DEMONSTRATORS invaded  the Glasgow offices of Ernst & Young yesterday, calling on the Commonwealth Games sponsors to squeeze Atos out of the line-up — or suffer “disrepute.”

Staff peered from meeting rooms and milled at the front desk as protesters with Glasgow Against Atos offered a “moral compass” for the elite accountancy firm.

Campaigner Sean Clerkin told the Morning Star that his group welcomed this year’s games.

But Ernst & Young, which promotes itself as the “official professional adviser” to the games’ organisers, had failed to press the committee to drop the widely reviled welfare contractor Atos as a fellow corporate sponsor.

The IT firm has sought to boost its public profile by sponsoring database software for the event, but disability campaigners have fought to expose a string of scandals and wrongful sanctions arising from its “work capability assessments” for the Department of Work and Pensions.

Mr Clerkin said he had written to Ernst & Young’s managing partner Douglas Nesbit in November to raise the issue  but had received no reply.

“We all support the Commonwealth Games, but we don’t want it to be associated with a company that’s dragging hundreds of thousands of people off their benefits,” he said.

“They will bring scandal and disrepute to Glasgow and the Commonwealth Games in 2014.

“We will act as a moral compass,” he said.

The campaign has launched a petition on change.org.

An Ernst & Young spokesperson declined to comment on the protest, the company’s communications with the games’ organisers or its values statement — “people ... with the courage to lead; people who build relationships based on doing the right thing.”

rorym@peoples-press.com
@RoryMacKinnon