£80million+ of cuts to be proposed by Cabinet to Swansea's Labour Council will be opposed

None of the Labour councillors in the City and County of Swansea Cabinet, which later voted on proposals to make £80 million of cuts to jobs and services, was prepared to come out and face us.

Trade unionists, school parents, workers whose jobs are at risk, joined others who value and want to fight to defend services. Swansea TUSC added our banner  to those from Swansea Trades Council and Unite the Union.

Seeing as the cabinet members weren't prepared to come to the lobby, representatives of the lobby went to them. including TUSC candidate for Aberavon, Owen Herbert.

Members of the public have an opportunity at the start of the meeting to question the Cabinet. Councillors faced questions on the cuts in education and schools, including plans to sell off school playing fields. Alec Thraves, TUSC election agent in Swansea West, simply lambasted them for their lack of backbone in cravenly carrying out Tory cuts.

In 2 weeks' time, the proposals Cabinet agreed tonight will be presented to the full Council. We'll be back as part of a much bigger demonstration, including the Council's UNISON branch who are mobilising against threats of jobs losses, outsourcing and cuts.

Labour councillors may decide to make Tory cuts but trade unionists and the Swansea public will resist and not allow these cuts go unchallenged. Come to the lobby, February 24, Civic Centre, from 4pm.

We think part of that challenge must be putting forward a political alternative to Labour representatives who make Tory cuts. If you've agree join with TUSC.

Which side are you on?

This image, via TUSC supporters in Sheffield, is too good not to share..

Tristram Hunt, the Labour Education spokesman, who crossed a UCU picket line to deliver a lecture on Marx, publicly declares what TUSC has been saying, Labour is on the wrong side as far as trade unionists and working class people are concerned.

Listen to the People!

That’s the message Swansea TUSC will be taking to the lobby of the Special Cabinet Meeting of the Council, Tuesday (10 February) from 4pm at the Civic Centre.

For any Labour councillors willing to listen, the Swansea Trades Unionist & Socialist Coalition (TUSC) street ballot today (7-2-2015) sent a clear message: The people of Swansea want their representatives to stop voting for Tory cuts and start fighting them.

 

188 people participated in our ballot. Not one of them wanted their Labour councillors to make Tory cuts; 100% of them voted that they want “representatives who will fight the cuts”.

Unfortunately it appears that they won’t get that from their elected Labour representatives. Just like in the run-up to last year’s cuts budget, not one Labour councillor has spoken out against, let alone indicated a willingness to vote against, projected cuts of £80 million+ over the next 3 years.

The only defence they can offer for their failure to fight Con-Dem cuts is to claim that it is better that they make the cuts than somebody else does. People we spoke to today were furious that all Labour councillors are getting paid to vote for £millions of cuts to our jobs and services.

We asked people we balloted which of the proposed cuts that will be considered by Swansea’s Special Cabinet Meeting next week, most concerned them and invited them to write down a message to send to Swansea councillors.

There are a whole range of proposals that are worrying people we spoke to and making them angry, including the outsourcing and cuts in leisure and social services, threats to close youth centres and Plantasia, increases in charges for a number of council services and cuts in funding for supported organisations like West Glamorgan Youth Theatre.

Time and again though, the issue that seemed to most anger people is the proposed cuts to education. That’s no surprise; many had read the report in the local paper predicting that primary-age pupils could end up being taught in classes of 40 if these cuts to funding go ahead. In fact a number of heads of primary schools, including the one my youngest son attends, have predicted to the Council that 15% reduction in funding being proposed over the next 3 years could lead to classes of 42+ for some primary school pupils.

The people of Swansea have spoken today and told their councillors that they expect them to vote against Con-Dem cuts at the Special Budget Meeting on Tuesday and the full council meeting on February 24. It was summed up in a message one woman wrote to councillors: “No more cuts! We’ve had too many already!”

That’s what Swansea TUSC supporters will be demanding when we join the lobby of the Council Special Cabinet Meeting on Tuesday, from 4pm, Civic Centre.

Ronnie Job

TUSC Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Swansea West

Don't let Swansea's Labour Council's cuts lead to classes of 42+ for our children!

I've been studying the papers for City & County of Swansea's Special Cabinet Meeting next Tuesday (February 10). As a parent of two school-age children, I have to say it's enough to keep you awake at night with worry.

This meeting will decide which proposals go through to the Council budget-setting meeting on February 24. The agenda, for a Labour-led Council remember, is all about parcelling out Con-Dem cuts.

For months parents, governors, pupils at my younger son's school have been opposing the proposed sell-off of school playing fields for house-building, along with residents from the local community.

We have serious concerns that the Council has barely paid lip-service to the democratic process. Reading the papers reveals that my son's school is one of 14, just in the first tranche of sell-offs of school land. Labour councillors claim this is "surplus land" but the beautifully maintained ground where my son plays, learns and evacuates to in an emergency, is a school playing field and not surplus land!

You can check this out for yourself  - follow @ParklandsField on Twitter or look up the Save Parklands Field Facebook group. Watch the wonderful video, starring pupils themselves, which demonstrates why a number of Welsh sports stars are now backing the campaign to save the playing field.

How many of the other parcels of school "surplus land" are also green spaces valuable to our children's education and development?

I knew about this proposal from studying the Council's budget papers last year. Some Labour councillors who voted for the proposals obviously hadn't checked what they were voting for because they told me, when I challenged them on it, that there were no plans to sell school playing fields. The only alternative, that they did know and lied to me, would be even worse!

School playing fields are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to schools and education cuts. Up to now, the Welsh Labour Government and our Council claim to have protected education. In fact, there have been cuts in areas like 'education other than at school' and transport for faith and other schools but education has seen far fewer cuts than many other services. Now however, education will face severe cuts from the Council - £24 million in the next 3 years, 15% of the current budget.

