Skip Nav | Home | Mobile | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Security | Support Us

Wales

Wrexham joins National Day of Protest Against WCA & Maximus

WISE Up Wales | 02.03.2015 16:35 | Health | Public sector cuts | Repression | Wales

A national day of action was called for Monday 2 March to protest the ongoing use of the discredited Work Capability Assessments to determine fitness for work or otherwise and to leave Maximus, the company that has taken over from Atos to carry these out, in no doubt that resistance will be ongoing.

2 March is the first working day of Maximus' new contract and protests were held in 30 UK towns and cities including here in Wrexham and at Maximus HQ in central London. A solidarity demo was also organised in Toronto at the offices of Maximus Canada. In Wrexham, there was a small but highly visible protest outside the DWP and Medical Examination Centre on Grosvenor Road.












Background

Read Disability Wales' take on Maximus for some background and for insight into how benefit claimants are being left with no means of supporting themselves, some starving to death or driven to suicide, see this Guardian article and suicides reported on the Benefit Tales blog.


Flyer

The DPAC flyer handed out in Wrexham today describes Maximus as:

a giant American health insurance company. They have been found guilty of massive fraud against the US government, disability, race and gender discrimination, and fined for improper expenses claims. Now they have been employed by the UK government to conduct over a million new assessments for ESA - the main sickness benefit if you can't work - and drastically reduce the numbers of sick and disabled people who are passed as unfit. And Maximus are also selling 'occupational health' services to other UK companies.

We want Maximus to go the way of Atos. They are not welcome here. But just as important we are demanding that the government scrap the unfair and damaging work capability assessment. When medical evidence is needed it should come from a person's own doctor.


Welfare Not Warfare

Today was also a day of action against nuclear weapons, the Burghfield Lockdown, with activists from all over the UK and Europe converging on the nuclear weapons factory in Berkshire to protest against the billions of pounds being spent on Trident and due to be spent on its replacement.

The government doesn't have any trouble allocating huge sums of money for nuclear weapons that threaten all life on earth while sick and disabled people, along with many others, are being denied even the most basic subsistence income. It is becoming increasingly clear that government benefit policy and practice are deliberately genocidal - it's all part of the war on the poor.


Protest in Wrexham

With five times as many people this afternoon as attended this protest at the DWP in Wrexham 11 months ago (although more did come along later on that day), we managed to have a highly visible presence on the corner of busy Grosvenor Road and Gerald Street outside the DWP and Medical Examination Centre where Maximus will have started work this morning. The large number of motorists beeping in support of the demonstration as well as the pedestrians who took flyers and stopped to chat indicated that the public is under no misapprehension about the government's malevolent intentions towards the sick and disabled.

WISE Up Wales

Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

/regional publish include --> /regional search include -->

Wales Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech