UNISON Active

Scotland - the real divide

2012-02-01T07:52:00.000Z

Amongst the vast outpouring of news reporting and coverage and punditry regarding whether Scotland should or shouldn't become independent. This article from GMB Scotland's Richard Leonard - analysing the situation from a Trade Union and Left perspective stands out like diamond in a dungheap.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/114793

UNISON Labour Link - Give our members a reason to vote Labour

2012-01-31T13:05:00.000Z

The UNISON National Labour Link Committee met on Monday 30 January to consider its response to the statements made by the Labour Party leadership about public sector pay restraint and cuts. It issued the following statement:

UNISON’s National Labour Link Committee members have been angered by the Party’s suggestion that public sector workers should face two more years of pay restraint - effectively pay cuts. Across the country, public service workers – the majority low paid women - have already endured real cuts to their living standards, attacks on their pensions, and face the daily threat of losing their jobs. The committee agreed to campaign within the Party to reverse the leadership’s decision to back these damaging pay policies.

Committee chair, Steve Warwick, said: “Everyone agrees that we must raise the issue of pay cuts at every level within the Labour Party. We must fight from within, and work with Councillors, MPs and CLPs to impress on the Party’s leadership how damaging the statements on public sector pay have been. We need the Labour Party to act like an opposition, and hold the government to account over damaging policies that are hitting the poorest, and most vulnerable, hardest.”

The committee agreed that UNISON will meet with other affiliated unions to discuss how Labour Party policy is made, so that members and affiliates can be properly listened to and involved in the future. To get ordinary members’ views heard within the Party, we will also encourage UNISON activists to get involved in CLPs and regions to speak up for public sector workers and their families. We will be diverting UNISON staff resources into making this happen.

UNISON is fiercely opposed to the government’s policy of pay restraint and cuts, and calls on the Labour Party leadership to give our members a reason to vote for the Party, by providing a real alternative to the coalition’s damaging cuts.

7 March - Rally to save the NHS

2012-01-31T08:13:00.000Z

The TUC’s All Together for the NHS campaign is calling health workers and patients to a rally in Central London at 6PM on 7 March as the Health and Social Care Bill enters its final crucial parliamentary stages. TUC Deputy General Secretary Frances O'Grady said: 'Some changes have been made to the Bill but not nearly enough. Only this week we have seen a private company taking over an NHS hospital for the first time, as Circle moves in to the Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire. This will be the future the NHS has to look forward to if the Bill stays in its current form’ http://www.tuc.org.uk/social/tuc-20551-f0.cfm

Party Funding reform - a study in political paralysis

2012-01-30T07:46:00.000Z

The June 2010 Coalition Agreement included the aim of 'removing big money from politics' and to that end the Con Dem appointed Committee on Standards in Public Life conducted a protracted review in 2010/11. Its report was published in November 2011 recommending a £10,000 annual cap on individual donations from 2015, over £20m additional state funding and some reform to the law governing trade union political contributions (opt in instead of opt out). Yesterday, a Commons select committee, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, published a report urged renewed consideration of the proposals - which back in November were met with a lukewarm response from the main political parties and silence from Labour's 15 affiliated trade unions: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmpolcon/1763/176302.htm

Vested interests speak out in favour of Con Dem NHS reforms

2012-01-29T08:05:00.000Z

In a letter to yesterday’s Daily Telegraph a number GPs belonging to the pro-Commissioning NHS Alliance criticised the BMA for its stand against the Government’s Health Bill. The group say the BMA does not speak for the majority of General Practioners while ignoring the fact that NHS Alliance itself is an elite group representing some commissioners. The main thrust of the letter is that if the bill is derailed then there is a real threat to the future of the NHS. The only justification for the Bill presented by this group is the perception that clinical leadership will spearhead commissioning: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/9045518/Clinical-leadership.html

But as Dr Clare Gerada, Chair of the Royal College of General Practioners points out the Bill proposes far more fundamental changes to the provision of health care than merely giving clinicians a greater say in commissioning.

The risk to the NHS is far greater if the Bill becomes law. The bill will require competition to be the driving force in provision of health care. Cost will become the bottom line with quality very much secondary. The Bill is simply a way of opening the health service to the private sector, with every service open to 'Any Qualified Provider. In addition NHS Trusts will be able to earn 49% of their income from private patients. This will lead to NHS patients waiting longer.

Far from empowering GPs the bill will create a divide between them and their patients. Commissioning budgets will still be determined by the government and GPs will ration health care. This is bound to interfere with the important relationship between the patient and their GP.

Perhaps it is not surprising that this group of GPs have openly supported the Bill given the generous praised heaped upon them by Andrew Lansley in November 2010. It is also true that some GP's could make significant sums of money if they manage to underspend their budget.

LRD report confirms #N30 linked membership surge across all public sector unions

2012-01-29T07:56:00.000Z

All trade unions are reporting big increases in the rate of recruitment during the final quarter of 2011. The surge in union membership because of the Pensions disputes - including in the private sector - is confirmed by research carried out by the independent Labour Research Depeartment (LRD).
http://www.lrd.org.uk/issue.php?pagid=1&issueid=1499

UNISON reports its own 'spike' in membership as part of the findings and other unions who took strike action for the first time in decades have reported similar increases - including ATL and Prospect. GMB and Unite report increases in local government and in the private sector, with the current Unilever Pensions dispute being a recruitment factor.

Sustaining these increases is the biggest challenge facing the unions, especially in a climate of austerity. An environment of massive job losses, service cuts and privatisation is an extremely difficult one for unions, especially when coupled with threats to union facilities such as time off and check off arrangements.

But this report sums up what we all knew - an active campaigning union that is relevant to the workers has the best chance to grow.

Counsel by Mourid Barghouti

2012-01-29T07:54:00.000Z

Perplexed and not knowing what to do,
he summoned us
and we obeyed.
We stood under his marble balcony:
he looked sad.
His hands have been shaking
since a fortune-teller said to him:
“You’ll die if you do not seek somebody’s counsel.”
He cleared his throat
and mapped us with his eyes.
We almost believed that,
for once,
in a thousand years,
he’d give one of us the chance to speak.
He reached out for a looking-glass,
raised it,
stared at it,
asked it to speak out.
When it did,
he thanked it
then smashed it
lest it should get used
to the right to speak

http://mouridbarghouti.net/Mouridweb/English/index.htm

Speak out against injustice - Ed Miliband

2012-01-28T10:22:00.000Z

In his statement to mark 2012 Holocaust Memorial Day, Labour leader Ed Miliband says that this year’s message - ’Speak Up and Speak Out’ - is one which we must all take to heart and commit to act upon. 'In order to ensure that the atrocities of the Holocaust and other genocides are not repeated in the future we must all recognise our individual duty to protect our communities and neighbourhoods by speaking out against injustice wherever and whenever we see it. Memorial Day provides us with the opportunity to remember this call to action while reflecting on those who have suffered, and to renew our determination to work together to ensure a better, safer and more just future for all.'
http://hmd.org.uk/

First They Came - Pastor Martin Niemoller

2012-01-28T10:17:00.002Z

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

http://hmd.org.uk/resources/poetry/first-they-came-pastor-martin-niemoller

Salford needs more Lads Clubs not an Elected Mayor

2012-01-27T13:15:00.000Z

Last night’s results in the Salford Mayor referendum are alarming and should act as a wake-up call to trade unionists everywhere. Just 18.1% of the total eligible electorate voted in the referendum in Salford triggered by a petition from the right wing English Democrats Party (who claim they are not anti-anything but want a devolved English Parliament) http://www.socialistunity.com/english-democrats-party-all-rotten-apples-in-a-rancid-barrel/

A miniscule party that attracts some very tardy right wing members and supporters. The results of 17,344 people voting yes, with 13,653 voting against means that Salford will have an Elected Mayor – that’s the result of ‘democracy’. The election will take place on 3 May on the same day that 10 largest English cities outside of London will hold imposed referenda on whether they should adopt the Mayoral model of governance: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16720832

In reality it has been a catastrophic failure of the left and unions to organise against this fig-leaf policy to impose popularist Mayors, often of the right wing ’hang em and flog em’ school of public policy on local areas – whose powers outstrip those of the majority of councillors selected on higher turnouts.

The idea of an elected mayor being somehow more democratic is ludicrous. In most English authorities councillors are put up for re-election on a rolling basis of a third of all seats each year, allowing regularly opportunity for the public to remove those councillors or council leaders that are failing to deliver.

Elected Mayors have a term of four years and even when they are an unmitigated disaster it is nigh on impossible to remove them. Just look at Stoke. In other areas opposition party Mayors have imposed policies deliberately frustrating those of the majority council. In places like Doncaster and North Tyneside Elected Mayors have pursued random outsourcing policies against the will of the majority council. Conservative Mayors ruling over a labour council is not an unusual turn of events when Elected Mayors are voted upon.

Now is the time for UNISON to organise against this threat. We need to campaign and educate our members what it means to simply not bother to turn out to vote against Elected Mayors. Apathy on the part of the electorate who are unlikely to want a mayor but didn’t bother to go to the polls has led to this outcome. In a place like Salford riddled with poverty and bleeding under the weight of public sector cuts the idea that millions of pounds of public money is spent on a new Mayoral office, election costs and new constitutions is remarkable. Salford people need more lads clubs not more politicians.

Anna Rose

Gloom, doom and more austerity dominates Davos World Economic Forum - but ITUC pushes for change in direction

2012-01-27T07:57:00.000Z

World leaders’ gather in Davos this year knowing that disaster is still able to sweep them all away. Whilst the world's workers and their families suffer the global austerity measures - the political leaders and their big business masters still insist that cuts in welfare, in education and in health or the only way to preserve the system. But as the German Chancellor Angela Merkel has conceded their strategy might be too late to save Greece. If that is the case the implications for the European Union, the Euro and the chances of any kind of recovery will appear even more distant and again the lives of people across the European economy will be devastated: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/25/davos-summit-growth-gloom-live

The Davos summit will take place with a number of other spectres haunting the participants. The sudden re-emergence of Marine Le Pen leading French fascism back into the polls - 22% and rising - could signal a re emergence of the far right. The Arab Spring has released forces that the governments of the world economy cannot control. Finally the US Presidential election looks set to be a bitter battle over the economy with the economic intervention styles of Democrats and Republicans looking increasingly divergent.

There is still room to make the case for a better way. Sharan Burrow as the General Secretary of the international Trade union Confederation has set out the case for a different model for economic recovery.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharan-burrow/the-worlds-next-top-econo_b_1224758.html

The ITUC rejects the still discredited 'trickle down' theory of recovery and sets out an agenda for every government -

Investment to create sustainable jobs that will lead the recovery
Investment in social equality and protection
Financial Regulation
Fair and progressive taxation
Climate action

‘World leaders’ will not take up this agenda at the World Economic Forum in Davos. But it sets out an agenda for trade unions to pursue with their own politicians - are you listening Ed?

Prospects for Unions in the UK - a slow death or a renewed purpose?

2012-01-26T08:13:00.000Z

In a week when the Tory right formally launched an advanced guard in its war against trade unions, the laughably named Trade Union Reform Coalition, the BBC has published an insightful on-line feature on the state of the UK trade union movement. Geraldine Healy, professor of employment relations at Queen Mary, University of London, says that the role of unions is of renewed importance during an era of austerity and widening inequality "At the moment there's a really strong sense of injustice in society and people are looking for different ways of reducing that level of injustice. Trade unions are one of the key ways of doing that,"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16609527

European Trade Union Day of Action - 29 February 2012

2012-01-26T08:09:00.000Z

In the face of a worsening economic and social situation and the ever-tougher austerity measures being imposed by Europe's leaders as the only solution, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) has called for a European day of action on 29 February, the eve of the European Council. Trade unions will mobilise across Europe to have jobs and social justice placed at the heart of political priorities.

European trade unions met today, in Brussels, in a strong and coordinated response to the worsening economic and social situation.

On the initiative of the ETUC, a European day of action will be organised on 29 February, the eve of the European Council. European trade union organisations will carry out actions in their own country to bring attention to the gravity of the situation. Jobs and social justice can no longer be kept off the European agenda.

ETUC General Secretary Bernadette Ségol declared: "European trade unions are mobilising to say 'enough is enough'. Austerity measures are not the only answer to the crisis. On the contrary, they cause tremendous social damage. The draft international treaty that will be on the agenda of next week's summit reinforces austerity. Its sole objective is to reduce public deficits as much as possible, regardless of the social impact.

Europe cannot continue to impose measures that do not work, that plunge countries deeper into the crisis and impoverish more and more people. For the European trade unions, this treaty must include a strong social component. Balanced budgets are necessary but austerity alone exacerbates imbalances. A policy of stimulation of the economy through investments should be the solution of choice."
Pictures of the trade union assembly and press conference available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/etuc-ces

New TUC report - Facility Time for Union Reps: Separating fact from fiction

2012-01-25T08:22:00.000Z

In an excellent riposte to the union bashing Tory right and their tabloid mouthpieces, Professor Gregor Gall has written a TUC report highlighting the value of workplace union representatives, featuring a number of case studies including Angela Rayner, UNISON local government branch secretary in Stockport, Greater Manchester: http://www.tuc.org.uk/tucfiles/206/FacilityTimeSeparatingFactfromFiction.pdf

Outsourcing in the era of austerity - diminishing returns?

2012-01-24T18:30:00.000Z

The FT today carries an interesting report on ‘growing scepticism’ in central and local government over the potential savings to be achieved by outsourcing of services, despite the worst efforts of the public sector industrial complex. David Hall, director of the Public Services International Research Unit at Greenwich University, says: “What is interesting is that despite the biggest austerity package in postwar history the outsourcing route has not been seen as a way of delivering significant cost savings. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b01353c2-27d0-11e1-9433-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1kOo6dZTF

Cuts in England - mapping the North-South divide‏

2012-01-24T18:29:00.001Z

A heat map of the cuts does a pretty good job of showing the north south divide in the way government cuts are hitting people. Unsurprisingly, Liverpool having taken one of the worst cuts in the country is shown as having lost more than £40 per person out of next year's budget. St Helens and Knowsley are in the same category. http://blogs.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/dalestreetblues/2012/01/goverment-cuts-maps-shows-nort.html

1.1bn people unemployed or living in poverty

2012-01-24T07:59:00.000Z

The International Labour Organization (ILO) has published its annual Global Employment Trends report and states that 'the jobs crisis continues unabated, with one in three workers worldwide, or an estimated 1.1bn people, either unemployed or living in poverty.' The ILO also added that young people continue to be among the worst hit by the jobs crisis and that future prospects for them are bleak - 'judging by the present course, there is little hope for a substantial improvement in their near-term employment prospects'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16695096

Green light for Mutuals - Dust off your old CCT guidance and get ready to fight

2012-01-23T21:17:00.000Z

Whilst the Cabinet Office desperately struggles to reinvent the failing ‘big society’ policy the LGA recently reported that less than 3% of councils responding to a survey have had any interest from staff in setting up employee led mutual arrangements and very few intend to encourage or push this route.

