PRIVATISATION and the Private Finance Initiative are likely to be the focal point of Criminal Record Bureau. a renewed trade union challenge to New Labour poli- PFi failures cies at this year's Party conof the biggest unions with members in the public sector - UNISON, GMB and TGWU - have already announced their intention to step up the fight
UNISON has demand- under-sized, ed a moratorium on any new PFl deals pending an on stream. independent inquiry into the £18 billion-worth of deals already completed or under way - a stance supported by the other two big unions.
The GMB resolution fur- Hairmyres ther widens the challenge to privatisation, demanding the government reinstate the International Labour Organisation Convention on fair wages, which was revoked by the Thatcher govern- enforced; ment back in 1983.
If private contractors were prevented from submitting tenders on the basis of cutting workers' pay and had to clear up the mess;
argues the GMB, the competition would genuinely be based on issues of quality, with the public sector in-house team on a level playing field. local demand;
This is similar to the tactic adopted by UNISON in its challenge to the low pay and poor conditions of pricontractors €23.8m under PFI; Scotland's NHS: the union believes that once the possi bility of profiting from low pay is excluded, many of the private firms will pull out of alent to a 25% the bidding process, allowing staff to return in-house.
The GMB resolution also points to the string of failures of private sector providers years; in key areas of public servic- Chancellor es - including the railways, the near-collapse of British Energy, the continuing failures of the Child Support Agency and the crisis at the
Similar arguments also apply to the extension of the Private Finance Initiative as a way of funding new hospi- insisting that nothing will tals, schools and other core stop the government forg investment. An embarrass- ing ahead with this extremeingly long list of PFI failures ly costly method of funding and scandals is growing by new facilities the month as shoddily-built. A Labour Party briefing
over-priced document drawn up to butbuildings and facilities come tress the arguments
favour of PFI daims that it is
Among the fiascos are: a means to make invest• the repeated floods of ment "go further": in fact it is sewage and structural prob- a way of spreading higher lems that have made life hell costs over a longer period for staff and patients at (up to 30 years), and thus
Hospital in draining money from the annual budget of health and
• the new PFI hospital in education for a generation Worcester with corridors so narrow two trolleys cannot pass each other... requiring a one-way system to be
• the PFI school in East Best bib and tucker for TUC: UNISON's Dave Prentis raises the pressure