John Burgess

Barnet locals are extremely unhappy at apparent council plans to outsource and privatise most of the services the council provides.

It's getting harder and harder for local government to sell the argument that the market knows best - that your schools, nurseries, housing, roads, etc, would be better provided by the likes of HBOS, anyone lately of the Lehman Brothers, or Tescos.

I'm a capitalist at heart, but even I doubt the market's genius these days. I don't think the private sector is inclined to deliver good public services at reasonable cost. I think it is inclined to tender loss leaders when bidding for public sector contracts, and then to recoup losses by cutting staff salaries and service corners when contracts are won.

I am a capitalist, but I don't think the private sector is capable of providing public services in a way that will simultaneously save tax pounds and shore up communities with the all-important health, education and housing services that keep those communities functional.

People in Barnet aren't convinced either. Hundreds turned up for at a protest about the proposed outsourcing several weeks ago, and an even bigger crowd showed on Wednesday outside a council meeting - on a freezing cold night, too.

I'll be writing more about the Barnet proposals as time goes on.

For now, here are some photos from the event.

Not sure how Santa got into the mix - thought he'd be more of a capitalist...?

Rang around a few union branches for views on last week's local government strike action, and on the list of demands that unions will apparently put to the Labour national policy forum this week. People reported a bit of a mixed bag:

Barnet Unison branch secretary John Burgess describes rallying the troops at Barnet Council for last week's two-day strike action as 'pretty hard, to be honest.' About 900 people went out on the first day (16 July) at Barnet and about 1100 on the second (Burgess thinks he had about a 55% turnout). The strike action closed about 20 schools, and partly-closed about ten others. 

Burgess says that the logistics of organising strike action on this scale, and in this environment, were almost too challenging. The sentiment is there - public sector workers are as worried about the credit squeeze as anyone, and they are incensed about the privatisation of public services - but unfortunately, the sector is also disparate, disorganised, and easy for management and strike-breakers to circumnavigate. 

Burgess estimates that about a third of the staff providing council services at Barnet are temps and/or agency workers, or are outsourced workers who are as frightened of the consequences of taking strike action as they are difficult to co-ordinate into it.

Another problem this time was that members of other public sector unions weren't out on strike (the GMB, for example, accepted the government's 2.45% pay offer, which meant that GMB members were at work, although some wouldn't cross the picket lines).

Things are made even more challenging by the behaviour of Unison's leadership - specifically, the leadership's ongoing reluctance to acknowledge that its members are demanding that the union break its formal link with the much-loathed Labour party.

'You could see the response that the leaders got at the [strike] rally (in central London on Wednesday). Any time that they mentioned Labour, they got booed. People were shouting 'Disafilliate! Disaffiliate! [Unison deputy general secretary] Keith Sonnet got a real howling when he spoke... People want someone to lead them. It gives them confidence.'