Despite these figures which would depress the most committed ‘big society’ proponent The Cabinet Office are intent on flogging a dead horse are now issuing guidance and changes to legislation to take forward coops and mutuals to make it easier to set them up to run public services:
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/news/mutuals-get-go-ahead

This is now for the unions a ‘back to CCT’ moment. In the late 80’s and early 90s we made sure anyone who wanted to pick over the bones of public services were able to support the continuance of staff terms and conditions and we fought hard to enforce TUPE.

We fought for continuation of staff pensions and made pensions a key negotiating point. We fought against the cowboy contractors by insisting that they had proper health and safety assessments, method statements, competency to do the work and financial security to run public services without going into bankruptcy.

This latest missive from the Cabinet Office should remind us as a union to dust down the old CCT advice. It is no different now to then in many ways – if enthusiastic amateurs attempt to run local public services they should be held to account in the same way that we held private companies to account under CCT.

Public services shouldn’t be put at risk nor public sector workers thrown onto the scrap heap because councils or other employers are seduced by the language of good intent spun by the self-interested third sector intent on privatising public services.

Anna Rose

Injunction blocks Tory Council plans to replace libraries staff with volunteers

2012-01-23T09:20:00.000Z

Library campaigners in Surrey have won a court injunction which stops the Tory led County Council from replacing paid staff at 10 libraries with volunteers.The action was brought last week by Surrey Libraries Action Movement (SLAM), whose spokesman Lee Godfrey told the BBC “We were expecting a three-week wait while the judge considered the merits of the case before deciding whether to issue an injunction. It didn't take the judge very long to decide that our case was strong enough to merit a quick injunction."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-16665381

Fight intensifies against NHS & Social Care Bill

2012-01-23T09:18:00.000Z

The fight against the NHS and Social Care Bill is hotting up. Yesterday's Observer reported that the cross-party (but Tory led) Commons Health Select Committee is about to publish a highly critical report saying that the reorganisation of the NHS in England is counter productive and "often creates disruption and distraction that hinders the ability of organisations to consider truly effective ways of reforming service delivery and releasing savings" http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/21/health-reform-crisis-andrew-lansley?

Southampton one year on - 'UNISON members will not accept pay cuts'

2012-01-22T10:11:00.000Z

The dispute at Southampton City Council has entered its second year with UNISON and Unite members continuing their resistance to imposed pay cuts. A new phase of protest action is planned including a lobby of a 15 February council meeting and action on 10 April to mark the opening of the £5 million Sea City Museum. The hard line Tory led Council is aiming to cut £76 million from its budget by 2015.

Mike Tucker, UNISON Branch Secretary said "Whether introduced by Conservative or Labour councils, UNISON members will not accept pay cuts. While wasting millions on a museum the city does not need, council workers have suffered savage pay cuts." http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/114410

Tomography by Kersten Hensil

2012-01-22T10:05:00.000Z

The X-ray of my aching
cranium
shows nothing
but the predictable hardenings
of age.
Stop worrying,
the doctor says,
it's just the world
pressure-cooking
your head.

http://germany.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=2214

We are the shareowners of Capitalism...and we must make it responsible to us!

2012-01-21T11:01:00.000Z

At last a debate has begun about the future of capitalism...many on the left consider it a pointless debate given that they consider it something to be torn down. But what most workers and their leaders fail to grasp is they are capitalism...! The largest capital funds in the world are pension funds and many dwarf the GDP of countries.

Of the 40 largest pension funds in the world 36 are public sector pension funds...and what is a pension fund? It is simply the store of worker's savings, invested to deliver pensions. Around half of these savings are invested in company shares..this makes you and I capitalists..we are the beneficial owners of company shares.

We are not shareholders...we are shareowners there is a difference...shareholders are the investment managers who hold our shares and invest our money for financial gain they charge us for that privilege. Until we wake up and realise that the economy belongs to us and not some bunch of top hatted toffs we will always be cutting our own throats with our own money.

Yesterday Jon Cruddas raised his voice on our behalf in the House of Commons..."Making companies more accountable to shareholders will not be enough to tackle 'crony capitalism'. Shareholders themselves must also become more accountable to the ordinary savers whose capital they invest, this means much greater transparency about what is being done with our money. It also means clarification of investors’ duties. We cannot have responsible capitalism if the capitalists think the law prohibits them from acting responsibly."
http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2012/01/20/the-capitalism-debate-spotlight-on-shareholders

Responsible capitalism does not go far enough we need a responsible economy...one designed for everyone..for those without pension funds. It is no good just seeking a return on investments we must develop a whole economy outlook for our funds own a slice of everything..shares, government debt, corporate debt, property, infrastructure.

A starting point in developing a “whole economy” approach is to recognize that our fund's assets only earn income because of the labour they employ or draw on. We are the senior parties in the chain of governance that ultimately controls the deployment of labour in the private sector. Company boards make employment and investment decisions in the name of the shareowners first.
So in influencing the deployment of labour, what are funds seeking from the economy for the retirement provision for beneficiaries, and their wider social and family benefit? It sounds trite, but perhaps the clearest answer is expressed in rather simple practical terms:

· A decent quality of domestic life – food, warmth and shelter, and enough income to enjoy some travel and entertainment.

· A thriving community to live in – with full employment, social amenities and health care

If the economy is to meet these basic requirements for beneficiaries as the retired live longer, as well as cope with climate change, world poverty and widening income inequality, it is surely inevitable that more labour must be oriented to these tasks, both in creating new technologies and in applying them.

However, recognising that we are Capitalism is the first step on the road to finding the solutions we and our planet so desperately need.

10 Myths about local pay determination

2012-01-21T10:58:00.000Z

The 'IDS eye' blog has published a very useful summary of 10 myths associated with local pay determination. It should give Tory proponents of the break up of national pay bargaining plenty of food for thought, particularly the myth 'that the public sector should start varying pay without regard to any other factors, but change does not occur in a vacuum.

Employers in the public sector have spent much of the past ten years trying to develop pay systems that would eradicate equal pay challenges. Paying people doing ‘like work’ at different rates of pay ‘for no good reason’ would re-open the gates to equal pay challenges and any number of challenges about unfair treatment. Even zonal pay systems can provoke arguments about unfairness over where the lines are drawn'
http://ht.ly/8AdQB

Ordering Genes by Helen Oswald

2012-01-21T10:57:00.000Z

We are what our grandparents ate.
Their choices from the cold store ordered my genes
so that a grapefruit dissected with the proper tool
and eaten by my grandma on the eve of war
accounts for this bitterness I sometimes feel.

And maybe that extra cow’s-lick of butter
churned from grandpa’s Irish herd,
scooped up on his initialled silver blade
passed down to my own cutlery drawer,
has marked me too; my slick, emollient tongue.

I have no children of my own
but today I select with care: mussels in their shells,
unscrubbed; hake, the deep sea gleam
still polished in its eye; tomatoes not yet ripe,
their stubborn grip on the vine.

http://toddswift.blogspot.com/2010/08/featured-poet-helen-oswald.html

Joseph Stiglitz: Austerity is a suicide, it will kill Europe

2012-01-20T09:58:00.000Z

Ahead of the 2012 world economic summit in Davos, leading US economist Joseph Stiglitz is interviewed by the Hong Kong financial website Quamnet and cautions against the austerity measures being implemented in many European countries: 'the big message that I’m going to talk about in Davos is that the strategy of austerity is a suicide. It will kill Europe, it will kill America and also the global economy. That’s really the important message. You have to get growth' http://www.quamnet.com/newscontent.action?articleId=2150970

Breaking News: Edinburgh dumps privatisation

2012-01-19T12:55:00.000Z

Edinburgh Council voted this morning to dump the final two of three huge privatisation plans following a hugely successful union and community campaign. Environment Services stayed in house in November and Corporate services and Facilities contracts were voted down today as the SNP joined Labour and Greens to beat the Lib Dems (SNP coalition partners) and the Tories. Had these contracts gone out, about 4,000 jobs would have been affected - the biggest ever council privatisation in Scotland.

The "Our City's Not For Sale' campaign has been running for two years with UNISON activists and members, along with key full time officers, joining with community and service user groups across the city to bring the plans to public attention and put maximum pressure on politicians.

"It has been an object lesson in combining trade union and community action, lobbies, demonstrations with political lobbying and hard technical analysis and evidence-building.

"Thanks must go to everyone who worked so hard, for Labour for sticking with us, to the SNP for listening and most of all to full time officers, mainly Peter Hunter, for all the research and organisation. We remember too Newcastle's Kenny Bell for his advice and inspiration at the start of the campaign", said UNISON Branch President John Stevenson.

http://unisonedinburgh.blogspot.com/2012/01/edinburgh-council-dumps-privatisation.html

UNISON says to Labour - Enough is enough

2012-01-18T17:43:00.000Z

UNISON today condemned the Labour Party's suggestion that public service workers should accept more pay freezes and pay cuts as "a slap in the face". Labour's misguided statement comes at a time when it is predicted that 700,000 jobs will be lost in the public sector by 2017, two thirds of whose workers are women.

"I've been a Labour party member for many years and this has come as a slap in the face" said Wendy Nichols, joint vice-chair of UNISON's Labour Link.

Ms Nichols, a Labour councillor in Selby and a member of the Labour party since 1984, added: "I remember canvassing for Labour at the age of nine with my parents. And this has really shocked me."

She was joined in her anger by Margaret Wilkinson, also joint vice-chair and a longtime member of the Labour Party, who commented: "Many hundreds of thousands of low-paid women working as carers, classroom assistants and in other local government jobs have already suffered two years of pay freeze - and none of us got the £250 that Osborne promised to help the lower paid.

"Now we have our own Labour leaders saying they would support even further pay freezes. Not only are UNISON members shocked by this, but so are Labour party members. The two Eds need to be out there arguing for fairness, not following in the tracks of the Tories. We will make sure the party leaders get the message loud and clear."

UNISON's general secretary Dave Prentis said that in the past year Labour has struggled to get its message across, and show that there is an alternative to the coalition's savage cuts in public services.

"Our members need hope and a reason to vote Labour. These have been snatched away," he said.

"We were told by Ed Miliband to be patient, to prepare for the long haul, that their economic plans needed to be careful, cautious. We hoped that as the economy worsened, Labour's voice would get louder, more strident, more forceful, and that Ed Miliband would step up and speak out against the tearing apart of communities and families as they face insecurity and uncertainty.

"But at a time when our members needed him most, he panicked and ditched overnight a policy that challenged the coalition. Instead he has decided to embrace a Tory pay policy that hits millions of public service workers, particularly low-paid women."

Accusing the Opposition leader of "breathtaking naivety", Mr Prentis added: "His comments will have unintended consequences. At a time when hard working families are struggling to make ends meet, the very party which they want to stand by them, has chosen instead to play cheap politics with their lives."

UNISON's relationship with Labour is governed by our democratically elected National Affiliated Political Committee. They will meet to determine the best way to ensure that the Labour Party leadership properly reflects the views of UNISON members, the wider Labour Party membership and those who support Labour.
http://www.unison.org.uk/news/news_view.asp?did=7537

Raising the white flag on cuts - a response

2012-01-18T14:21:00.000Z

It is no surprise that Len McCluskey has publically voiced the concerns that have been quietly uttered since Miliband’s disastrous first year as Leader of the Labour Party. Whilst being the Leader of the Opposition is bound to be a thankless task, one of the key roles is to hold the Government to account. Instead that opportunity has been squandered.

Most polls still showed that Labour could still be trusted on the economy and accepted the Global nature of the economic crisis. There was a begrudging, recognition, even in the right wing media, that Brown, for all his faults, had steered Britain away from the dark precipice that threatened to totally engulf the economy. That legacy has been misspent.

Miliband failed to pick up momentum and indulged in the displacement activity of the Murdoch press issues. Cheap hits to attach the party to Celebville. With the exception of the tragic Milly Dowler case, who really cares about the affairs of the super rich being exposed? Big deal. But in expanding party conference last year into a self-congratulatory ‘Spa day’ for Tom Watson et all we allowed focus on the damaging cuts from the Tories to be watered down.

The weakest link for the Tories was always going to be mass unemployment, high inflation and economic incompetence -failing to invest to grow. When Balls raised these arguments in TV and radio interviews, we were starting to win that debate. Now - for inexplicable reasons they feel the need to shift debate onto what is a ‘credible’ and 'tough' (Thatcherite) position on the economy. Why?

We are not in the midst of an election. We are not being asked to put forward hard figures. Now is the time for a debate about principles. Thos principles are about economic growth, employment, social housing, regulation of utilities, attacking poverty, creating jobs.

Why on earth would any Party Leader in that position or any Shadow Chancellor for that matter, just shoot themselves not so much in the foot but in the head? Once again we see the spectre of the Labour Party sleep walking into an electoral defeat.

If Ed Miliband and his front bench colleagues can't promote Labour principles and the real alternative that working people are crying out for then they're forfeiting their right to be in leadership positions in the labour movement.

Anna Rose

Taking the P*** - Carlsberg Brewery deemed essential service & strike ruled illegal

2012-01-18T11:22:00.000Z

Drinking and striking is a serious business! Workers employed by Carlsberg in Lithuania have had their strike action ruled illegal by the Courts as the production of beer is deemed a vital service in Lithuania. Despite the smile the headline will raise the Government and the Company are out to smash the trade unions in Lithuania and this is the latest of a number of battles taking place. Send your support, it’s probably the best thing you can do today! http://www.beerworkers.org/blog/carlsbergs-attacks-trade-union-rights-supported-lithuanian-court-decision-declare-beer-essentia

Raising white flag on cuts is a serious miscalculation by Labour's leadership

2012-01-18T08:09:00.000Z

There is no doubt we are living in interesting times. This truly could be a defining moment for the Labour Party. Many commentators are though sensing a carefully orchestrated dance here, whereby ‘Red’ Ed is portrayed as less in hock to the Unions and the Labour Party effectively distances itself from too many undeliverable promises before an election which will start in less than three years time.

