Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group supports Thursday 10th May public sector strikes Protesting outside Kilburn jobcentre 7.45am- 10am…loudly!!

(Please note, Back entrance where staff go in is in Coventry Close, and front of Jobcentre where the public enter is in Cambridge Avenue )
THEN 12 NOON A MARCH ASSEMBLING ST THOMAS’ HOSPITAL, WESTMINSTER BRIDGE RD SE1 TO RALLY 1PM CENTRAL WESTMINSTER METHODIST HALL SW1 9NH
The £67.50 per week Jobseekers Allowance and public sector pension rates are nothing for private sector workers to envy. Private sector company directors raid workers' pension funds while securing their own overseas. Taxpayers’ money secures MPs pensions, travel perks and expenses. Does this sound like “we're all in this together” or just more of the old “divide and rule”! Offshore corporate finances instituted under Thatcherism helped fund David Cameron's graduation and beyond; today's students are left with massive debts. When will we ever learn?
The BBC, dependent on public money, kowtows to the Government li[n]es, even after the Levenson enquiry, why are they still taking their lead from The Sun and Daily Mail? The Welfare Reform Minister is an investment banker. Did you know that? Landlords who made £21bn from Housing Benefits in 2011 won't be made homeless by the coming budget. Doesn't look like there will even be a mansion tax for the 940,000 thousand plus homes worth over a £1 million that have avoided stamp duty as they're supposedly owed by businesses... More council houses, an end to 'right to buy', and a Robin Hood Tax, anyone?
Bankers' greed and irresponsibility (as described by Mervyn King recently) have been rewarded with bonuses stolen from the taxpayer. 'Austerity' is just an excuse for dismantling the Welfare State and driving down all workers’ pay.
We support Job Centre staff who stand up to the bullying elite, and seek to protect both their co-workers and claimants from the stresses bought on by deliberately reducing on-site staff in favour of call centres and computerised forms. Claimants and Workers shouldn’t cross picket lines, but join them, as WE are all being stuffed together. Unemployed and Workers (Public AND Private) should stick together!
STUFF THE CUTS AND STUFF THIS RUTHLESS GOVERNMENT!
Meetings: 3pm-5pm Thursdays, Room 6, Kingsgate Community Centre, 107 Kingsgate Road, London, NW6 2JH
KUWG Web page: http://Kilburnunemployed.blogspot.com.
Contact: kilburnunemployed@gmail.com.
0770 993 2267 Marie Lynam, secretary
Facebook: Kilburn Unemployed Workers
We urge Trade Unions and Community Funding groups to help us fight the battles that will complement their own in their workplaces and communities.
Cheques welcome, made to ‘KUWG’ and sent to:
The KUWG Officers, 85 Webheath, Netherwood Street, London NW6 2JS

