemployed workers but worse, it does not work, the public sector delivers services more effectively, efficiently and less expensively than the private sector.
The cuts are blighting the lives of the least economically secure in society.
The government’s approach cannot work: there are already 2.5 million people unemployed, and over 6 million seeking additional work.
Pushing disabled people off benefits – without creating jobs or tackling employer discrimination – is simply a means of cutting disabled people’s living standards.
Evidence shows supportive social security systems that treat people with dignity and respect – rather than punitive systems based on conditionality, sanctions and low benefit levels – help individuals, families and communities but also the wider economy.
The social, individual and household consequences of these cuts contravene the right to independent living enshrined in the United Nations Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
To justify this brutal attack on disabled people and those on welfare more generally, the government has engaged in a campaign of vilification to label those on benefits as lazy, as feckless and as scroungers.
Much of the news and print media have colluded in this hate campaign – leading to a sharp increase in attacks on disabled workers, including physical assaults. The government’s own figures show benefit fraud accounts for £1.5 billion a year, while £16 billion of benefits and tax credits are left unclaimed.
Tens of thousands of PCS members are involved in the administration of the welfare state and they are committed to providing a service that meets people’s needs.
Workers are facing huge cuts in their pay, pensions and rights at work – 40% of those workers who will administer universal credit will also be entitled to it.
PCS members are often on the frontline, facing the anguish and anger of those suffering from government welfare policies.
PCS members did not create these policies, the union does not support them and is committed to campaigning against them.
We commit to strengthening our campaigning alliance, which includes peaceful direct action against those politicians who have supported these policies and against those companies that seek to profit from them.
The government is trying to divide people: between those in work and those out of work; between disabled and non-disabled people, between those in the public sector and those in the private sector.
The key to defeating these welfare cuts, and austerity more generally, is unity.
PCS, DPAC, and Black Triangle members have a common cause in defeating these welfare cuts and in building a decent welfare state.
WE ARE UNITED
UPDATE 20th November 2012
PCS’s copy of the statement: HERE
DPAC’s copy of the statement: HERE
Superb news, let us campaign to wake this government up, it cannot get away with its crimes for much longer.
My son has just been disallowed DLA , which he received for 12 years, due to a Polish medical assessor coming to our home for an assessment. She could hardly speak or understand English! And the whole exam lasted 2 hours and not the usual 20-60 minutes stated. Today he received the decision. The polish doctor wrote the opposite down of everything we said in her medical report, she was hired by ATOS the private company that’s doing all the damage to all the vaunderable sick and disabled people. We are living under a very corrupt government that needs to be dissolved, who are all multi-millionaires and don’t even know the meaning of hardship. We seriously all need to unite and not let this government get away with murder!!!
I can’t believe these jokers are still in power after all they’ve done. But then people said that about the Nazis.
Indeed the National Socialists Persecuted the Poor and Vulnerable and had their
Tag der Arbeit Badges
It Astounds Myself the Stupid Spineless and Supine Docility of the ” Great British
Public ” over the Past 2 and a Half Years
People had Fiddled About Drinking Alcohol and being TV Zombies when Protests
and Mass Demonstrations were Needed
We Need a Better Government we have For Since May 11th 2010 at Least
Let the Country Unite and Say Enough is Enough
Protests For Welfare Social Justice Yes Christmas Circus No
Common Sense Demands Do NOT VOTE Tory or Liberal Democrat until the Welfare
Provision Situation Improves
Do NOT VOTE For any Candidate who does Not Care about the Poor and Vulnerable
They are Un Fit to Hold Office