It is ludicrous to expect that Ed Balls will go into that campaign promising to reverse every individual cut made by the Tories because nobody can know what the economy will be like so far ahead. We are next in line to lose our triple A rating and literally anything can happen as a result.

However for Ed Balls to say as he did at the weekend: “the starting point….is we’re going to have to keep all these cuts” sends out a completely wrong message to millions of people who want hope and not anger. Balls also knows that it is bad economics to say that Labour is signing up wholesale to the government’s present pay freeze and future pay cuts.

Pay restraint was wrong when it was tried in the past and it is wrong today. If Labour believes in jobs we need demand and investment. Not in Trident, or tax relief to the already obscenely rich but in technology, infrastructure and home building. If you seriously want to stimulate demand then cutting benefits and essential public services and by forcing pay cuts/freezes on low paid workers all you are going to do is get the exact opposite. Such measures will further constrict demand, discourage private investment, intensify austerity, and consign hundreds of thousands more to the poverty of unemployment.

So what is the game being played here?

Nick Robinson the BBC Political editor says:

“(the) announcement that Labour will back and not oppose continuing public sector pay restraint was chosen precisely because it would cause a fuss. It was a carefully selected symbol of realism meant to prove that the party is not in denial about the deficit”.

So its just another message, another attempt to spin about looking forwards and not backwards whilst reverting to type as a politician, to show how tough you are.

But if they cannot get even a nuanced change in message right what likelihood is there that they can convince a clear majority of the British people what they actually believe in.

Last year the lowest tenth of the population had a pay increase of 0.1%, while the FTSE-100 directors took home an increase of 49%. Their obscene greed really is taking the ‘yacht’.

If Labour’s leadership cannot articulate a vision different from that of the multi-millionaires in the Cabinet they will destroy the Party and condemn millions to privatisation and austerity and themselves to oblivion.

Lib Dem MP's speak out against Regional Pay

2012-01-17T08:12:00.000Z

The FT reports that a growing number of Liberal Democrat MPs are speaking out against plans to regionalise public sector pay. In his Autumn Statement Chancellor Osborne called on Pay Revew Bodies to examine the case for localised pay, a move which could take effect as early as 2013-14: http://m.ft.com/cms/s/0/cdefeb62-3f8b-11e1-ad6a-00144feab49a.html

Coalition MP's are sharply divided between Tories supporting measures which will drive down wages in areas of high unemployment and Liberal Democrats concerned at a widening of regional inequality between the South East and the rest of the UK.

The FT quotes Adrian Sanders, Liberal Democrat MP for Torbay, who said the idea “must be resisted” because it would “make everyone poorer in the peripheral parts of the UK, especially in the far south-west. There will be an impact that lower public sector salaries will have on a local economy, and the knock-on effect they have lowering private sector pay, further reducing the amount of money circulating”

Osborne to raid LGPS funds to finance PFI-type Infrastructure Projects?

2012-01-16T11:51:00.000Z

The Treasury has been in discussions with the Local Government Association to establish how the money we pay into the Local Government Pension Funds could be used to finance the rebuilding of schools, bridges, hospitals – these are known as infrastructure projects. Publishing the Government’s response to its report into Private Finance Initiative (PFI) funding, the Treasury Select Committee says the National Infrastructure Plan supporting 500 projects and programmes worth £250bn, involves further risks in the form of additional government liabilities and guarantees: http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&id=104564

According to the plan, the Government is pledged to giving local authorities more flexibility to support major infrastructure, to guarantee schemes when investors cannot bear risks and explore new sources of revenue to support investment.

To this end a memorandum of understanding has been signed with the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF), which represents nearly three quarters of the funds comprising the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), and the Pension Protection Fund.

However, Ministers' plans to use local government pension funds as a ‘back door’ way of funding infrastructure projects risk continued private finance failure, MPs conclude.

There are three main concerns for members of the LGPS and of course the unions currently negotiating reforms to the scheme and funds. They are as follows…

1. Pension funds in the UK and in the EU are required to only invest in the best interests of scheme members…how would this be possible if the investments lead to the privatisation of the members jobs? Furthermore the history of PFI demonstrates that losses are incurred by investors…a collapsing PFI project will not be in the interests of scheme members it will lose money for us...

2. There is virtually no effective scheme member representation on the funds. Decisions are made entirely by councillors sitting on council pension fund committees. They can never be out voted by scheme member representatives if they opposed the projects. Which making investments in the best interests of scheme members impossible anyway.

3. Finally it is also possible that other laws on pension fund ‘self-investment’ may be breached. A pension fund cannot invest more than 5% of its assets in the employers who sponsor the scheme. If councils use the pension fund cash to invest in schools or bridges they may breach these laws….

UNISON must insist before any discussions take place on members' money being used to finance PFI type infrastructure projects the decision making process in council pension committees are changed to allow elected LGPS members to jointly make the investment decisions on behalf of scheme members. Structures need to be set up to do this as the lead party on a council can never be outvoted due to local government law.

The European Directive on pensions – known as IORP (Institutions for Occupational Retirement Provision) must be fully implemented into the LGPS.

The NAPF has no scheme member representatives within its ranks and it does not serve the interests of scheme members.

Scheme members, interests must be paramount – not Osborne and the Treasury

Balls - opponent of NMW, supporter of banking deregulation, gets it wrong again on Pay

2012-01-15T16:04:00.001Z

Trade unionists will be dismayed at yesterday's comments by Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls that public sector pay being capped at 1% for 2013 and 2014 is ''inevitable' and that the Opposition would support continued pay restraint 'Labour cannot duck that reality - and we won't. Jobs must be our priority before higher pay.'

So in one speech Balls reverses Labour policy and throws down the gauntlet to the affiliated unions - this policy must be challenged and overturned.

It's not the first time Balls has spoken against workers' interests where pay is concerned. It's hardly believable these days but back in 1991 early doors neo-liberal Balls wrote in Marxism Today that: "The allure of a minimum wage is deceptive and should be resisted" and "could make poverty worse."
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/106214

At a time when real wages across the economy are falling by 3.2%, what Balls is supporting is a further squeeze on the real incomes of all public sector workers - which in turn will lead to a depression of economic demand. It is as economically illiterate as his musings on the minimum wage 20 years ago and similarly will be shown to be the case in the years ahead:
http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2011/12/inflation-real-wages-and-potential-economic-surprises-in-2012/

Spotlight on regional pay

2012-01-15T16:02:00.002Z

The review of public sector pay bargaining announced by Chancellor Osborne in his Autumn Statement could lead to 'nurses, teachers, council workers and prison officers paid different rates in different parts of the country' states a BBC report following up last Tuesday's Westminster Hall debate: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/uk-england-16509345

49% Private Patient Income Cap threatens NHS founding principles

2012-01-15T16:01:00.000Z

Tomorrow (Monday 16 January) there will be an important Commons debate on Government plans to increase the cap on hospitals treating private patients to 49%. The NHS is the largest untapped 'market' and this is a blatant attempt by the Government to open it up to private business to make profit:
http://www.unison.org.uk
/file/UNISON%20-%20Private%20Patient%20Income%20Cap%20briefing%20-%20Jan%202012.pdf

As we have seen in the recent debacle about breast implants the Government has no ability to force private companies to treat patients. In fact private companies who have made money out of people will now be able to keep their profits whilst the NHS has to bear the cost. Patient care clearly comes after the profit margin for these companies. So what is the Government's response? They want to open up the NHS even more to business. By raising the private patient income cap to 49% the result will be a growing inequality in access to health care. The ability to pay will be the overriding consideration, while the majority of ordinary people who don't have money to spare will be left to wait longer for treatment.

UNISON's briefing points out that the revised impact assessment for the proposed legislation 'continues to acknowledge that there is "a risk that private patients may be prioritised above NHS patients resulting in a growth in waiting lists and waiting times for NHS patients". The NHS founding principle that access should be based on need not ability to pay is threatened.'

Public services are under attack from this Government, and must be challenged by the broadest and strongest coalitions to make sure their lies are exposed, and their plans to handover our public services to private companies are stopped.

Clare Williams

Talking of Power and Love by Paul Eluard

2012-01-15T10:00:00.001Z

Between all my torments between death and self
Between my despair and the reason for living
There is injustice and this evil of men
That I cannot accept there is my anger

There are the blood-coloured fighters of Spain
There are the sky-coloured fighters of Greece
The bread the blood the sky and the right to hope
For all the innocents who hate evil

The light is always close to dying
Life always ready to become earth
But spring is reborn that is never done with
A bud lifts from dark and the warmth settles

And the warmth will have the right of the selfish
Their atrophied senses will not resist
I hear the fire talk lightly of coolness
I hear a man speak what he has not known

You who were my flesh’s sensitive conscience
You I love forever you who made me
You will not tolerate oppression or injury
You’ll sing in dream of earthly happiness
You’ll dream of freedom and I’ll continue you

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/766

Support Your Public Libraries - Lobby Parliament on 13 March 2012

2012-01-14T09:56:00.000Z

#librarieslobby UNISON, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI), Voices for the Library, The Library Campaign, Campaign for the Book and the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) will hold a joint lobby of Parliament on 13 March 2012 - calling on politicians to protect vital library services: http://www.unison.org.uk/asppresspack/
pressrelease_view.asp?id=2567

Wife to Noah by Eunice Buchanan

2012-01-14T09:53:00.000Z

I didna speak   whan it bleetert doon.
Ma man wis gey taen up wi' getting us
sortit, an' it wis fell lang afore we had
the bastes in an' the fowl settled.

I didna speak
  whan the watters spewed
ower ma rigs o' corn an' doon the street
intae ma hoose amangst ma rugs
an' the bonny things I had fae ma mither.

I didna speak
whan I heard ma frien
Becca battrin at the howe o' wir boat,
her bairn in her airms, yowlin like een
o' the damned o'Hell. We had linkit
doon the years fae bairnie tae wife.
Ma bonny hinnie, weel-hertit Becca.
I clappit ma haunds tae ma lugs
an' flung ma airms aboot ma laddies,
   but still I didna speak

I didna speak
whan the lift grew black an' blacker
an' there wis naither muin nor sun an' the cries
that had been aa aboot us wir smoored.
Nae soond on that black sea but the doonfa, the dreep,
the plowt, the pish-oot o' grey watter on grey watter.

I canna speak
o' the things on the watter
as the days drave on – swollen an' blae,
wi the sea-maws skirlin an' pickin, skirlin an' pickin.
Syne whan the well-heid dried an' the watters sank,
the laund, oor bonny laund, slaich an' slairy
wi' black glaur,
    an’ oorsels alane.

But whan I gang the low road on the hinmaist day
   an' I climb the steps for my tryst wi' God
I will look the Almichty in the face –
   an' I will hae ma say

http://sites.google.com/site/stephgreen1/links

10 myths of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs)

2012-01-13T08:18:00.000Z

The European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) has published a useful briefing which demolishes the myths about PPP's - in a nutshell they don't supplement public spending they absorb it: http://www.epsu.org/a/8193

Another Tory attack on time off for union reps rebuffed

2012-01-12T07:48:00.000Z

Conservative MP Jesse Norman has assumed the mantle of premier trade union basher from his discredited parliamentary colleague Aidan Burley MP. Yesterday, as part of an orchestrated campaign by the Tory Party's far right, Norman put his name to a Private Member's Bill seeking to force unions to refund employers the pay of union representatives who carry out union duties at the workplace. Thankfully, Labour MP's mobilised to defeat the Bill by 79 votes: http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/house_of_commons/newsid_9675000/9675068.stm

Regional pay in the public sector - Westminster Hall debate

2012-01-11T19:36:00.000Z

Last November Tory Chancellor George Osborne announced a review of public sector pay with a view to introducing regionalised pay bargaining. Yesterday the proposals were debated in Westminster Hall and a number of MP's made impressive interventions including Labour's Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) who said 'we should remember that salaries at the lower end of the public sector, as in the private sector, are not those on which a family—or often even an individual—can live.

The minimum wage is not a living wage, and for that reason, Newcastle City Council is working towards a living wage in the most difficult economic circumstances. Low-wage and minimum-wage employers often have to be subsidised by the state, in that working tax credit and housing benefit are needed to enable their employees to live decently, so depressing private sector salaries will cost the state more in benefits' - the full debate can be read here: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm120110/halltext/120110h0001.htm#12011041000001

Breaking News LGPS - UNISON agrees to negotiate

2012-01-10T19:26:00.001Z

UNISON's lay representatives covering members in the LGPS met on 10th January to consider the next steps in the campaign. Each of the Service Group Executives (SGE) separately agreed a motion to proceed with detailed negotiations.

In the Local Government SGE, by far the largest in terms of the membership involved, the vote was 24 - 10 with reps from Scotland understandably abstaining as their scheme is different. The individual SGE meetings followed a joint LGPS presentation which itself followed a briefing for Regional Convenors and senior activists and staff in the morning on the latest position in the different pension schemes.
http://www.unison.org.uk/asppresspack/pressrelease_view.asp?id=2563

The vote to proceed will be a blow for those from some factions who had been calling UNISON to walk away from any negotiations - even though the staus quo has been secured and in the LGPS there is no detailed set of proposals as yet! Perhaps those officials and activists in some other unions who have openly tried to interfere with UNISON's decision making processes will now respect the democratic decision of UNISON's elected lay member bodies.

UNISON to consult members on NHS Pension Scheme proposals

2012-01-10T19:25:00.001Z

UNISON's health care Service Group Executive (SGE) voted decisively to put the NHS Pension Scheme Heads of Agreement to the membership. By a margin of 5 to 1 the SGE rejected calls to throw out the agreement and take immediate and sustained industrial action.

The debate, lasting nearly 3 hours was punctuated by misinformation and posturing from a small core of ultra leftists. Despite the grandstanding only five people voted to reject the agreement and some of those openly defied their regional position. The committee agreed to hold a special SGE in early February to consider the final offer and decide whether to make any recommendation in the membership ballot. It was agreed that full details including a comprehensive explanation of the proposals including how it will affect members will be prepared to go with the ballot.

The SGE recognises that our industrial action mandate remains alive. Branches will need to continue to discuss the campaign with members and prepare for action should the government renege on the proposals or the members reject the offer.

http://www.unison.org.uk/asppresspack/pressrelease_view.asp?id=2563

Join Cuba’s amazing May Day celebrations

2012-01-10T06:35:00.000Z

Witness the sights, sounds and smells of Cuba and experience first hand the principles of equality, community and international solidarity. The Cuba Solidarity Campaign is organising two specialised trade union visits to Cuba next Spring to enjoy the iconic and unforgettable May Day celebrations and learn more about the country, its unions and the effects of the US blockade.

