Privatisation Follow

Government plans to give employees shares in a privatised Royal Mail are an attempt to mute opposition to the sell-off and undermine workers’ solidarity.

Huge numbers of Indian workers joined a 24-hour strike last week against rising prices and privatisation. Action by around 100 million workers shut banks, power plants, telecommunications, airports and schools across the country.

Barnet council workers and supporters protested on Tuesday of this week against cuts and the North London council’s plans for mass privatisation.

Some 300 people in the pathology department at King’s College Hospital in London are to be balloted for strike action against privatisation. The workers are in the Unite union.

Workers who transport patients between hospitals for South London Healthcare NHS Trust have voted to strike over plans to privatise their work.

Health activists have launched a petition opposing the Tories’ vicious privatisation threat to the NHS.

Royal Mail bosses plan to close two of London’s three giant mail centres and a major delivery office. Some 3,000 jobs could go in the scheme and it would clear the way for privatisation.

Mick Cash, the senior assistant general secretary of the RMT union, told the Potters Bar inquest last week that the 2002 train crash was caused by the standards of contractors’ work slipping since privatisation.

Government plans to hand over control of most NHS spending to family doctors would unleash the biggest wave of privatisation ever seen in the health service.

The government last week ramped up threats to privatise Royal Mail, but suggested that any sell-off would be accompanied by a share offer aimed at postal workers.

The new government has launched a "radical reform" plan to expand the academies programme and introduce "free" schools. This threatens the future of state education by entrenching social segregation. It will also be disastrous for the pay and conditions of school staff and will destroy accountability and democracy in the education system.

The government’s policy of part-privatising the post formed the backdrop to many of the debates at the CWU union’s conference last week.