Call for local actions:

Please contact us if you're organising an event in your area to be added to have it added to the website, fb page etc. Help, support, ideas all really needed, please get in touch via the website or facebook

Take Action Against Atos Origin and the Poverty Pimps on the 24th January 2011.

Atos Origin have just been awarded a £300 million contract by the Con-dem Government to continue carrying out ‘work capability assessments’.  It is claimed assessments are to test what people can do rather than what they can’t. The real purpose is to strip benefits from as many people as possible. This testing system has already led to people with terminal illnesses and severe medical conditions being declared fit for work and having benefits cut. GP’s are ignored in favour of decisions made by Atos Origin’s computer. Plans announced for the scrapping of Disability Living Allowance have also revealed that this intrusive testing is likely to be extended to everyone on some form of disability or health related benefit. To date around 40% of appeals against Atos Origin’s decisions have been successful.

The Government also plans to cut £2.5 billion from Employment Support Allowance. Plans to limit the benefit to just one year will mean that even those who are deemed unable to work will be presumed to have made a miraculous recovery. Meanwhile the budget for Disability Living Allowance is to be cut by 20%.

With the recent changes in Housing Benefit and possible changes to Council Tax benefit, these cuts will leave hundreds of thousands of people with severe health problems without enough money to feed themselves and heat their homes.

That’s if they aren’t forced into unpaid labour, no doubt inflicted on them by poverty pimps like SERCO and Action for Employment. Whilst millions of people face homelessness, disruption, debt and ill health the gravy train is being extended for those companies which seek to profit from the misery of others.

It’s time to fightback and hold these companies to account.

Atos Origin do not just do health related testing. They are a global IT and Consultancy company with offices around the UK. One speciality they boast of on their website is having: “a team of Organisation and HR professionals who undertake the analysis, design and execution of headcount reduction.”

A list of Atos Origins locations can be found at:  http://www.uk.atosorigin.com/en-uk/about_us/locations/
Other poverty pimps include: Action for Employment / REED / Manpower / Serco

Plus many more, please add details to the facebook page:  http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=173084439389460

Supported by:
- Accept the challenge Iain Duncan-Smith!
(FB Group from Dundee Unemployed Workers)
- Benefit Claimants Fightback (fb group)
- Black Triangle Anti-Defamation Campaign (fb page)
- Brighton Benefits Campaign
- Carer Watch
- Carer Watch fb page
- Crippen – Disabled Cartoonist
- Disabled People Against Cuts
- Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty
- Free London Listings
- Goldsmiths in Occupation
- Haringey Solidarity Group
- Ipswich Unemployed Action
- Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group
- Lancaster and Morecambe Against the Cuts!
- Norfolk Community Action Group
- Nottingham Claimants' Union
- Oxford Save Our Services
- Nuneaton Against Benefit Cuts (fb page)
- Squattastic
- Tyneside Claimants Union
- Welfare Rights 4 u (UK) fb page
- Work Programme & Flexible New Deal Scandal
- World Homeless Day