The May Day parade was amazing. It was moving to see so many people coming together to celebrate their country”: Lisa – May Day Brigade 2011

The Young Trade Unionists’ May Day Brigade and the May Day Study Tour will show solidarity with over one million Cuban workers as they parade through Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución. The tour, from 26 April – 10 May 2012, is £999 and the cost includes flights, accommodation, food, transport and visas. Delegates will stay on the Julio Mella camp outside Havana and will take part in solidarity work. Three nights will be spent at the Hotel Vedado in Old Havana. Although aimed at young trade unionists, all are welcome!

The May Day Study Tour, 22 April – 3 May 2012, starts at £1,415 including flights, accommodation, transport and visas. Accommodation in Havana will be in the iconic Hotel Plaza.

Contact Dan Smith at:
Cuba Solidarity Campaign, c/o Unite Woodberry, 218 Green Lanes, London N4 2HB
t: 0208 800 0155
e: campaigns@cuba-solidarity.org.uk

Cuba really opened my eyes about what can be achieved in a society built around working together for the benefit of everyone” James – May Day Brigade 2008

Participants will visit Havana’s famous Museum of the Revolution and receive an exclusive invitation to the International Solidarity Conference alongside activists from across the globe and families of the Miami 5. Professional visits to schools, factories, hospitals and universities will provide insight into the achievements of the revolution and allow delegates to strengthen links with sister unions.

Our fifth annual May Day Brigade will also contribute to the agricultural development of the country through voluntary work sessions as participants discover the reality of life for Cubans living under the illegal US blockade of their country. Over 100 young trade unionists – from Unison, Unite, GMB, CWU, RMT, TSSA, BFAWU, PCS and the UCU – have previously taken part in our May Day Brigade.

The May Day Brigade was one of the best experiences of my life. Viva Cuba!” Vikki – May Day Brigade 2011

Both tours are a wonderful opportunity to see the real Cuba away from the usual tourist trail. They provide an inspiring and humbling view of Cuba’s intrepid resistance against 50 years of blockade and allow you to experience Cuba’s rich and diverse cultural heritage whilst providing visible solidarity and support to the Cuban people.

ANC celebrates 100th Anniversary

2012-01-08T09:43:00.000Z

The 2 million strong Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) has sent its best wishes to the leadership and membership of the African National Congress on the occasion of its centenary celebrations: http://www.politicsweb
.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71656?oid=273474&sn=Detail&pid=71616

A key extract from the COSATU statement says:
Under the leadership of the ANC we have made tremendous strides in building a better life for all South Africans. As we celebrate 100 years of the ANC we shall be celebrating the protection of workers' rights, not only in the Constitution in a manner no other constitution does anywhere else in the world, but also we shall be celebrating arange of progressive labour laws that have helped in tilting the balance of forces in the workplace to make super-exploitation of workers difficult as part and parcel of addressing one of the three interrelated antagonistic contradictions - class oppression and exploitation.

We shall be celebrating improved healthcare, in particular with the phased-in and progressive introduction of the National Health Insurance. We are particularly pleased to note that 1.4 million South Africans are in government's ARV programme and 15 million will be tested for HIV by June this year.

The aim is to reduce the rate of infections by 50% and get ARV treatment to 80% of those who need it. We shall be celebrating improved access to education, in particular the near universal access by girl children. We shall be celebrating the fact that 15 million South Africans have a roof above their heads.

Millions receive support from government in the form of grants without which they will simply die of starvation.The victories under the ANC are countless. Our task is to multiply and consolidate these advances. We know that ‘Rome was not built in one day' and as the ANC itself has said ‘more still needs to be done'.

The Actual Dialogue by Mongane Wally Serote

2012-01-08T09:32:00.000Z

Do not fear Baas.
It's just that I appeared
And our faces met
In this black night that's like me.
Do not fear--
We will always meet
When you do not expect me.
I will appear
In the night that's black like me.
Do not fear--
Blame your heart
When you fear me--
I will blame my mind
When I fear you
In the night that's black like me.
Do not fear Baas,
My heart is as vast as the sea
And your mind as the earth.
It's awright Baas,
Do not fear.

http://www.poetryinternational.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=15594

Involving workers key to quality services – not privatisation

2012-01-07T10:59:00.000Z

Edinburgh Council would do well to learn the lessons of a story in its own staff magazine and vote against two more major privatisations this month.

Interviews with grass roots union stewards in the December issue show how positive workers are about change if they are directly involved in designing their service – so long as it remains a service for the public, not a cash-grab for private companies.

In November, the SNP coalition councillors joined with Labour and the Greens to keep Environmental Services in house, leaving only their Lib Dem coalition partners and the Tories voting against.

The euphoria of the campaign success that kept the service in-house was always likely to recede as the hard realities of the changes kicked in. But as the 23 January start date for the new shift patterns and working practices approaches, grass roots union activists remain positive about the future of their service so long as they are directly involved in shaping it.

And they weren’t shy about telling the workforce magazine ‘Magnet’ about it.

Unite shop steward John Porterfield is quoted: “We’ve worked hard to make the case for the in-house option and to demonstrate how that will work. But there are other reasons to be happy – this is a real opportunity to do something special.

“The decision to stay in-house gives us a fresh start – for both the union and the managers. The stewards have new skills and confidence from the campaign and we’ll be taking that into our future work – for the members and for the service.”

UNISON’s ‘Our City’s Not For Sale’ campaign over the last two years now has a joint union badge with Unite and GMB and the most recent campaign focus has been on “Up For Change, Realistic, Fair Efficient’, to promote the in-house options.

But it’s not change at any cost: “We’re up for change if we’re given the chance to influence how these changes take effect”, John told the magazine.

A theme picked up by UNISON steward Tam McKirdy when he told the magazine: “Along with other duties, me and my colleagues work on the floral clock in Princes Street. The hours of planning and effort involved create just one visual image of the quality of work across Environmental Services.

“That’s what you get when staff get some control over their work – quality.”

So, if it is quality and efficiency rather than purely cost that the LibDems are after (and that’s what they claim), they should have no problem throwing out the other two privatisation schemes in the coming weeks.
http://www.unison-edinburgh.org.uk/citynotforsale/index.html

Yoke and Star by Jose Marti

2012-01-07T10:53:00.000Z

When I was born, without the sun, my mother said:
Flower of my heart, generous Homagno
Me and the world's great copy,
Fish and poultry in horse and man becomes
Look at these two, which gives you pain,
Insignias of life go and choose.
This is a yoke whoever accepts it, enjoy:
Makes gentle ox, and provides
Service to the gentlemen, sleeping on straw
Warm, rich, wide and oats.
This, oh mystery to me born
What was the summit of the mountain
This, that shines and kills, is a star:
Since water light, sinners
Who are fleeing the leads, and in life,
What a monster of crime charged,
Anyone who carries light stays alone.
But the man who imitates ox without penalty,
Ox again be shut down and raw
The universal begins again.
Without the fear that the star is limited,
As you create, grow!
When the world
From his glass and emptied the liquor live:
When, for delicacy of the bloody
Fiesta human happy and got serious
His own heart, when the winds
North and South Virti voice sacred?
The star as a blanket, wrapped it in light,
Lights, as a party, clear the air,
And the living was not afraid to live,
It's rumored that a step further rises in the shade!
The yoke Dame, oh my mother, so
That put him in the foot, look at my forehead
Best star that illuminates and kills.

http://kirjasto.sci.fi/josemart.htm

Social Care ‘backbone’ paid less than minimum wage

2012-01-06T10:54:00.000Z

200,000 direct care workers, “the backbone of the social care workforce” are being paid less than the minimum wage according to research by King’s College London, which UNISON helped with. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/kpi/scwru/pubs/periodical/issues/scwp16.pdf

The union’s low pay commission submissions informed the research which shows that complex pay structures, along with unpaid work and travelling time, conspire to disguise how private employers are getting round paying the legal minimum wage.

The research stresses that its assumptions underlying the findings are ‘very conservative’ and it is likely the problem is even worse.

In the New Statesman, Gavin Kelly and Joe Coward put a human dimension to the figures:

“How is it that the law of the land is being so widely flouted? My friend's pay slip sheds some light, exposing the chaotic system of pay that is the norm for many care workers, especially those working for agencies or private firms: constantly shifting hourly rates of pay - varying dramatically by client, length of each care visit, time of day, and day of the week. The opacity of pay rates makes it hard for those affected to fathom if they are getting their legal minimum; indeed the LPC has suggested that some employers don't themselves understand their own pay systems.

“And the real story is worse than the pay slip suggests. She had to pay for her CRB check. There are no travel expenses even though travel is essential ('I couldn't afford to work if I didn't cycle'). Regular mobile phone use is essential to stay in close touch with the office - again, no expenses are paid. It just doesn't pay to care.

“There are lots of injustices in Britain that are so entrenched and complex that they would take a generation to turn around. This isn't one of them. The minimum wage is supposed to be a right, not a nice to have. So here's a resolution that we should stick to: let's make 2012 the year when every care worker gets what they are legally entitled to."
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/gavin-kelly/2011/12/minimum-wage-paid-care-pay

Ultra Orthodox extremists violate memory of Holocaust victims

2012-01-06T08:39:00.001Z

Ultra Orthodox Jews demonstrated in Jerusalem wearing the 'uniforms' of Concentration Camps victims and displaying yellow stars based on the ones the Nazis forced on all Jews in the 1930's and 40's. They were demonstrating against the opposition to their attempts to bully and abuse those in Israeli society who don't share their religious convictions. This abuse included spitting at and assaulting school children who were attending mixed sex schools or exposing arms and legs. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/menachem-rosensaft/those-who-desecrate-the-h_b_1180670.html?ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=010312&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

Professor Menachem Rosensaft takes issue with all who utilise Holocaust parallels in their political arguments. In particular he takes issue with these ultras but also with right wing commentators (so called 'shock jocks' and Tea Party members) who regularly abuse Obama as a 'Hitler'.

Where we might disagree with the Professor is with the use of parallels not with gas chambers - but of ghettos and walls. It is one of the worse ironies that those who campaign in support of the Palestinian People's rights have had to point out that early Nazi oppression of Jews, Poles, Russians and Gypsies involved the use of walls and ghettoes. Even worse that the point is lost on the Israeli Government. It is part of the usual vitriol for supporters of the Palestinian people to be abused as 'anti semitic' by those in the Zionist camp when we raise our voices in protest at war crimes and illegal settlements.

Trade unionists and Socialists side with the oppressed, that means the victims of the Nazis and the Palestinian victims of successive Israeli Governments

Glasgow commemorates 40th anniversary of UCS occupation

2012-01-05T07:53:00.000Z

Trade unionists and the wider community are set to mark the 40th anniversary of one of the greatest moments in Scottish Working Class History – the Clyde Ship Yard Workers occupation to save their Ship Yard. A successful occupation that was characterised by the leadership of Jimmy Reid (‘there will be discipline and no bevying’) the workers took over the yard to stop its closure. http://www.scotsman.com/news/chris_bartter_anniversary_of_work_in_is_a_timely_inspiration_1_2035032

Occupation seems to be a lost tactic of the Labour Movement. Inspired by General Motors workers who occupied their factory in Flint Michigan in 1937 the sit in tactic spread across the states involving tens of thousands of workers and led to the formation of one of the most powerful unions in US History – the Union of Automobile Workers UAW.

Maybe we should look back at these struggles – eager to re learn?
..................
Events:

As part of the Celtic Connections festival, a UCS Work-in 40th anniversary concert is scheduled for February 5. Concentrating more on the music and artistic side, it will feature a number of stars from last October’s gala concert alongside new artists, and is again being produced by Fair Pley with musical direction by Rab Noakes and Hilary Brooks.

The line-up for the Fruitmarket venue, is still being finalised, but it will again feature the new commission for traditional band, brass, saxophone and cello, ‘Work-in at UCS - a celebration suite’ composed by prominent Scottish composer, Eddie McGuire of the Whistlebinkies.

Eddie wrote an original piece for saxophones in 1971, that he presented to Jimmy Reid. Forty years later, this one was presented to Jimmy Cloughley of the Joint Shop Stewards at the Gala Concert. Eddie says:

“The spirit of resistance and dignity demonstrated by the workers in the yards inspired me at the time to compose a piece for saxophones which I handed to Jimmy Reid in December 1971. I was really honoured, 40 years on, to be asked by those veterans of the struggle to compose for them once more. I am inspired again - this time to rekindle that spirit so needed again today. We are keeping the links strong, with Maya Burman-Roy again playing the opening cello. Maya is the cello teacher to Jimmy Reid’s granddaughter!”

Dobson 15 years, Norris 14 years

2012-01-04T13:10:00.000Z

UNISON has supported the Lawrence family campaign for Justice for Stephen Lawrence from its inception, through previous trial disasters, and through the MacPherson inquiry. The conviction and imprisonment of Dobson and Norris today for Stephen’s murder is only a partial victory. They have admitted nothing, and shown no contrition or understanding of what the acts that they have committed.

Meanwhile confidence in the police investigating crimes against the Black community remains low, while the use of “Stop and Search” powers against the Black community remains a real cause for concern.

For Doreen and Neville whose son was taken from them in a vile racist attack, and who have endured years of misery, there is still no answer to the question of who actually killed their son. These convictions are a result of a sort, but still do not provide an ending to their tragedy.

Our solidarity and support must remain with them.

Never give in when your cause is just - RIP Stephen Lawrence (1974–1993)

2012-01-04T07:27:00.000Z

Rodney Bickerstaffe gives his personal view on the verdict in the Stephen Lawrence murder trial.
Justice delayed is justice denied. So goes the old saying. And so it has been for the family, friends and supporters of Stephen Lawrence's cause. And so it's been for the community of Eltham, in South London. And further afield, so has it seemed to the scores of thousands in no way related to the young victim, but touched and angered by his murder and by its unhappy and unsettling aftermath.

Now, with a verdict given,and the sentences to be shortly announced, many will feel that there can be some 'closure'. There's more than a glimpse of justice being served. But it took over 18 years.

To me it seems a long time since Monday 14th November 2011, as I waited at the Old Bailey - The Central Criminal Court - as part of over a hundred jurors in-waiting, called to do our civic duty in the age old system. My name was called by random selection into a smaller group of forty nine, from which a final dozen would be selected to sit in a case. The case it turned out, was to be that of Stephen Lawrence.

I immediately thought of my own past and the great and principled stand of our union, UNISON, in support of Doreen and Neville, Stephen's Mum and Dad in their long struggle for justice. I could not, of course, sit on this jury, and face the possibility of a challenge some weeks into the hearing. A mis-trial would be good for no-one, well certainly not for the Lawrences. I was stood down from the trial jury.