The government lies to us about rejecting 'segregation' and 'discrimination'. But its education policy is of school segregation (mostly on religious lines) and its social policy is of social cleansing and partitioning. The government says that Big Society is philantropic, but the Osborne budget has proved that the philantropy of the very rich is only another tax dodge. The lies of the 1% are reported at face value, but the unemployed, the sick, the single parents and those on benefit sanctions face the reality. The TUC and Unison leaders - as well as the Miliband Labour leadership - broke the momentum of 30 November 2011. But on this 10 May, the working class base, employed and unemployed, is again regrouping. Let us not forget that the police itself will be demonstrating, on this 10 May, demanding the right to strike. The 1% have repression and brute force at their disposal, but brute force does not build societies. We are the 99%, we build everything.
DID YOU REALISE?
THE DWP DOESN’T THINK KILBURN CLAIMANTS WORTHY OF PICKING UP JUSTIFIED EMERGENCY GIRO PAYMENTS FROM THEIR JOBCENTRE ANYMORE? WE HAVE TO USE OUR OWN MONEY TO TRAVEL TO WILLESDEN, AND IT’S RARELY OPEN ANYWAY-RETURN OUR CASH DESK FACILITY!
ALTHOUGH KILBURN JOBCENTRE OPENS 9AM-5PM, GROUPS OF CLAIMANTS ARE NOW REQUIRED TO COME IN AT 8.30AM (WHEN THE JCP IS STILL CLOSED TO OTHERS) AND IF NOT ON TIME, THEY ARE LOCKED OUT UNTIL 9AM AND SANCTIONED! THE MANAGER WHO ORGANISES THESE GROUPS OPENLY ADMITS TO THIS PRACTICE! STOP THIS OBVIOUS MONEY-SAVING RUSE AND VICTIMISATION!
PEOPLE ON METHADONE, AND PEOPLE WHO CAN BARELY STAND, ARE TOLD THEY ARE FIT FOR WORK OR FOR PREPARING FOR WORK! WE WANT THE DWP AND ATOS (MEDICAL ASSESSORS) TO EMPLOY METHADONE TAKING CLAIMANTS, AND THOSE WHO CAN HARDLY WALK, AND TO LET US KNOW ALL THE COMPANIES WHO ADVERTISE FOR SUCH PEOPLE! THE DISGUSTING PLANS TO SHUT DOWN REMPLOY FACTORIES WHERE DISABLED WORKERS ARE GOING TO BE MADE UNEMPLOYED, MAKES THE GOVERNMENT’S CLAIMS TO WANT TO HELP THE DISABLED, A VERY SICK JOKE!
IF WORKFARE IS FAIR THEN DO NOT PAY MPS AND TOP OFFICIALS FOR WORKING FOR THE STATE, BUT ONLY PAY THEM THE SAME AS CLAIMANTS, IT’S ONLY FAIR…WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER, AREN’T WE?
THE PCS UNION CALCULATE THAT BECAUSE OF SUCCESSIVE GOVERNMENT CHANGES JSA INSTEAD OF BEING £67.50, SHOULD BE AT LEAST £110 A WEEK!
OUR YOUNG PEOPLE GET NO INCREASE OR 5P AN HOUR INCREASE ON MINIMUM WAGE TO PAY FOR TOP EARNERS TO HAVE 5% TAX DECREASE! SHAME!! JOB CUTS ARE AFFECTING BLACK AND FEMALE WORKERS THE MOST! SHAME AGAIN!
2000 TOP CIVIL SERVANTS ARE PAID SALARIES AS SELF EMPLOYED, THEREFORE SAVING £1,000s IN TAX AND ARROGANTLY DEPRIVING THE STATE, WHILE HARD ON US!
WHO ARE THE REAL BENEFIT THIEVES?
MAKE JOBSEEKERS ALLOWANCE £110 PER WEEK!

Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group joins opposition to “Council Tax on free speech”

Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group has joined Brent Fightback and Brent Trades Council in opposition to what it calls “Brent Council's Council Tax on free speech.”
Brent Council plans to institute licensing of organisations other than charities and political parties that deliver leaflets in the Borough of Brent. “This is not only an attack on free speech,” said Alan Wheatley, a spokesperson for the group. “It is also a way for despotic local and central government to bury disclosure of how widespread oppressive measures such as the sanctioning of benefit claimants actually are,” s/he said.
“The Council say that they do not want the reputation of the Borough of Brent tarnished by littering over the time of the Olympics. As usual, the Council has its priorities wrong while at the same time it is throwing people in South Kilburn onto the street and central government's attacks on poor people exacerbate the desolation and isolation that come with poverty.
“The Olympics serve as a branding platform for global corporations such as McDonalds that are notorious for shoddy employment practices and for product that leaves loads of street litter. Our leaflets, by contrast, help counteract the desolation and isolation that vulnerable benefit claimants experience via Kilburn Jobcentre and the JobCentre Plus network. Our leafleters are not paid, and to make our resources stretch further, we display our leaflets rather than thrust them under people's noses. People ask us for the leaflets that tell of our weekly meetings at Kingsgate Community Centre on the Camden side of Kilburn, and more. Further, people who attend our meetings who have had bad treatment at the jobcentre and/or through the testing procedures of Atos Healthcare that reduce the number of disability benefit claimants without curing them of their ailments, feel less inclined to throw themselves under a bus.
“We know of people who have won their tribunals for entitlement to Employment & Support Allowance and had but a month in which to enjoy their back money before dying in this the year of Queen Elizabeth II's Sliver Jubilee. The wait for a tribunal is about a year these days. Serial re-testing of claimants adds to their stress. The Royal Family, who cost the taxpayer much more per head, are comparatively in glowing heath.
“Through the invitation to our meetings that our leaflets represent, people who have been subjected to bullying that goes through the Chancellor of the Exchequer and ministers at the Department for Work & Pensions begin to feel better about themselves.
“Brent Council's proposed daily leaflet licensing fee of £75 is greater than the sum total of £67.50 weekly Jobseekers Allowance plus £5 per week earnings disregard for a single person aged over 25. That fee would hit us and our members hard,” s/he said. “Non-claimants generally remain blithely ignorant of the facts of how low state benefits are, and the fact that the £5 per week 'earnings disregard' has remained unchanged since 1988, but our leaflets help to set the record straight about that and the sanctions against claimants that are now routine.”
Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group meets every Thursday at Kingsgate Community Centre, 107 Kingsgate Road, NW6 2JH from 3pm to 5pm. With a dearth of such groups around London, KUWG helps benefit claimants in Brent and Camden and beyond to the help they need, when they need it.
-----ENDS----

