Marching on Easton

The campaign committee met and we decided to hold a march and rally in Easton next Friday. We were pleased to welcome Faruk Choudhury to our meeting and talk about developing our links with the Muslim community in the City. Faruk is the labour canditate standing against Lib Dem Cllr Keily in the Easton ward of Bristol. It is Cllr Keily who has pushed through the Council's privatisation plans. Keily is the executive member for Adult and Community Care and he hangs by a thread in his job with Labour having already decided he needs to go and the Torys putting him 'on probation'.

We will protest on Keily's home turf and the campaign committee is tasked with organising a strong turn out from the Home care Assistants for our afternoon of demonstration.

Home care assistants met last week - we are determined to step up our campaign

Because we care about our service users we have been unwilling to call for industrial action, and prefer to ask the people of Bristol to support us, this should not be seen by the council as a weakness we won't be silenced or appeased and we will not go away. We will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that the future of homecare is as a public not a private service where the care comes before the profit.



Steps we are taking:

We have formed a committee of 34 Home care assistants who will lead campaign organisation

1. We will get involved with local council elections and back candidates who back us


2. We will keep positive and recognise that we are making good progress, we are proud of who we are and the jobs we do, we are proud to serve the older and disabled people of Bristol


3. We will gather as many signatures as possible for our petition
   
   We need our service users, their families and all people in Bristol to support us. We are ordinary working women, we are not trouble makers, but we are not a push-over. We will not abandon our service users and we will not be bullied out of our jobs.
   
   Please back our campaign and sign our online petition on the Council's website: http://www.bristol.gov.uk/items/epetition.html Keep Bristol Home Care. Please talk to us in the street, we wear a mint green uniform and there are hundreds of us. We need to know you care too.