History has been made. Not only the momentous decision taken yesterday, 3 January 2012, but in the major changes to police practice, public policy on race equality and the UK criminal justice system arising from this case. Hopefully we are now a better country than we were in 1993 but there is still much to be done.

It's a strange world but some things are certain. Democracy demands constant vigilance. Fascism and racism have to be challenged and beaten in every generation, and each time they raise their ugly faces. And as Doreen and Neville Lawrence have shown us all, never give in when your cause is just.

Rodney Bickerstaffe

http://stephenlawrence.org.uk/

Make 2012 the year to tackle poverty

2012-01-03T08:09:00.001Z

The excellent piece on UNISONActive (Review of 2011) rightly provided an analysis of the challenges that we face as an organising union. For 2012 the overwhelming issue has to be tackling the poverty that is creeping and blighting the lives of our members and our communities throughout the UK. It is children in particular who suffer the consequences: http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/
jrf/poverty-social-exclusion-assessment-full.pdf

Almost all households in the bottom tenth by income are in fuel poverty, as are half of households in the second bottom tenth. The proportion of children living in low income households that were going without ‘essential’ items for reasons of cost was higher in 2009/10 than in 2005/06. For essential items you can read this to be a warm coat, a mattress to sleep on or shoes that fit,

Over 1 million UK children do not have access to the internet causing them to fall behind in school work increasingly reliant on web-based learning for homework and projects. And poverty doesn’t just affect families. Accordingly to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation the poverty rate for working-age adults without dependent children is now 20%, the highest since 1997, and an increase of 5% in a decade.

The coalition government panacea policy of a universal credit system will make matters worse not better; Poverty needs to be tackled not only by fair taxation and regulation on fuel and other pricing mechanism but by an effective industrial policy that recognises the value of a living wage and employment. The Government is failing on every count. The take-home pay of our members and our ability to protect them from spiralling into further poverty and hardship will be our critical fight of 2012.

On the issue of poverty we have to take on Miliband as well as Cameron and Clegg. UNISON has always championed the underdog and tackled the sometimes controversial or complex issues that have not always enjoyed the overwhelming support of our members. The failure of Miliband has been to allow the Tories to shift the debate onto one of economic austerity instead of a political debate about the social issues that effective economic policy can tackle.

UNISON's labourlink needs to remind Labour that whilst it should be humble about its failures on many counts of poverty we should celebrate, instead of hiding from the victories on key indicators in tackling poverty, such as raising the living standards of pensioners, improving the gaps between educational attainment of the highest earners and the poorest and the impact of some progressive taxation in tackling poverty amongst the lowest earning families. These were not accidents of policy they were social strategies that were starting to have a real impact.

The austerity measures of de facto wage cuts and job losses in the public sector will catapult us back into the economic madhouse and chronic poverty of Thatcher’s Britain. UNISON needs to continue the fight for our members and those in working class communities across Britain and take the political territory back onto the issue that matters. But Miliband and the [still] new labour cronies need to wake and smell the coffee and do the same. We must tackle poverty and get it back at the heart of the political agenda. To do that we need to start the battle on pay and jobs today.

Anna Rose

More posts on child poverty

10 years of campaigning for a living wage

2012-01-02T09:07:00.000Z

The Living Wage campaign has yielded £96m in topped-up wages for thousands of workers over the past 10 years, according to a study by Queen Mary College, University of London: http://www.independent
.co.uk/news/uk/home-
news/the-penny-finally-drops-pay-people-properly-and-you-will-get-better-results-6283794.html

The Independent on Sunday this week published an article to mark the tenth anniversary of UNISON's groundbreaking decision to commission the Family Budget Union to research a a living wage for London. Subsequently TELCO (The East London Communities Organisation) published Low Pay in East London, charting how low-paid workers are caught between minimum and living wage.

Over the past decade the campaign has gone from strength to strength and today the Living Wage campaign calls for every worker in the country to earn 'enough to provide their family with the essentials of life:'
http://www.citizensuk.org/campaigns/living-wage-campaign/the-living-wage-foundation/

Happy New Year from the Cuban 5

2012-01-01T10:45:00.000Z

Dear friends:
I wish to convey to all of you my most sincere appreciation for another year in solidarity with this struggle for truth and justice.

The year which will soon end is yet another year of significant efforts of all those, who in one way or another, contribute to the objective of making the freedom of the Cuban Five a reality.

We are aware of the activities and events that all of you organize everywhere in the world as part of the campaign for our freedom. To each one of you, in each place on the planet where you show the universal value of human solidarity, with the closing of the year 2011, receive my gratitude and my certainty that we will achieve victory.

May you have a happy and fruitful New Year, and that 2012 be another year of gains and victories for the causes that we defend.

Happy 2012!

Venceremos!

Fernando Gonzalez Llort

http://en.cubadebate.cu/news/2011/12/21/happy-new-year-from-cuban-5/

to being with by kari edwards

2012-01-01T10:40:00.000Z

You made a significant . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . bigstep
forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
compared to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . that one step
before dropping to . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . the next .......

....... future "something" that we
celebrate today as the important
"step forward".................that
establishes Another Step Forward
in Bringing Members To Folding
instructions . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .
. . . 10 first steps in the process . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
establishing consensus
statements of purpose and goals .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and Once the
front of the bus steps forward to
the first step..................... use . . .
. our office (Monday through
Friday, 8:00 am-5:00 pm). . . . .
. .. . . . . . . . . . . @ first step,
inc.@ first step.com.......we will
provide a first step single key

stroke........................That is the
first step (to you) . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . towards Personal
Imaging . . . . . . . . . . . whether
you're looking at . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The first step toward, the step
forward "on the
road".........or.........our, "the first
step inc." that is a step forward.

http://www.foame.org/Issue1/biographies/edwards.html

Review of 2011 - Celebrate the Successes... It’s going to be a Long War

2011-12-31T09:16:00.002Z

UNISON can look back on 2011 as a year in which our public profile was paraded effectively on a variety of streets and boulevards up and down the UK, leading to a good few column inches in newspapers and a position at the top of the hour news bulletins.

Our successes are worth celebrating. Who can forget the 26th of March, when the streets of London were turned into a cavalcade of green and purple, as wave after wave of UNISON branches marched through the streets, from every corner of the United Kingdom. This was a ubiquitous protest about the injustice and inequality of the austerity measures being pursued by the present government, where the many are suffering so that the few are protected. It was only prevented from being the highlight of the year by the magnificent strike effort on November 30th.

Then, rather than asking our members to abandon their picket lines for another trip to London, every major town throughout the land saw its own huge protest movement, from Shetland to the South West tip of Cornwall. If rhetoric could remove governments, the vast array of platform speakers that day should have swept the Tories from office.

A coalition of public service unions took action together that proved the value of unity in the face of an enemy, while there only was one enemy. As events progressed, trade unions returned to their essential nature as bargaining beasts, sitting in scheme level negotiations whose outcomes now crucially depend on member consultation.

We marched at the Lib Dem Birmingham conference, then at the Tory Party’s in Manchester. Scotland had its own national demonstration on October 1st in familiar Scottish weather (a downpour), while every nation and region has its own memories of events noteworthy and significant.

Of equal consequence at branch level up and down the country are the countless victories that keep significant terms and conditions for members, save jobs or keep services in house. Some, such as the Edinburgh victory against the wholesale privatisation of the city cleansing services, or the Southampton strikes make the headlines. Too many others are probably known only to a handful of grateful members, or sometimes even only to the branch negotiators, who extinguish one blaze only to move on to the next with no respite.

In the fight to maintain our public services the reality is that while UNISON nationally is majoring in research and public relations, important as those may be, it is stewards and branch officers in local authorities and schools, in hospitals, in health centres and police stations, in colleges and universities, and in voluntary projects and charities, that ensure that the day to day challenge of trade unionism is met. Our reason for existing is the defence of our member. The efforts currently made in that defence are praiseworthy and admirable.

Events like the November 30th strike crucially reveal both our strengths and weaknesses. It was a remarkable feat of organisation that produced a show of solidarity across the land, bringing the experience of strike action to a new generation of activists, particularly in the Health Service. It was remarkable that where members did go into work, on December 1st, there was a sense of shame among them, induced by a feeling that they had missed out on a major event rather than by any action from union activists.

The strike revitalised many branches, and brought new enthusiasm, energy and confidence into the union. But we cannot disguise the weaknesses that it also revealed. Our strength remains greatest the further north the region and the low level of density in many branches made the level of action challenging. Strong picket lines disguised a multitude of sins and action in the ever growing privatised public services sector was spasmodic, and therefore problematic.

Both the analysis of the strike day and the sense of branches fire fighting, however successfully, on a daily basis add up to a sense that, though we are recruiting more members and growing as a union, at a basic level, we recite the mantra of being an organising union but on the ground have yet to move toward actually taking organising seriously.

The consequences are clearly seen in the limitations of our branch organisation, and the failure to engage branches in an overall sense of purpose and action beyond the recent industrial action strategy.

“Meeting the Organising Challenge” has been the buzz word since the initial paper was introduced in 2007 on the back of the Pay and Grading exercise for staff, based on a new structure designed to provide both career progression, and to create posts designed to meet the challenge of the changing organisation.

UNISON acknowledged that the public services environment in which it existed was changing, and the traditional branch structures were failing to keep up with them , resulting in the creation of new posts and new appointments. In addition the union introduced the branch assessment process. The twin keys were seen as building local organisation and building workplace activism changing the focus from dealing with individual casework and routine representation.

The union was to move from an organisation where a limited number of officers and activists served to members to one where the members were enabled to help themselves, The goals were admirable, their level of achievement arguable.

In the common dictionary definition, trade unions are organisations of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as representing their interests and improve their working conditions. How we do that has been the subject of debate since trade unions have been founded and ideas about the role of the organising union are part of that debate.

It also relates to the debate about the wider role of the union movement. From Lenin’s “Left Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder,” the argument about whether trade unions have a limited workplace role or one that should challenge the causes of workplace injustice in the widest sense have raged. (British trade unions answered that in their own fashion in their historic role in founding the Labour Party. Created through the TUC - though with a minority of trades unions involved - the goal was expressed as the “furtherance of the interests of working men through independent parliamentary representation.” However from the start of the Labour Party there was an in-built argument as to whether its principles were socialist, to change the system or to improve it.)

UNISON’s own policies have been clear about our opposition to societal inequality and injustice, and as expressed in the NEC statement unanimously adopted at NDC 2010, in our opposition to the policies of the Con-Dem coalition, and we committed ourselves to that as a whole union.

As noted earlier, we have had our successes, and we should celebrate them. But largely our successes have been national initiatives in which branches and regions have been urged to participate. Politically, we largely lack a cohesive strategy to engage at the local level - branches through local activists concentrate on bargaining, not on political campaigning.

Branch take-up of political education and materials remains limited. Such successful branch initiatives as there are, like the Edinburgh “Our City’s Not For Sale” campaign are as outstanding as they are uncommon. They remain the exception rather than the rule. Occasional stalls at significant local events or one-off demos are not likely to change the political tide. Yet that is what as a union we are committed to if the government are to be defeated.

2011 has defined our limitations but they are not insurmountable. We have acknowledged the need to move from a servicing to a mobilising culture, and need to start by empowering our branches to do so. Branch assessment must not be the largely bureaucratic paper exercise that it is at the moment, but the engine for change, in an agreed timescale designed to encourage branches from working on a day to day basis to planned growth through workplace activism.

We need to further strengthen the link between our policy goals and objectives, a dynamic alternative vision of policy and politics and decide what that means at Branch level. National initiatives achieve publicity but will not achieve change on their own. Just consider how many of the political reviews of the year so loved in the national and Sunday newspapers have even mentioned our initiatives and successes, and those of the TUC as a factor for consideration in their state of the nation addresses.

But the connection between our policies and what we seek to do locally is vital. Successful models for doing so already exist - particularly in the outstanding work of the Northern region where the annual policy conference brings together all the branches, sectors and self organised groups to decide a work programme that binds all those disparate groups together.

Further, in the influential Northern Public Sector Alliance, there exists a campaigning model that other regions could learn from - it exemplifies the vision of some activists to understanding the power of the collective through engagement with marginalised groups as spearheaded by the late Kenny Bell, deputy regional convenor of northern region (who sadly died in 2011 but who took a lead from Pablo Friere organising models of popular education).

We have a lack of imagination that we have to overcome as to what real activism at branch level can achieve, partly because of a lack of an engagement between national and regional and branch level.

As a union we also need a better strategy about what we are trying to achieve. One size will not fit all. The political narrative in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland is not the political narrative of England. The Scottish situation of a forthcoming referendum on independence means a different political response to that required in opposition to the Tories .We need to start to acknowledge that more directly.

For ‘revolutionary socialists’ writing in Socialist Worker or the Socialist, another demo or another day’s strike action will defeat the coalition. Unfortunately the dynamics of parliamentary elections are against that approach. To achieve political change means changing the votes of several million voters, not in one place but largely in Eastern and Southern England. There are implications in that need serious consideration.

Celebrate our achievements. But it is also wise to consider where we are failing and whether there are changes necessary? We have the tools but need to start putting them to work much more effectively if we are to achieve the progressive change that we seek.

I am the daughter by Reeti Roy

2011-12-31T08:57:00.000Z

I am the daughter
of this vast wooden land
where unspoken myths
lie buried in the sands.

I am the daughter
of those who died young
those unsung heroes deprived
of their birthright
to speak
in their own tongue.

I am the daughter
of this blood-splattered land
where the stains reek of penury
and hack many hands.

http://www.kritya.in/0503/En/poetry_at_our_time6.html

A flawed attack on UNISON

2011-12-30T18:56:00.000Z

Author Owen Jones uses a platform on the Union News website (reprinted by Labourlist and the Morning Star) when previewing the challenges faced by unions in 2012 to make an ill founded attack on UNISON:
http://union-news.co.uk/2011/12/unions-have-a-big-task-ahead-of-them-in-2012/

Jones claims that on pensions the UNISON ‘leadership looked set to lead a capitulation to the government, despite no movement on any of the key grievances. 2011 ended with a looming union defeat’. Perhaps it is understandable that, as a commentator looking in on unions from the outside, Jones relies on received knowledge from those on the ultra left who made blanket condemnation of the ‘heads of agreements’ reached for the NHS and local government pension schemes (LGPS) prior to Xmas.

