As the RMT Health and Safety Conference takes place, the union is calling for urgent action on crisis of work-related stress, understaffing and the growing threat of workplace assaults. RMT leader EDDIE DEMPSEY explains
OUR schools shows how far things that were in the public realm have been handed over to private interests. And how those private interests have treated themselves very well indeed.
Take the case of the Academies Enterprise Trust, where people who shouldn’t really be in charge of state schools have been handed enormous power. The results for pupils are mediocre, but for the top managers, they are pretty comfortable.
Under New Labour’s Academy programme, schools were handed to private — although not-for-profit — trusts. The Labour version just took selected schools out of local education authorities.
It is rather strange that Labour continues to give prestigious roles to inappropriate, controversy-mired businessmen who are also major Tory donors. What could Labour possibly be hoping to get out of it, asks SOLOMON HUGHES
Despite Labour’s promises to bring things ‘in-house,’ the Justice Secretary has awarded notorious outsourcing outfit Mitie a £329 million contract to run a new prison — despite its track record of abuse and neglect in its migrant facilities, reports SOLOMON HUGHES



