24/02/10 - Become your own boss, Paul Bristow offers Teesside public sector workers

New plans for employee-owned co-operatives to help improve local services

Public sector workers across Teesside could become their own boss and deliver better services under new Conservative plans, backed Paul Bristow, Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland.  Under bold proposals, public sector workers would have a powerful new right to form employee-owned co-operatives to take over the services they deliver. This will empower thousands of public sector workers across Teesside.

The new right to form employee-owned co-operatives will apply throughout the vast majority of the public sector - including JobCentre Plus offices, community nursing teams and primary schools. Employee-owned co-operatives will continue to be funded by the state so long as they meet national standards, but will be freed from centralised bureaucracy and political micromanagement. They will be voluntary sector, not-for-profit organisations; any financial surpluses would be reinvested into the service and the staff who work there, rather than distributed to external shareholders.

 Paul said:

 "Public sector workers should have the chance to become their own boss. Employee-owned co-operatives can help cut waste and deliver better services for everyone across Teesside. This could be the biggest shift of power from government to people since the right to buy your council house in the 1980s.

 "This shows how Conservatives will give power to the public sector workers who are fed up with Gordon Brown's top-down control of their working lives.''