Yet it is a matter of fact that the ‘key grievance’ of increased contributions has been warded off for members of the LGPS and for 2012/13 at least for all health workers with pensionable earnings less than £26,557.

The agreements are far from perfect, particularly the failure of central Cabinet Office level negotiations which led to the retention of indexation based on the imposed CPI (on which union leaderships collectively sold the pass by substituting a forlorn legal challenge for a political campaign) and the regressive link to the extended state retirement age of 66 (and ultimately 68).

Yet it serves no useful purpose for Jones to misrepresent the negotiated outcomes as achieving no movement on ’key grievances’ when he himself identifies the ’deficit tax’ as the casus belli of the strike action on 30 November - 'technically, it was over government pension “reforms” (a term whose meaning long ago went from “progressive social reforms” to “rolling them back”).

In reality, it was a deficit tax on public sector workers – with the extra contributions flowing straight into the Treasury’s coffers.'

Facts are stubborn things and no extra contributions from local government workers will flow into the Treasury's coffers. No rigorous analysis of the facts could conclude this to be the capitulation claimed by Jones.

UNISON activist meets Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma

2011-12-30T18:52:00.000Z

UNISON has long had solidarity links with Burma. National Delegate Conference recognised Aung San Suu Kyi's achivements for speaking up for democracy and awarded her honorary life membership to show solidarity for her tireless campaigning work. In the Northern Region there are strong links with activists who have dedicated their energies to making that solidarity support something real and practical. Anne Stokle, a healthworker, is one such activist.

Currently taking time to provide international solidarity to ordinary people in Burma through practical projects, supported by the region and UNISON nationally, she sends us greetings from Burma, and from a meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi.

The world has seen much change throughout the year, with people in many countries coming together to campaign for democracy and free speech. This shows why international solidarity work is so important, and also why and how it makes a difference.

See also http://unisonactive.blogspot.com/search/label/Burma

Job losses continue despite over £10bn in English Council reserves

2011-12-30T08:05:00.000Z

The reserves held by local authorities in England will remain in excess of £10bn at the end of the 2011/12 financial year – a sign that many Councils are cutting back on jobs and services as a first resort rather than using reserves to balance budgets and offset reductions in Government funding. A full list of reserves is available at the DCLG website: http://www.communities.gov.uk/news/corporate/2059125

Cuts to local authority causing a Social Care crisis

2011-12-29T07:56:00.001Z

Age UK is warning that Britain faces an "absolute crisis" in social care for elderly people as a result of cuts to services. The Guardian reports on concerns from Michelle Mitchell, the director of Age UK, that increasing numbers of older people with considerable care needs were "getting absolutely no support at all, or poor quality and limited support" as a result of cuts to local authority provision. Research by the King's Fund shows that the number of older people who need significant care support but receive no assistance will reach almost 900,000 in 2012, rising to 1 million by 2015. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/dec/28/care-elderly-crisis-charity-warns

The Bread and Roses Strike – Centennial Video

2011-12-28T10:38:00.001Z

2012 marks the centennial anniversary of the Great Lawrence Strike of 1912 in Massachusetts, USA - popularly known as The Bread and Roses Strike. With original footage, the inspiring video "Collective Voices" tells the story of this important moment in the collective history of the working class:
http://www.massaflcio.org/
node/198811

Scrapping of private patient limit will create a two tier NHS

2011-12-28T10:24:00.000Z

Government moves to lift the cap on the funds that NHS Foundation Trusts can raise from private work, in most cases less than 5%, to a maximum of 49%, comes as no surprise to UNISON which has waged a long campaign to defend the NHS in England from creeping privatisation sought by Foundation Trust lobby groups and successive Governments: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16337904

The private patient cap was introduced by the Health and Social Care Act 2003 (which established NHS Foundation Trusts) to limit the income NHS Foundation Trusts can earn from private patient activity. Even under the previous Labour Government which introduced the concept, the union waged a tireless struggle to uphold the limit and in 2009, following a successful UNISON legal challenge, the High Court found that the regulator, Monitor, failed to produce accurate guidelines on what NHS Foundation Trust Hospitals need to declare on income derived from providing services to private patients
http://www.unison.org.uk/asppresspack/pressrelease_view.asp?id=1673

Prior to the 2010 general election Labour had been consulting on increasing the cap (even in mental health Foundation Trusts where it had been zero) and inevitably the advent of the Coalition government and its NHS white paper signalled the stepping up of privatisation.

In October 2010 UNISON lost its High Court bid to force the government to consult more widely and thoroughly on its proposed changes to the NHS. Following that decision UNISON’s Karen Jennings said the white paper: 'seems to be designed to reduce the NHS to little more than a brand name for the system. Care and compassion will give way to hard-nosed business decisions about what is affordable. What will happen to NHS patients if the white paper is implemented and the cap is taken off the number of private patients that foundation trusts can treat? The cap was put there for very good reasons. It prevents hospitals from cherry-picking more profitable private patients, pushing them to the head of the queue and forcing NHS patients to the bottom. We do not want a two tier health service eroding the very founding principles of our NHS’
http://www.publicservice.co.uk/feature_story.asp?id=15234

Manchester ravaged by Con Dem austerity & cuts

2011-12-27T09:55:00.001Z

A recent survey carried out by the Manchester Business School has concluded that by 2015 spending cuts will have taken £10bn out of the economy of Greater Manchester. Other key findings include:

• The regional economy lost 34,000 jobs and £1.5bn from the 2008 recession, even before the spending cuts began.

• Another 15,000 public sector jobs in Greater Manchester have since been lost or are under threat.

• There has been an 80% reduction in regional economic aid. http://www.mbs.ac.uk/about-mbs/news/view/?guid=f89bed32-50c8-43d6-9619-71a6fbdafdab Two reports on the Manchester economic survey were broadcast on Radio4's PM programme on 22 and 23 December and can be heard at the following link within the next three days http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qskw

Industrial action to hit cleansing services in Chester

2011-12-26T10:49:00.000Z

Joint action by the local government unions, UNISON, GMB and Unite, is about to hit cleansing services in Cheshire West and Chester City unitary council where a contract dispute has rumbled throughout 2011. Action short of action in the form of an overtime ban in the Streetscene service will kick in over the Xmas bank holiday in response to the Tory led authority imposing inferior contracts such as a 7 day working week rota system which would include removing the enhancements for working weekends and bank holidays, and involve staff having the majority of their annual leave days fixed by management.
A branch wide ballot for industrial action is expected to be held by UNISON early in the New Year:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-16315084

"The voice of weeping" by Felicity Currie

2011-12-25T08:10:00.001Z

“The voice of weeping shall be heard no more.”*
The land that cradled mercy, justice, peace
Became for Zionists an “empty land”,
Birthright and home for Israel alone.
Birthright? No. Death-rite. Site of genocide;
Non-people’s slaughter easily denied.
A holocaust designed and coolly planned
Before the Nazi model. Now they own
An Israel whose bounds will never cease.

Bedlam—no lamb-child’s bed in Bethlehem:
A truth that so few care or dare to tell.
What is a Palestinian child to them?
At best the “if” at its frail heart of life.
At worst Christmassacre—ungodly strife
Until we give a home instead of hell.

http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/2011warpoetry.html
* The title comes from Isaiah, a quotation also embedded in Milton's poem "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity".

#N30 - Treasury briefing on the £500mn Damp Squib

2011-12-24T10:29:00.002Z

Following a Freedom of Information request to the Treasury, a breakdown of the Government's £500 million estimate of the cost of the 30 November strike in defence of public sector pensions is available on line:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/breakdown_of_500_million_estimat#incoming-238434

LGPS agreement is a victory - Socialist Unity blog

2011-12-24T10:28:00.000Z

Andy Newham takes issue with those who claim that this week’s LGPS deal constitutes a defeat - ‘given the comment from some on the left, it might seem surprising to claim that this result is a victory, but I think they have both misunderstood the specific arguments about the LGPS, and also misjudged the political and industrial situation. Unfortunately, pension arrangements are an inherently complex and technical topic’
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=8758

Christmas Legend by Bertolt Brecht

2011-12-24T10:27:00.000Z

1
On Christmas Eve today
All of us poor people stay
Huddled in this chilly stack
The wind blows in through every crack.
Dear Jesus, come to us, now see
How sorely we have need of thee.

2
Here today we huddle tight
As the darkest heathens might
The snow falls chilly on our skin
The snow is forcing its way in.
Hush, snow, come in with us to dwell:
We were thrown out by Heaven as well.

3
The wine we’re mulling is strong and old
It’s good for keeping out the cold
The wine is hot, the door is shut
Some fat beast’s snuffling round the hut.
Then come in, beast, out of the snow
Beasts too have nowhere warm to go.

4
We’ll toss our coats on to the fire
Then we’ll all be warm as flames leap higher
Then the roof will almost catch alight
We shan’t freeze to death till we’re through the night.
Come in, dear wind, and be our guest
You too have neither home nor rest.

Tory campaign against union reps belies their contempt for democracy

2011-12-23T08:22:00.000Z

Solomon Hughes, writing in the Morning Star, juxtaposes Tory MP Priti Patel’s support for the tyrannical Bahraini regime with her crusade against the workplace rights of trade union representatives:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/113467

24 hour public sector strike in Belgium

2011-12-23T08:19:00.000Z

Yesterday Belgian trade unionists shut down schools, post offices and the national rail network as part of campaign to stop the new ‘socialist’ led Government from putting public sector pensions on a par with the private sector. Trade unions are involved in fighting attacks on workers living standards all over Europe. International links between unions are needed more than ever: http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/
index.php/news/content/view/full/113461

Trade union rights are human rights – John Hendy QC

2011-12-23T08:15:00.000Z

Union News interviews John Hendy QC on the occasion of Liberty bestowing him with a well deserved lifetime achievement award. Asked how difficult it is to represent unions given the anti union laws prevalent in the UK, Hendy characteristically replies that ‘it’s not particularly difficult. Compared to the risks faced by lawyers and trade unionists in Colombia it’s child’s play really’ http://union-news.co.uk/2011/12/video-john-hendy-barrister-to-the-unions/

4 Community Budget pilots confirmed – time to organise

2011-12-22T10:08:00.000Z

The Government has announced that in 4 large areas public bodies are to be given the chance to pool budgets across all local public services – thus posing a major organising challenge to UNISON over the next 10 years – building workplace power to secure in house service delivery as the public service structures in England are transformed: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/dec/22/councils-local-public-services-budgets The local authority areas selected for the pilots are:

- Essex
- 3 London boroughs of Hammersmith, Kensington & Chelsea, and Westminster
- Greater Manchester
- Cheshire

LGPS impasse over – union consultation begins

2011-12-22T10:06:00.000Z

Following the withdrawal of Tuesday’s letter by DCLG Minister Eric Pickles - which was seen as undermining the framework agreement for taking forward negotiations on the LGPS, UNISON will be consulting on the proposals - which ward off the 1.5% pension contribution increases due to commence next April: http://www.unison.org.uk/asppresspack/pressrelease_view.asp?id=2559

Heather Wakefield, UNISON National Secretary for local government, said: "we are pleased that the agreement on principles and a timeline for more talks on the local government pensions scheme are back on track. They have the green light from government, marking a major step forward in the dispute over public sector pensions. We have always argued that as the local government scheme has funds worth more than £140bn, it should be dealt with in a different way to the other Treasury-backed schemes.

The full agreement – which applies to England & Wales only - can be read here and includes a key principle that in the long term the new scheme ‘can include zero increases in employee contributions for all or the vast majority of members provided overall financial constraints are met’
http://www.local.gov.uk/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=920cb423-6b3a-4a9a-ad2e-664c6ddaf3f2&groupId=10161

Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy

2011-12-22T10:05:00.000Z

Book launch with Ben White - author and activist Thursday, 26 January 2012, 6.30pm – 8.00pm at Amnesty International UK, The Human Rights Action Centre, 17-25 New Inn Yard, London EC2A 3EA. Discussion followed by Q and A and reception - signed copies will be available to buy The event is free and will start at 6.30pm - please ensure you book to reserve your tickets http://www.amnesty.org.uk/benwhitebooklaunch

'Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy' is the new book by Ben White, and considers an issue neglected by the mainstream “peace process” and many commentators: the Palestinian minority in Israel.

With a foreword by Member of Knesset Haneen Zoabi, and endorsements by the likes of Prof. Ilan Pappe and Booker Prize-shortlisted author Ahdaf Soueif, White argues that “a consistent emphasis on privileging one ethno-religious group over another cannot be seen as compatible with democratic values and that, unless addressed, will undermine any attempts to find a lasting peace”.

Background

Israel’s Palestinian citizens are subject to formal and informal discrimination in a variety of areas. Amnesty is increasing its work on this issue with a particular focus on discrimination in relation to the right to adequate housing. This includes work on discriminatory laws and policies relating to planning, zoning, building, and land ownership, and show how these result in systematic discrimination against Palestinians’ right to housing in different types of Palestinian communities inside Israel e.g. recognized municipalities, unrecognized villages, unrecognized neighbourhoods, mixed cities.

The second area of focus will be on the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev in southern Israel. The Prawer plan, recently passed by the Israeli cabinet, recommends resettling residents of many of these villages to seven already over-crowded townships in the Negev, which lack the land, housing and services for their existing populations. Israeli human rights groups estimate that implementation of this plan, which is expected to start in 2012, will forcibly evict some 30,000 Bedouin from the land on which their livelihoods are based and the villages where they have lived for generations.

www.amnesty.org.uk/discrimination
http://palestiniansinisrael.wordpress.com/

NHS Pension Scheme: final proposals published

2011-12-21T08:02:00.003Z

Details of the Government’s final offer to NHS unions has been published with confirmation that 70% of UNISON members will not pay increased contributions in 2012/13 (thus avoiding the 1.5% increase due to be implemented next April under previously agreed ’cap and share’ arrangements’).
Key points of the offer are set out below: http://www.unison.org.uk/news/news_view.asp?did=7505

· Accrued rights are protected.

· Full protection for those within 10 years of the normal retirement age of their current existing pension scheme, including those with special class status. They will continue to be able to retire at 55, 60 or 65 depending on what scheme they are in. An additional 3.5 years tapered protection.

· The new proposed scheme would come into effect in 2015 and would be a career average scheme with an accrual rate of 1/54 uprated by CPI plus 1.5%, this represents a significant improvement from the outset of the negotiations.

· The government is still proposing contribution increases. In 2012 members will pay between 0 and 2.4% extra. Those with a pensionable salary of less than £26,557 will not pay any extra. This will apply to 48% of the NHS workforce and probably around 70% of UNISON members. There will be further discussions on contributions in years 2 and 3.