In the papers that Cabinet members have received there's a section where head teachers identify what cuts of this scale will mean for their schools. They all predict that it will be impossible to meet the statutory requirement to teach 5-7 year olds in maximum class sizes of 30. Many schools predict class sizes of 42+ for older pupils. All of them will see job losses, which will affect teachers, classroom assistant and support staff.

The only response of the Council leadership to these concerns seems to be that schools are 'relatively protected' and other services have it worse.

If you work in education or are a parent who's worried about their children's education, join TUSC representatives on the lobby of the Council Cabinet on February 10 and the full Council on February 24 (both from 4pm at Civic Centre).

Meet TUSC representatives this Saturday in Oxford Street, from 1.30pm, holding a ballot on whether Swansea people expect our representatives to fight Con-Dem cuts.

Tell Swansea Labour councillors to fight Toey cuts not make them!

Swansea TUSC supporters will be standing with Swansea Trades Council representatives and defenders of council services when they lobby the special Cabinet Meeting (Civic Centre, February 10, from 4pm).

This meeting will decide where the axe will fall - whose jobs are at risk, what services will be reduced, privatised or even axed altogether - as they decide which cuts to propose to the full Council budget-setting meeting on February 24.

Swansea Labour councillors, like their colleagues across the country, seem to see their role as parcelling out Con-Dem cuts. TUSC thinks we need representatives who will fight Tory cuts not implement them.

We will be holding a ballot in Swansea this Saturday, 1.30pm, in Oxford Street, to ask the people of Swansea if they agree that our representatives should fight cuts not make them.

We encourage everybody who's worried that a service they hold dear is under threat - library, school breakfast club, Plantasia, playing fields, West Glamorgan Youth Theatre, etc - to also come along on February 10 and on February 24 demand councillors reconsider. Ask councillors to do what they were elected for to defend jobs and stand up for services.

Lobby City & County of Swansea, Special Cabinet Meeting, 4pm, Civic Centre, Feb 10 to demand councillors reconsider £27 million cuts.

Fighting Cuts in the Snow

Protesters stood for hours outside Cardiff's City Hall as snow gusted about them, but it was the Councillors, arriving for the last full council meeting before the budget is set in February, who got the frostiest reception.

TUSC supporters joined Cardiff Against The Cuts and a host of other campaigners, including from Howardian Youth Music Centre, Community Action for Rumney Library, Save Channel View Leisure and others.

Library campaigners from Rumney were amongst the angriest. Despite local councillor Jacqui Parry promising "Rumney Libray would close over my dead body," both Rumney councillors voted against motions that would have scrapped the library closures this year.

Labour councillors have correctly pointed out that Tory Councillor and prospective parliamentary candidate for Cardiff North, Craig Williams, who proposed the motion, could hardly have been relied upon to defend council services from cuts if his party was in power in Cardiff. But if Labour councillors couldn't bring themselves to vote for a Tory motion they could have proposed their own, or backed the motion from Rhiwbina Independents. Labour has completely failed to demonstrate that there are any meaningful differences between them and either the Tories in government or the previous Liberal and Plaid Cymru coalition.

There is no opposition to the cuts demanded by the Tories and Liberals in Westminster from either the Labour-run Welsh Assembly or the Labour-run Council in Cardiff. Cardiff Council has obediently cut £83 million worth of jobs and services, but by 2017 they want to more than double that figure, adding another £125 million more cuts. This year's budget plans as they stand include the privatisation of all leisure services, ending meals on wheels for most people who currently have them, closing all day centres for the elderly, sacking more social workers (when the previous Liberal/Plaid Council and the current Labour Council have between them already cut a quarter of all social services staff in the last five years) and increasing the workload for those who remain, closing of seven libraries if volunteers can't be found to replace the paid workers and the further gutting of Cardiff Central Library. Another £5.7 million will be cut from out of a workforce which Unison says has already lost 18% of their real pay in the last four years.

What's the alternative? TUSC councillors would propose a needs budget - setting the funding at the level determined by what is necessary to fund the services we need, not by what the government thinks it can get away with fiving. TUSC councillors would be campaigning councillors, fighting for the funding we require to save jobs and services. Cardiff Council doesn't have to cut services back when the government demands it. They're sitting on a cash pile of reserves that is £41 million high, and they have powers to borrow £million more. They should use that cash to plug the gap between what the government has given us this year and what need to save all services, and spend the year building a campaign for more funding, calling for and link up with similar campaigns in the rest of Wales and Britain.

TUSC fully supports all the campaigners who are fighting to keep their communities together by trying to save the facilities and services those communities they rely on. We'll be outside City for the BIG ONE - the budget protest called by Cardiff Against the Cuts on Thursday 26th February at 330pm. You should be there too!

Give us a real choice!

Trades Unionist & Socialist Coalition (TUSC) to ballot the people of Swansea on whether they want representatives who implement or who fight Con-Dem cuts

TUSC will be holding a ballot on austerity and cuts in Oxford Street, Swansea on Saturday, February 7th from 1.30pm.
Ronnie Job, TUSC prospective parliamentary candidate for Swansea West, said:
"Swansea's Labour council are currently planning cuts of £80 million from its budget. These cuts are going to devastate council jobs and services. The council have held yet another sham public 'consultation' where the only option on offer is 'What do you want us to cut?' That's like asking people 'what do you want cut off, your hands or your feet?'!
"We will be asking the people of Swansea whether they want their Labour councillors to carry out Con-Dem cuts or whether they want representatives who will vote and fight against austerity."
Come along, send a message to your elected councillors and let's plan how to ensure in future we get representatives who will stand up for jobs and services.