You may have heard of
the security company called Serco before, if you have not, however, then you
might be interested to learn that they run the security for Villawood Detention
Centre. You may also be interested to learn that what they also own is most of
the world’s ‘public’ assets.
The multinational
company (and that’s about 17 different countries worth of multinational). They
are run out of the UK where they have the most influence and in the UK they own
(yes all of these services are privatized) state security, transport, the
National Physical Laboratory, most of the prisons and detention centres, most
of the defence force including the countries ballistic missile defence system,
most of the airports, five of the state’s hospitals, a highschool, some leisure
centres, they run a number of publicly-funded (naturally putting the private in
public) websites, and waste collection. They also create the software for
monitoring web traffic across London and they’ve been contracted to set
Greenwhich Mean Time.
In the United States,
they have contracts with the US Army, US Federal Aviation Administration, The
Ministry of Ontario, the US Navy, the US airforce, US Department of Homeland
Security, US Marine Corps, Federal Retirement and Thrift Investment Board, US Patent
and Trademark Office, and the US Department of State Intelligence Community.
In case you thought
the list was done, I’m sorry but it doesn’t end here. The company owns the
Province of Ontario’s DriveTest driver examination centres, they have 55 of their
own contractors working for the US Department of Health and Public Services, and
they manage the implementation of the US’ Patient Protection and Affordable
Health Care Act. They also have a contract to enforce parking meter regulations
in Chicago and they run prisons in Germany and Mount Eden Prison in New
Zealand. They operate the Dubai Metro and the Copenhagen Metro.
To add further to the
list, the company operates air traffic control in Iraq and the United Emirates.
In Australia, the
company run Acacia Prison, Borallon Correction Facility, Christmas Island and
of course Villawood Detention Centre. Outside, of our detention centres, they
also operate the Transport Infoline.
To put it simply,
Serco as a conglomerate has managed to privatize more ‘public assets’ than any
conglomeration in history.
The companies revenue
officially stacks out at UK3, 955 million and is ever-growing and, I’m sure you
won’t be surprised to learn, ever acquiring more ‘public’ assets.
So, how much power
do they actually have over individual states?
Well, as is boringly
predictable, they have a dodgy track record which has gone largely unchecked.
In the UK, a report by
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate, a regulator body in the country, found that under
prison regulation from Serco, 60% of its inmates were locked up all day.
Another report found that under the same regulation from Serco in the UK’s
public hospitals, the company had falsified its numbers on its performance 252
times. In fact, within weeks of becoming a large stakeholder over the National
Health Service in the UK as it is now, the company immediately cut one in seven
jobs under the title of “wastage.” The report also found that the company were
underemploying staff and two managers had been gagged by confidentiality clauses,
which was only revealed after several whistleblowing incidents.
The company also
contracts for the Ministry of Justice in the UK here it was revealed that two
Serco contractors had overcharged the government for its services by up to $50
million. Not only does a figure like this prompt the question, what’s in it for
the public, but what’s in it for the people in government?
In Australia, the
record of the company’s finances are fairly similar. In 2012, Serco was meant
to be reporting its financial assets using the auditor Deloitte. However, the
University of New South Wales Proffessor Jeff Knapp said in the Sydney Morning
Herald “Serco now claims the company is not a reporting entity and it prepares
a special financial report that does not include business segments,
financial instruments , directors remuneration and related party transactions
and balances.”
Almost like clockwork, story after story of misconduct by
Serco Security guards keeps finding its way into the public news rounds such as
security guards failing to pay respond properly to protests and allegations
that the security guards are not trained properly. Allegations of this nature
do not just come from Villawood staff themselves but from the NSW police force
who have said that they weren’t not properly trained for emergency incidents
such as fire emergencies.
Serco staff also threatened industrial action last year
claiming that Western Australia’s prisoner transport system is understaffed.
United Voices Carolyn Smith said to the ABC. "They are running
incredibly important public services and they do not have the guts to come out
and answer the very real questions that people have about the way they're
running those services."
To criticize the government’s relentlessly racist asylum
seeker policy on both the federal and opposition side is one thing, but what
does it mean it is in a company’s vested economic interest for their to be a
continued influx of asylum seekers in a given country? The same vested economic
interested the company also has in continued national defence spending in
numerous countries and the same vested economic interest in continued
government surveillance? In fact, the same vested economic interest in
continued conflict between many of the countries it runs security for?
Well, the multinational conglomerate Serco does and will only continue to as long it keeps buying up public assets.