· Normal Pension Age (NPA) will remain equal to State Pension Age (SPA). We could not shift the Government on this issue. Unions have proposed a number of alternatives but as yet this remains in the Heads of Agreement.

· Fair Deal will apply in health and anyone being TUPE transferred will be able to keep their NHS pension. They are proposing to review extending access to the NHS scheme for staff working in Any Qualified Provider organisations (AQPs).

· A tripartite review of the impact of the proposed increase in pension ages on certain categories of staff including those in emergency services.

LGPS – ‘Deficit Tax’ Increased Contributions Averted

2011-12-20T08:43:00.000Z

In October the DCLG commenced a formal consultation on increased employee contributions for LGPS scheme members in England and Wales - proposing increased contributions for all scheme members in posts with FTE salaries over £15,000 - rising from 1.5% for those earning under £21,000 to a maximum of 6% for ‘high earners’. Negotiations on the LGPS have successfully averted the DCLG’s proposed increases – which were due to be phased in between April 2012 and April 2014. http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/localgovernment/pensionconsultation

Yesterday, UNISON published a briefing on the framework agreement for future negotiations on LGPS reforms. The agreement with the Local Government employers is expected to be reported to Parliament today, including confirmation that the formal consultation on contribution increases will be scrapped and the LGPS status quo will be maintained until April 2014.

A major achievement for the local government unions, which will now be the subject of consultation through UNISON’s democratic lay structures involving five service group executive's which will meet on 10 January 2012:
http://www.unison.org.uk/acrobat/LGPS_PoP_Campaign8.pdf

Tax Avoidance: Finding who's not paying what

2011-12-19T09:01:00.000Z

An NAO report shows about a third of the UK’s largest companies paid no corporation tax at all. But they won’t tell us who they are. http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/0607/management_of_large_business_c.aspx

The National Audit Officer report shows that in 2005/6, 220 of the 700 companies avoided all corporation tax and another 210 paid less than £10m each out of the £24billion total.

Given that this 700 account for over half of all corporation tax income – and of course because “we’re all in this together” - you would think that it would be in the public interest to know who is paying what. Apparently not.

One of our UNISON folk wrote a Freedom of Information request to the NAO seeking:-

1) The identity of the 220 paying none
2) The identity of the 210 apparently avoiding most
3) The identity of the 700 top companies

They responded that they did not have items 1) and 2) (though they had ranked the companies by tax paid and thereby avoided) and on 3) they could not disclose because of the Financial Act. An appeal against this decision and was turned down as was a complaint of the Information Commissioner.

Anybody out there got any more information on this – or where to go next to get it?
http://unisonactive.blogspot.com/p/contact-unisonactive.html

Ultra left sows disunity as pensions negotiations enter critical phase

2011-12-18T12:37:00.000Z

It is a sad reflection on the lack of integrity of certain unions present at Thursday's TUC Public Services Liaison Group (PSLG) meeting on public sector pensions, that lies and misrepresentations emanating from their ranks have been allowed to go unchallenged. Two basic facts about the PSLG meeting need to be stated:

1 No union proposed that a date for further strike action be agreed

2 No trade union leader present argued for acceptance of current proposals. How could they when scheme specific negotiations are ongoing and in some cases close to conclusion? For that reason it was agreed to reconvene the PSLG meeting on Monday.

Yet lies have been spread by ultra left front organisations raising long rehearsed cries of 'betrayal' and ‘sell out’ - targeting individuals including our own General Secretary. Union democracy is being brought into disrepute as a faction of a civil service union seeks to interfere in the negotiations of health and local government unions including UNISON: http://pcseuston.org.uk/pcs-left-unity-pensions-organising-conference-london-7th-jan-2012/

It seems that some activists in civil service unions have short memories. Ready to pick up their own agreement in 2005/6 and leave local government workers isolated, they now seem hell bent on stopping a possible breakthrough in LGPS negotiations which GMB, UNISON and Unite negotiators are commending as an important step forward. In due course, workers in each public sector scheme will approve or reject negotiated outcomes on a union by union basis. That’s the way union democracy works whether the Socialist Workers Party or Socialist Party (and their front organisations such as NSSN) like it or not.

The pension rights of millions of public sector workers are at stake and no responsible trade unionist or trade union leader should allow the lies and misrepresentations of the ultra left to go unchallenged.

Union bashing 'Nazi stag party' MP is sacked

2011-12-18T09:21:00.000Z

Aidan Burley, the disgraced far right Tory MP who is leader of the anti- union Trade Union Reform Campaign has been sacked as PPS to the Transport Minister. A welcome development but surely this proto-fascist should be removed from Parliament? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nazi-stag-party-mp-is-sacked-6278863.html

How marginalised are trade unions in the UK?

2011-12-18T09:19:00.001Z

Jerry Latter of Ipsos/MORI has written a short article on surprising opinion survey findings that the public view the public sector strikes as relatively unimportant in answering the question 'what are the most important issues facing Britain today?' Whilst the article doesn't give the alternative answers that the public gave, it does help us to reflect on the findings: http://www.ipsos-mori.com/newsevents/blogs/thepoliticswire/962/Igniting-the-squib-public-opinion-on-strikes-and-trade-unions.aspx

Trade Union membership is currently around 6.5 million - still a significant figure - which is, however, half what it was in 1979. During the time since then unions have lost influence massively as manufacturing collapsed and 'new' industries have still not been unionised.

Anti-Trade Union legislation broke the disruptive power of all but a few unions and the promotion of 'partnership' had an anaesthetic effect on activism. New Labour delivered an improved environment for trade union growth - massive public sector job increases and some secondary legislative improvements - but left untouched the core of the laws that Thatcher's government brought in.

Our unions however did not grow in that 13 year period. This may partly explain the MORI findings because....
- We have lost millions of members and the average age of the membership is getting higher each year

- No Government in the last 30 years has welcomed trade unions as a serious partner and treated us as vital to society - Our strategy of partnership was based on 'swapping favours' and not really on our collective strength and so has led to less focus on union mass membership

- The law still makes it difficult to operate decisively and so strike action becomes a massive bureaucratic challenge that sucks energy and resources out of campaigns

- We are facing a Government determined to put the last boot into the collective culture.

As activists we can deal with the above, after all we are on a bit of a roll from the Pensions Strike, we had a sudden 'spike' in membership applications, the public generally see the dispute as unfair to ordinary workers and UNISON has identified extra resources to deliver Organising.

Working with community groups and wider public campaigns can play its part - as it does in our Northern region with the Public Services alliance. After all MORI does identify one very encouraging factor - the public are increasingly believing that trade unions 'tell the truth'.

The 20179th by András Mezei

2011-12-18T09:16:00.000Z

Like ink on the blotting paper, the number
tattooed in Auschwitz splinters and spreads
on the inside of my lower left arm
when I ride the tram in the summer
and, forgetting myself, I happen
to reach up in my short-sleeved shirt
to hang on to the strap.

* * * * *

May I never lift my right arm
if I forget the mark on my left.

http://www.smokestack-books.co.uk/book.php?book=35

Possible breakthrough in LGPS negotiations

2011-12-17T07:59:00.000Z

A joint local government union statement issued yesterday reports that a “very positive framework" has been agreed with employer representatives which would enable full negotiations on a reformed local government pension scheme (LGPS) to start in January: http://www.unison.org.uk/acrobat/C7500.pdf

Details of the framework will be released early next week (if/when Government ministers endorse the agreement) but it is reasonable to infer from the joint union statement that significant concessions have been secured from the employers – a testimony to the overwhelming success of the #N30 strike mobilisation in local authorities and the sheer force of the union’s case about the calamitous consequences for the LGPS of increased employee contributions.

Already infantile ultra leftists - mainly from outside of the local government workforce - are raising calls of 'sell out', without any detailed knowledge of the draft agreement. That our national union negotiators are hailing the developments as "very positive" is good news for local government workers and other UNISON members within the scope of the LGPS.

UNISONActive will provide an analysis of the framework agreement as soon as it is available.

Local Government jobs haemorrhaging as Con Dem cuts kick in

2011-12-17T07:57:00.000Z

LocalGov.co.uk reports on Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures which show the local government continues to bear the brunt of public sector job losses, accounting for a phenomenal nearly nine out of ten redundancies across government. In the third quarter of 2011 alone, 59,000 jobs were lost of 67,000 overall in government: http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&id=104436
Full ONS report available here: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/december-2011/index.html

The Desert by Arthur Coleman

2011-12-17T07:54:00.000Z

Cope with alienation from
the person who has driven you
to this desert to walk through
without shade in the hot blaring sun.
You weren't at home either in
the place that you departed from
and the people who had been there,
who shook hands and welcomed
you in weren't on their way
to any place they could take you.
This unease is so light and ephemeral
it can be pushed away with every
onward step, kicking rocks
to roll in the dust and come to rest
at a point you've passed already
before you've even reached it.
Oases are mirages you enjoy
imagining settling in and napping
with an arm draped across
your dreaming eyes as they discover
truth in the thirst that acridly parches
your throat; it can't be slaked
because your decision that water
in abundantly stacked glass bottles
back at the final vestige of civilization
would be too cumbersome to carry
on the trek has caught up to you.
There is nothing here but spittle
and that is rapidly evaporating.
There's blood too, of course
but its source is inaccessible;
no one can dig in the dirt
as long as they are spadeless;
and the exact spot where to unearth
the promised riches of heaven
would be a blind stab in the dark.
Return to her and the half-understood
ways she has of seeing things
by stopping where you are
and letting her approach, arrive.

http://arthurleocolemaniv.com/

Con Dem austerity is creating a ‘lost generation’- Prentis

2011-12-16T07:39:00.000Z

As unemployment among women and young people rises inexorably, UNISON General Secretary Dave Prentis accuses the Government of ignoring the human cost of its cuts in public services - ‘it is shameful to see that women, who make up the majority of low paid public sector workers, have had an unemployment hike of 45,000, to 1.1 million, the highest figure since 1988. Youth unemployment has also risen by 54,000, creating a lost generation of young people struggling to afford education, or find work, which the government will struggle to curb. Women and young people first in the government's jobless queues!’
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dave-prentis/unemployment-figures-and-cuts_b_1148501.html

Cameron tells porkies on private sector job creation under Coalition

2011-12-15T08:19:00.000Z

Excellent analysis by the TUC's Nicola Smith in challenging the Prime Minister's misleading spin on private sector job creation at PMQ's. The Prime Minister's claim that the private sector has created 581,000 jobs since the coalition came to power, with 336,000 being lost in the public sector over the same period is not supported by the facts: http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2011/12/pm-is-wrong-more-public-sector-jobs-have-been-lost-than-have-been-created-in-the-private-sector/

Cameron had compared figures dating back to January 2010 (the government was formed in mid-May!). Smith points out that a more accurate assessment would be to look at change in employment levels starting from the April – June 2010 quarter (the actual period in which the election took place, rather than the three months before it) to now. That shows that 267,000 private sector jobs have been created, and 305,000 public sector posts have been lost.

UNISONActive Analysis - We are ruled by the banks for the banks

2011-12-15T08:18:00.000Z

Running this government are two sons of bankers. Cameron's father was a stockbroker, Clegg's is still chairman of United Trust Bank (and famously helped his son get some work experience). For its part, Labour spent so long outsourcing all economic thinking to Gordon Brown and Ed Balls that it has long lost the ability to argue against the orthodoxy of giving the City what it wants.

In a poorer country, the cosiness of relations between bankers and politicians would be scrutinised by an official from the World Bank and disdainfully pronounced as pure cronyism. In Britain, we need to come up with a new word for this type of dysfunctional capitalism – where banks neither lend nor pay their way in taxes, yet retain a stranglehold on policy-making. We could try bankocracy: ruled by the banks, for the banks.

So what is it that justifies the kid-glove treatment of the finance sector? Switch on the news and you normally hear some minister or lobbyist (come on down, Angela Knight of the British Bankers' Association) talking about the vital contribution banking makes to employment. Our tax revenue. Or the role banks ideally play in directing money to needy businesses.

These claims are repeated so often that they rarely get even the briefest patdown from interviewers, let alone backbench MPs or economists. Yet they are largely bogus, as explained in a new book called After the Great Complacence, produced by academics at Manchester University's Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (Cresc). Indeed, on nearly any important measure, finance actually contributes less to Britain than manufacturing.

Take jobs. The finance sector employs 1m people in Britain. Chuck in the lawyers, the PRs and the smaller fry that swim in its wake and you are up to a grand total of 1.5m. And most of these people are not the investment bankers for whom Cameron went to war in Brussels. At the big British banks such as RBS and HBOS, 80% of the staff work in the retail business. Even if Sarkozy were to shroud Canary Wharf in a giant tricolore, those staff would still be needed to staff the branches and man the call centres. Even in its current state of emaciation, manufacturing employs 2m people.

What about taxes? Lobbyists like to point out that banks are usually the biggest payers of corporation tax, but usually omit to mention that corporation tax isn't that big a money-spinner. For their part, even leftwingers will usually assume that the bankers effectively paid for the tax credits, hospitals and schools we enjoyed under Labour.

It's not true. The Cresc team totted up the taxes paid by the finance sector between 2002 and 2008, the six years in which the City was having an almighty boom: at £193bn, it's still only getting on for half the £378bn paid by manufacturing. It would be more accurate to say that the widget-makers of the Midlands paid for Tony Blair's welfarism. But that would be a much less picturesque description.

Ah, but what about lending? After all, this is why we have banks in the first place: to channel money to productive industries. The Cresc team looked at Bank of England figures on bank and building society loans and found that at the height of the bubble in 2007, around 40% or more of all bank and building society lending was on residential or commercial property. Another 25% of all bank lending went to financial intermediaries. In other words, about two-thirds of all bank lending in 2007 went to pumping up the bubble.

Even in the best of times, the finance sector hasn't paid anything like as much to the state as the state has had to pay for them since the great crash. According to the IMF, British taxpayers have shelled out £289bn in "direct upfront financing" to prop up the banks since 2008. Add in the various government loans and underwriting, and taxpayers are on the hook for £1.19tn. Seen that way the City looks less like a goose that lays golden eggs, and more like an unruly pigeon that leaves one hell of a mess for others to clear up. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/12/britain-ruled-by-banks

But issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks. The powers of finance and banking have a far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. Italy, now governed by an unelected banker as is Greece are clear examples of that project.

This system is to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems is to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank is seeking to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.