THE KUWG JOINED A PCS PICKET ON THE 10 MAY DAY OF STRIKES

On May 10, 2012, the KUWG organised a joint picket of solidarity with the PCS union outside the JobCentre, Cambridge Avenue, NW6. As the reader will know, the PCS (Civil Service Union) went on strike on that day to Stop The Great Pension Robbery and demand Fair Pensions for All.
As you know, 100,000 public service workers are going to lose their jobs in the summer. Will these people have suddenly become ‘lazy’ and ‘scroungers’? Or will they be sacked so that the State can lend more to the banks that speculate, pocketing the benefits and leaving the losses to the taxpayer?
The PCS stood outside the JobCentre from 7.45am to 10am with the KUWG in an official picket. The picket was joined by representatives of the Crossroad Women and BrentFightBack, as well as some SWP comrades. A big support was given by members of the public and persons who had read our leaflet.
The following Unions were on official strike: PCS, Unite, UCU, RMT, NIPSA and ISU. Note that the RMT was present this time. The workers from those unions object to pension age rising to 68 for both men and women - the highest in Europe. The government coalition’s budget includes plans for the pension age to rise to 71 in a few years, and then to 74.
Like the Welfare Budget, the people’s pensions are being handed over to private corporations that want greater premiums, more contributory years and reduced pensions to be paid out, hopefully, to less and less survivors. On May 10 this year, there was at least half a million on strike. Unite members in the health service, UCU members in Further Education and 92 universities joined PCS members in this latest struggle over pensions. There were fewer strikers than on 30 November 2011, but there were new and very important sectors on strike, indicative of the deepening crisis of the capitalist system. Prison officers in the POA who had come from England and Wales were on strike this time; not only was their strike national and unofficial, it also defied the anti-TradeUnion laws. Add to this that 20,000 off-duty policemen demonstrated in the streets. They marched separately, but chose the day and the hour of the workers’ strikes to express their anger at their own cuts and police privatisations. The leaflet distributed by the KUWG called for unity between the private and the public sectors, as well as between the waged workers and the unwaged. It also made demands from the Cambridge Avenue JobCentre itself, where people (who often do not have the bus fare) should not have to come before 9am, and where giros should be payable and cashable. We call on the PCS Union to question nationally the DWP ESA Medicals that declare very ill persons ‘fit for work’, thereby sending unfit people to seek work through the JobCentres. We call on the PCS Union to coordinate with the BMA a campaign in defence of the primacy of medical care and expertise, over and above administrative and financial decisions taken by the privateers who are taking over Welfare in Britain. This is a continuing struggle - next instalment in June! Please find below the two page leaflet the KUWG used for this day of Strikes.