RBS bonuses - UNISON response

UNISON, the UK’s largest union, said today that that the millions spent on bonuses at the 82% taxpayer-owned bank RBS, would be better spent on keeping vital local services running. The union said that the bonus pot could fund more than 32,000 nurses, midwives and paramedics, 27,000 trained social workers, or more than 68,000 care workers to help support elderly and vulnerable people to stay in their homes. Dave Prentis, UNISON General Secretary, said: “While hardworking families struggle with pay and job cuts, and communities lose vital local services, RBS bankers are being lavished with bonuses worth £785 million. Pay in the bank’s investment arm has gone up by a third in the last year, on top of salaries the majority of us couldn’t even dream of. The bank is still making a loss – it is a reward for failure, and another clear sign that we’re not all in this together. “This bonus pot could pay for more than 32,000 nurses, midwives and paramedics. It could fund more than 68,000 care workers, or 27,000 social workers - what do you think is worth more to our country? “The government needs to ditch its warm words on fairness and take real action. It is only right that the sector that got us into this mess takes responsibility for getting us out of it. Cutting these bonuses and imposing a tiny transaction tax on the banks would be a major step in the right direction.”

Scottish Spending Review – UNISON Scotland response

Commenting on today’s Scottish Spending Review announcement, Mike Kirby, UNISON’s Scottish Secretary, said: “While we welcome the news on public sector pensions as it applies to local government, the Finance Secretary had the discretion to carry this across the public services and chose not to do so.
“Although his announcement removes the threat of industrial action in local government, we still have serious issues across the public sector with many thousands of our members still facing unprecedented attacks to their pensions.
“We’re angry at the continuation of the pay freeze which will affect hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers, who have already faced a real-term pay cut for the past two years. There’s also no evidence that the £250 payment for workers earning under £21,000 will be universally applied.”

UNISON Scotland’s Policy Briefing #13 on today’s Spending Review is published on our briefings page – www.unison-scotland.org.uk/briefings.

UNISON Glasgow Staff Newsletter

Introduction

Welcome to the new Unison Enable Glasgow newsletter.  This year has been and continues to be a busy one.  With the prolonged introduction of personalisation in Glasgow and an ongoing pay claim.  However, we’ve seen a steady rise in membership over the year and now have two new Stewards in Glasgow (contact details above).

On Wednesday 5th October at 4pm, there will be a meeting for all Enable workers in UNISON at UNISON House, 14 West Campbell Street Glasgow G2 6RX.  This is your chance to meet the new stewards and raise any issues or concerns you have to them.  If you are unable to make the meeting on the 5^th of October, and there is anything you want raised please inform one of your stewards, so that this can be heard at the meeting.

Personalisation

Unison’s position continues to be in favour of giving service users greater control of their support but against all the cuts that we believe personalisation has been used to implement.  Back in April we had successful lobby in Glasgow with over 400 people attending including many form Enable.  Since then Glasgow City Council has been slowing down its implementation of personalisation, but cuts are still taking place.  

The cuts from personalisation continue to have a massive effect on the lives people of the people that our member’s support, with many seeing drastic cuts in the level of support they receive. Others are still waiting on the Risk Enablement Panels that are meeting in mid-October to find out what personalisation will mean to their support.

UNISON is continuing to raise awareness and campaign against the severity of these cuts and the effects they are having on the lives of people we support, through engagement with service users, families and support workers.  There will be a meeting to continue this process on Tuesday 20^th September 10am till 12pm at the Glasgow City of Glasgow Branch UNISON, 4^th floor, 18 Albion St, Glasgow, G1 1LH.  This meeting will be open to all service users, workers and family members.  We urge everyone who can make it to come along.

Training for Support Assistants 

UNISON has highlighted to Enable Scotland that training had not been taking place in Glasgow for some time.  Leaving many new staff members without all their mandatory training and many long term staff members with training that is out of date.  Enable agreed that they recognise this is a problem and have said they would soon be starting up training in Glasgow again. 

Nevertheless, we are still waiting for Enable Scotland to follow through on its promises and re-implement its training in Glasgow.  Training is vital in terms of health and safety at work, staff development and progression and also ensuring that we can deliver the highest level of care possible to those we support.   

Pay claim Update

For over 3 years now we have had a pay freeze at Enable and after the consultation ballot, in which members voted heavily in favour of industrial action over pay, there is still no sign of an offer coming from Enable for a consolidated rise for 2010/11 or 2011/12 for the 2.5% pay increase we have been asking for.  At UNISON’s request Enable have agreed to consider making a one off payment to all staff including those on sessional contracts and we await their response and will consider our next steps in light of this.  They have also stated that they are still committed to achieving the Scottish Living Wage, which would see a minimum rate of pay of £7.20 at Enable and discussion will continue other making steps towards this.

Our recent research has also shown that many workers in Enable who do sleepovers with a 16 hour shift and are on the £6.87 rate are in fact earning on average £5.74 an hour, which is less than the National Minimum Wage (NMW) £5.93.  Those workers who are on the £7.20 hourly rate and do sleepovers with a 16 hour shift, currently get an average of £5.96, just above NMW.  However the NMW is due to increase on the 1^st of October to £6.08, meaning they too will be getting an average rate of pay that is below the NMW.  This is illustrated on the graphs opposite, if you believe your average weekly pay falls below the NMW when sleepovers are taken into account then please contact your stewards and we will look to taking cases forward.

MEMBERSHIP AND STEWARDS

There has never been a more vital time to be a member of a trade union. Please pass the enclosed form to a non member colleague or they can join online at www.unison.org.uk/join or by calling 0845 355 0845. Also we need more members to come forward to be stewards. Please consider giving this a go, it is rewarding and stimulating work, you get full training and paid time off to do it. Please let me know if you would like more information on getting active.

CAMPAIGNING AGAINST THE CUTS

UNISON remains at the forefront of speaking out for workers providing services to the public. Recently you may have seen us standing up for workers in Quarriers whose pay and conditions are under attack. What is happening to voluntary sector workers at present is a direct result of Westminster, Scottish and local governments passing on cuts. We need to highlight that it doesn’t need to be like this and there is a better way – tackle tax evasion and avoidance and reprioritise what we spend money on.

UNISON will be fully supporting the STUC’s People First on October the 1^st March and Rally from Glasgow Green at 11.30am on October 1^st to a rally in Kelvingrove Park. Please come along and bring your family and friends to help us ensure a large UNISON voluntary sector presence.

PERSONALISATION IN GLASGOW

We continue to monitor this situation closely and are in the process of producing a campaign bulletin aimed at raising awareness of the issues arising out of the cuts being imposed in Glasgow.

We are organising a meeting from 10am to 12 noon on Tuesday 20^th September at the City of Glasgow Branch of UNISON, 4th Floor, 18 Albion Street, Glasgow G1 1LHfor service users, workers and families affected by personalisation in Glasgow, though the meeting will be of interest to people beyond Glasgow as what happens here will be picked up by other local authority areas.

PAY

As you know Enable have stated they are unable to offer any pay increase for 2010/11 and there is no sign of any offer coming for 2011/12. However they have committed to entering in to talks with us over the possibility of Enable adopting the Scottish Living Wage of £7.20 per hour as a minimum rate. As I write we are still seeking confirmation from Enable of a date to meet.

Whilst we haven’t had substantive discussions yet the adoption of the SLW would be a major step forward. More info on the SLW can be found at this website: http://povertyalliance.org/slw-home.asp .