ATOS demos in the UK

[red flag over teeside]

In light of today's protests in the UK against ATOS do people think any good can come from such protest's given that they are or the reports I've seen are small affairs?

[GiantMonkeyMan]

The problem with these protests (I went to one this morning of around 15+ people outside the centre Atos works out of) and the protests around the bedroom tax/council tax benefit cuts etc is that they seem to be organised by trade union full timers or naive Labour Party activists from half way across the country with an aim of making the protest 'national' but with no real knowledge about the realities of organising on the ground in local areas or no real attempt at support. For example, the place where we were protesting today is a bus ride away from the town centre in an awkward place to get to with virtually no public presence for us to hand leaflets out to and if you're disabled you can't easily make your way out there for the time called considering the local buses are tosspots who won't let you use your bus passes before 10 or something along those lines.

For a large part, these protests are called by people outside the movement on facebook. We had a number of people really active in 'organising' the protest on facebook who didn't even show up. It's frustrating because Atos, and the government dictated standards that Atos abide by, are fucking disgusting. If there is to be a successful organising against the cuts and sanctions being thrown at claimants then it needs to be at the grassroots level and not some randomer building the revolution one facebook event at a time.

[red flag over teeside]

Interestingly ATOS looks like it's going to jump ship so to speak and not renew it's contract with the DWP. Would like to think that campaigns over the years have led to this but I suspect not.

[tallguy]

Interestingly ATOS looks like it's going to jump ship so to speak and not renew it's contract with the DWP. Would like to think that campaigns over the years have led to this but I suspect not.
From what I've read, it's down to the significant number of people who have had their sickness benefits stopped, who then go on to successfully appeal the decision in the courts. It's basically broken Atos' business model, which was based on the number of claimants it got off the sickness benefits.

Fucking brilliant.

[Blake's Baby]

My understanding is ATOS specifically cited the protests as being a factor in their decision to pull out of the contract. Obviously that's not the end of it because it's not the company that's the problem, it's the process, and the law hasn't changed.

I don't know about other protests but where I am there were around 50 people for the first couple of hours which then shrank to about 30 for the next two hours.

Our 'facebook organisers' were there. The protest was called by disability rights activists and supported by a lot of angry people. So I don't think we suffered from the problem of 'activists' (Labour or otherwise) paracchuting themselves in. Yes there were a lot of union people there, mostly connected with the SPEW I think. A Labour councillor who's something of a maverick. But a significant proportion were people who had gone through the ATOS assessments themselves, and to that extent it was quite 'self-organised'. Maybe that was exceptional though (an perhaps indicates why our turnouts were significantly higher than in some other places, as several places I've heard about had protests of 10-20 people).