Lehman Brothers: financially and morally bankrupt

2011-12-14T07:30:00.000Z

Lehman Brothers was the first domino to fall in the collapse of the great ponzi scheme that banking is. That collapse, despite efforts by central banks and governments, continues to threaten to spread and places us in the state of austerity that we find around us. The courtroom drama ruling over the collapse of Lehman Brothers has concluded and Professor Richard Woolf reports in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/dec/12/lehman-brothers-bankrupt

He concludes with this "The lesson here is that large-scale global banking cannot safely be entrusted to private banks. Their behaviour yields socially unacceptable costs. They failed their fiduciary duties, betraying both public and private trust. Their continued existence imposes equally unacceptable risks.

"Modern societies do not leave military security to private armies, nor education to private schools, nor ports, harbours and transportation systems to private conveyors, nor control of the money supply to private banks. Governments, enterprises and households have now become dependent on credit in most advanced industrial economies. The extension of credit ought to be as equally socialised as dependence on credit has become. Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy exposes big global private banking as unaffordable and anachronistic".

Readers of this blog are aware of the arguments for the creation of money to return to the democratic state and be removed from the hands of self seeking bankers.

Federal court Judge James M Peck approved the final phase of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, which began with the investment bank's collapse on 15 September 2008. That bankruptcy, the largest in US history, precipitated the credit markets' disintegration that cascaded into the global economic meltdown that has deepened ever since. With roughly $450bn still owed by the bank, Judge Peck approved that Lehman Brothers has only $65bn left to settle creditors' claims. The latter must thus accept just over 14 cents for every dollar Lehman Brothers owed them. "Thieves," they are probably muttering

Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy has revealed multiple layers of ramifying corruption and theft among global banks in the US and elsewhere, as well. Many juicy details are covered in the nine-volume court examiner's report of 11 March 2010. It documents the bank executives' mammoth misjudgments in their investment decisions, including their repeated violations of the basic banking principle not to borrow short-term and lend the proceeds long-term.

The bank examiner shows misleading statements made about their activities and how they disguised Lehman's financial health and credit-worthiness. It appears that various legal and semi-legal mechanisms were used to manipulate their accounts, and otherwise violate the spirit and letter of laws and regulations.

Of course, Lehman Brothers' top bank executives rewarded themselves stupendously while directing Lehman Brothers into collapse. In October 2008, the CEO of Lehman Brothers, Richard S Fuld, argued over pay with Congressman Henry Waxman during public hearings on the bankruptcy. Fuld insisted he had taken "only" $310m in compensation during the seven years before 2008, whereas Waxman's figure was $485m. "Thieves," one can imagine Waxman muttering.

Lehman Brothers failed partly because of massive investments in subprime mortgage-backed securities notoriously misrated as "secure" by rating companies like Moody's, Standard and Poor and Fitch. In April of 2010, the New York Times reported that Lehman had secretly manipulated its balance sheets by using a small "alter ego" company it owned, Hudson Castle. Later in 2010, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed suit against Ernst and Whitney, Lehman Brothers' accountants, accusing them for having "substantially assisted ... a massive accounting fraud."

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers opened a window on strategies and tactics of many large private banks around the world. The hows and whys of their catastrophic mishandling of their "fiduciary duties" - basically, to be fundamentally prudent and trustworthy in how they manage other people's money - stand revealed. They no longer deserve public trust. Yet, to date, the weak new rules and laws passed in the wake of the global crisis have changed little.

Lehman Brothers' collapse and its aftermath threatened global capitalism and not merely other big global banks. "Too big to fail" thus became those banks' slogan in demanding and obtaining the dominant influence over governments. After Lehman's collapse, governments bailed out those banks, no matter the cost. By borrowing vast sums to fund those bailouts, governments raised national debts to reduce the big banks' private debts. Hence today's European sovereign debt crisis.

Consider the irony: governments today impose austerity on the rest of us because "the markets" demand no less to keep credit flowing to those governments. Behind this dubious abstraction - "the markets" - hide the chief lenders to governments. Those are the same global banks that received the government bailouts paid for by massive government borrowing since 2007. "Thieves," mutter the Occupy Wall Street folk - and who can blame them?

Record number of Palestinians displaced by demolitions as Quartet continues to talk

2011-12-13T18:25:00.000Z

Twenty aid agencies and human rights groups report that Israeli authorities have stepped up unlawful demolitions in the West Bank including East Jerusalem over the past year, displacing a record number of Palestinian families from their homes. The statement comes as the Middle East Quartet meets in Jerusalem in its latest effort to revive peace talks. http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=19857

The sharp rise in demolitions in 2011 has been accompanied by accelerated expansion of Israeli settlements and an escalation of violence perpetrated by settlers, the groups said.

The humanitarian and human rights groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam International, are calling for the Quartet to hold all parties to the conflict to their international law obligations. The Quartet must, therefore, press the Israeli government to immediately reverse its settlement policies and freeze all demolitions that violate international law.

“The increasing rate of settlement expansion and house demolitions is pushing Palestinians to the brink, destroying their livelihoods and prospects for a just and durable peace. There is a growing disconnect between the Quartet talks and the situation on the ground. The Quartet needs to radically revise its approach and show that it can make a real difference to the lives of Palestinians and Israelis.” said Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director, Oxfam International.

The evidence of a rapidly deteriorating situation on the ground includes:

· Doubling the number of people displaced by demolitions: Since the beginning of the year more than 500 Palestinian homes, wells, rainwater harvesting cisterns, and other essential structures have been destroyed in the West Bank including East Jerusalem, displacing more than 1,000 Palestinians, UN figures show. This is more than double the number of people displaced over the same period in 2010, and the highest figure since at least 2005.[1] More than half of those displaced have been children for whom the loss of their home is particularly devastating.

· Accelerating settlement expansion: Plans for around 4,000 new settler housing units have been approved in East Jerusalem over the past 12 months - the highest number since at least 2006, according to Peace Now.[2] In November, moreover, Israel announced plans to speed up construction of 2,000 new units in the West Bank including East Jerusalem.

· Sharp increase in settler violence: violent attacks by settlers against Palestinians have escalated by over 50% in 2011 compared to 2010, and by over 160% compared to 2009, the UN reports. 2011 has seen by far the most settler violence since at least 2005. Settlers have also destroyed or damaged nearly 10,000 Palestinian olive and other trees during this year, undermining the livelihoods of hundreds of families.[3] The perpetrators act with virtual impunity, with over 90% of complaints of settler violence closed by the Israeli police without indictment in 2005-2010.[4]

· Impending threat of forced displacement of Bedouin: Up to 2,300 Bedouin living in the Jerusalem periphery could be forcibly and unlawfully relocated if Israeli authorities follow through with their reported plans in 2012, which would destroy their livelihoods and threaten their traditional way of life. Rural communities in the Jordan Valley are also facing the prospect of further demolitions as settlements continue to expand.

“The Quartet should call ongoing settlement expansion and house demolitions what they are: violations of international humanitarian law that Israel should stop,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

“Israel’s escalating violations show the fundamental failure of the Quartet’s approach. It’s time for the Quartet to understand that they cannot contribute to achieving a just and durable solution to the conflict without first ensuring respect for international law,” said Phillip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Interim Programme Director, Amnesty International.

General Strike in Italy against Euro-Austerity

2011-12-13T08:55:00.000Z

Yesterday millions of Italian trade unionists took part in a general strike in protest against plans by the unelected Italian government to impose drastic austerity measures against working people, including attacks familiar to UK workers such as raising the retirement age to 66 by 2018 and reduce inflation indexing for pensions and other benefits: http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/113068

Party Funding - no equivalence between trade union levy payers & corporate largesse

2011-12-13T08:51:00.000Z

Scott Hill, writing in the Huffington Post UK blog, makes a spurious case for increased state funding for establishment political parties - by putting a few hundred Tory donor City millionaires on a par with the millions of Labour supporting trade unionists who make modest political fund levy contributions:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/scott-hill/party-funding-is-a-serious-issue_b_1141843.html

Hill uses two case studies in support of his thesis. He claims that Labour’s dependency on union funding left the party compromised during the recent pensions dispute, and similarly he suggests that David Cameron’s exercising of the UK veto was widely seen as pandering to Tory paymasters in the City. Putting aside that the latter is true and that the Labour leadership’s support for the 30 November was muted to say the least, this entirely misses the point.

There is nothing to stop the Tory party offering affiliated membership to company shareholders or trade unionists for that matter. The travesty is that the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA) deems subscriptions or affiliation payments to be donations – and in the case of Labour individual union member political contributions are aggregated as donations by Unions when it is simply not the case..
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/102263/to-donations-rp.pdf

And at a time of austerity and public expenditure cuts why should even more public funds be paid out to sustain political parties, such as the minuscule Liberal Democrats, which on the strength of their party membership alone are not viable national organisations.

Haven’t we had enough of bail outs in this country?

IS THAT A CRACK IN THE COALITION? The Truth about the Bust Up

2011-12-12T17:16:00.002Z

Even those for whom weekends are for more popular pursuits, like watching Celtic beat Hearts, or voting for Harry from McFly in the ‘Strictly’ semi finals, there has been no escape from the Big Euro Bust Up.

Cameron crossed the Channel and told promptly the Euro club that he wasn’t going to join them in their latest bout of masochism and flagellation, much to the delight of the Tory backwoodsmen every where. This wasn’t because they are not fond of the odd bout of flagellation. It has in fact been a speciality of the nasty party for at least the past thirty years, but it is also true to say that while they like inflicting pain, they don’t like it when continentals tell them it’s good for them.

For the right wing of the Tory party, the EU has been the bogey man that that haunts their dreams. Mention the EU and like attack dogs, they bare their teeth and growl.

Nick Clegg, however, has been touring the TV studios over the weekend to tell anyone who will listen that he is very, very disappointed with his coalition partners.

Is this because he regrets the huge number of public sector jobs that have been thrown on the scrapheap?

Does he regret the wage cuts that have seen demand in the economy plummet?

Does he regret the poverty that has been inflicted by cutting benefit levels?

No, Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats are worried about the damage being inflicted on “the City” Clegg believes that Cameron has damaged the prospects of our financial services industry and left its fate with the European partners. But Cameron believes that is precisely what he saved.

That would be the Financial Services Industry condemned today, a condemnation issued by its own regulator the FSA. That would be an FSA that says of its own performance:-

"The report concludes that the FSA was too focused on conduct regulation at the time and its prudential supervision of major banks was inadequate. The FSA operated a flawed supervisory approach which failed adequately to challenge the judgment and risk assessments of the management of RBS.

"This approach reflected widely held, but mistaken assumptions about the stability of financial systems and existed against a backdrop of political pressures for a 'light touch' regulatory regime," he said.

Of the Royal Bank of Scotland, the same report condemns:-
The “bank’s management capabilities and style; governance arrangements; checks and balances; mechanisms for oversight and challenge; and in its culture, particularly its attitude to the balance between risk and growth."

This measure of mea culpa is touching but confirms what the majority of this country has known for years- that the financial crisis in this country was caused by greedy rapacious bankers.
But both the Tories and the Lib Deems think that the city is worth defending .Did anyone mentions two bald men fighting over a comb?

There is another approach. Last week UNISON’s policy committee issued its own statement, worth quoting in full.

“UNISON has been rightly critical of the European Union’s response to the economic crisis: an overarching emphasis on fiscal austerity combined with a renewed neo-liberal drive towards greater competition, market liberalisation and a downward push on wages.

The Head of the European Central Bank maintains that its sole remit is to maintain price stability whilst the German and French governments are pushing for European treaty changes that will, for Euro zone countries, enshrine balanced budgets in national constitutions, impose fines on ‘errant’ member states and give the European Court of Justice powers over national parliaments’ rights to set their own budgets.

These policies have led to the situation in which the banking sector across the EU has been completely unfettered and deregulated, with the consequences that are currently being seen across the EU in the form of the debt crisis.

The real consequences of these acts, however, have been seen in the austerity measures that are being put into place in countries across Europe, notably Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Italy where, in the latter two cases, unelected governments are now in the process of drastically cutting living standards and public services, and adding to the already unacceptable unemployment levels. Such policies are now likely to be replicated throughout the euro zone, starting with Spain where a conservative government believes that it has such a mandate.

As in the UK, as a union we reject the necessity for working people to bear the brunt of these economic policies, and believe that what is necessary across Europe is a bold policy of public sector investment to stimulate demand and jobs as opposed to the reiteration of the status quo that is causing misery to millions.

UNISON has offered its full support to our sister unions across Europe throughout the current crisis and will continue to do. As a union we will continue to play a part in EPSU and the ETUC to urge the adoption of alternative economic policies, and support demonstrations and lobbies as and when these are called.”

So we can stand beside the people of Europe, or we can fall for the propaganda that this is about British interests. Which side are we on?

In the meantime remember, whether Tory or LibDem, they are all merchant bankers at heart.

TURC- heir to a long tradition of union busting in Britain

2011-12-12T08:35:00.000Z

The Trade Union Reform Campaign led by the disgraced Tory MP Aidan Burley, is the latest in a long line of business-funded union busting organisations in Britain. The most notorious being the Economic League, founded in 1919 by a group of industrialists and a Tory MP under the name of National Propaganda. It was wound up in 1994 after its McCarthyite activities in blacklisting workers were exposed: http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Spies_at_Work

More recently, the shady Consulting Association was exposed for providing blacklisting and intelligence services to employers upon subscription: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7927487.stm

1911 Centenary Lecture - Tony Benn

2011-12-12T08:32:00.000Z

Tristram Hunt, Labour MP for Stoke Central, (and also a lecturer in modern History) gives an excellent lecture on the BBC Parliament web site on Tony Benn - a reminder of what a radical Labour MP is and what an inspiration to wider action they can be. Nice also to see the ubiquitous Bick sat on the front row next to Tony Benn: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/
b0186bn3/1911_
Centenary_Lecture_Tony_Benn/

Burley Tory union basher joins Hooray Henry mates on pro-Nazi bender

2011-12-11T09:35:00.000Z

Aidan Burley, the right wing Tory MP who is fronting the anti union TURC campaign's attacks on hard working trade unionists, is badly exposed by today's Mail on Sunday. It reports on his presence at a Nazi themed stag party in France last weekend. By their friends you shall know them... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=&authornamef=Matt+Sandy

'We teach life, sir'

2011-12-11T09:31:00.000Z

Rafeef Ziadah is a Canadian-Palestinian spoken word artist and activist. Her debut CD Hadeel is dedicated to Palestinian youth, who still fly kites in the face of F16 bombers, who still remember the names if their villages in Palestine and still hear the sound of Hadeel (cooing of doves) over Gaza. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKucPh9xHtM&sns=fb