NIPSA News August

NIPSA NEWS THE NEWSPAPER OF THE LEADING PUBLIC SERVICE TRADE UNION

Trust’s new working proposals – ‘outrageous’ – See page 2

Strong support for J10 strike – pictures and report – See page 3

Concern over DVA’s Voluntary Exit Scheme – See page 4

August 2014 Tel: 028 90661831 www.nipsa.org.uk

EOII internal competition ‘welcomed’

by NIPSA – See page 5

Action pays off for health payroll staff – See page 6

Success at last as Exploris secures regional funding

NIPSA has strongly welcomed Finance Minister Simon Hamilton’s announcement that the Executive has earmarked £900,000 in capital funding for the Exploris Aquarium and Seal Sanctuary in Portaferry.

The union also backed Ards Borough Council’s decision in principle to accept the offer of funding.

The drive to secure funding has been long and arduous with NIPSA setting up a campaign group made up of trade unions, local councillors, NIPSA members and local residents.

At first NIPSA had made representations on behalf of its members to the council as it was debating the closure of the facility. However, the union quickly understood that a broad-based community campaign was needed to keep Exploris open.

Given the council’s financial position and the fact it provided a service to the whole of Northern Ireland, NIPSA took the view the Northern Ireland Executive had a responsibility to fund Exploris as a regional service. Subsequently, NIPSA made representations to the DETI and DOE committees.

On September 29, 2013, NIPSA organised a public meeting which was well attended by local residents, MPs, MLAs, local councillors, NIPSA members and other interested groups.

Following speeches and arguments from the floor, the meeting unanimously voted to seek regional funding for Exploris and for it to be retained as a public service.

A pressure group – Save Exploris Aquarium Campaign (SEA) group – was set up led by NIPSA. It consisted of several trade unions, local politicians, NIPSA members, local campaigners and other interested parties. On many dark nights throughout the winter months, the SEA campaign group met to review what actions were being taken. A strategy was developed to seek to secure regional funding as the only way to secure the future of Exploris in the long term.

A source told NIPSA News: “Every week there seemed to be a new and higher hurdle to jump but the SEA group members debated, argued and reached consensus on the way forward determined to find a solution.”

NIPSA ‘Save Exploris’ supporters on hearing the decision to save the aquarium

But SEA, however, was not the only group in the campaign.

The source continued: “This created a whole other dynamic which the SEA group had to deal with taking into account that the other groups were seeking to save Exploris albeit in a different way, which unfortunately did not meet the objectives of the public meeting resolution.”

Some local residents set up Facebook and Twitter accounts to save Exploris which in no small way helped enormously with the campaign.

The next step in the campaign was getting a motion passed supporting regional funding at Stormont. The Alliance party put forward a motion.

However, it did not specifically seek regional funding.

This created a major problem for SEA as the Alliance motion had the support of a number of campaign groups.

NIPSA and the SEA group lobbied a number of political parties. The Ulster Unionist Party came to the rescue with an amendment to the motion.

At Stormont the motions were hard fought. However, with the support of the UUP, SDLP and Sinn Fein, the Alliance motion fell. The amendment was then tabled but this time the Alliance party also supported the amended motion and the UUP motion passed. This was a decisive point in the campaign and there looked to be light at the end of the tunnel.

After several months, the Northern Ireland Executive agreed to provide capital funding of ap-

proximately £900,000. DOE minister Mark Durkan also agreed to fund the Seal Sanctuary up to £120,000 on an ongoing basis.

NIPSA Official Antoinette McMillen told NIPSA News: “This is good news for Exploris staff, for the local community and for all in Northern Ireland.

This outcome vindicates fully the united campaign

by NIPSA along with community supporters of Exploris to keep this important facility operating fully for the future.

“NIPSA wishes to thank the Assembly members, Ministers and other political representatives for their support for this campaign.”

NIPSA Deputy General Secretary Alison Millar added: “This has been a long and difficult campaign for all involved. However, NIPSA and the Save Exploris Aquarium campaign for regional funding has borne fruit and will secure the future of this excellent regional facility to be enjoyed by generations to come.”

NIPSA and other campaign group members attended a special meeting of Ards Borough Council on Wednesday, August 6, and will continue to lobby the new North Down and Ards Council to ensure the future of Exploris “gets over the line”.

After a long and often arduous campaign to keep Exploris open and as a public service facility NIPSA, together with other members of the SEA Campaign Group will continue to work on behalf of Exploris staff, the local community and all citizens of Northern Ireland to realise the full potential of this valuable regional asset.

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‘A Pay Rise For All’ must be our clarion call Editorial

LOCAL Government employees across the UK, including NIPSA staff in Education, Libraries, Housing and other NJC pay-related sectors in Northern Ireland are lining up for a further one day strike on October 14 in a campaign to secure a decent pay increase after many years of nil or negligible pay increases.

Those working in the Northern Ireland Civil Service are likely this year to feel the full force of the HM Treasury pay limit of 1% on total additional pay costs, having managed over the last number of years to breach the pay limit due to the out-workings of the Equal Pay settlement and Comprehensive Pay and Grading Review which delivered increases for many over and above the Treasury limit.

For civil servants the prospect of a fouryears pay freeze looms and the union has a responsibility to challenge this grossly unfair and arbitrary attack on their pay. Many staff on the max of the scale have not had a consolidated increase for well-nigh four years.

This comes at a time when wages as a share of the wealth in the UK have decreased while the greater share of wealth is attracted by

Trust proposals on full-time working are ‘outrageous’

NIPSA has slammed as “outrageous” Western Health and Social Care Trust proposals to implement a new arrangement for the recruitment of staff that do not work shifts.

This change, slated to be implemented from September 1, would involve all new staff being offered contracts at a maximum of 35 hours a week [rather than the current full-time arrangement of 37.5 hours a week].

The same hourly contractual change will be offered to internal promotions and the Trust is also seeking volunteers to reduce their hours voluntarily to 35 hours a week.

NIPSA Official Alan Law told NIPSA News: “This is just another outrageous proposal from

company profits and astronomical pay rates for the captains of industry and the high-flyers in the financial sector.

The Bank of England has now slashed its prediction for pay growth by half, from 2.5% to 1.25%. This means that wages will continue to grow by less than inflation. Other forecasts predict that the UK economy is now in the top five in the world and the coalition government boasts that the economy has now been restored to its pre-Great Recession level.

Unemployment has fallen but what is ignored is the increased significance of underemployment, zero-hour contracts, self-employment and poverty wages.

People who need full-time employment are stuck in part-time work, on the minimum wage or slightly above and face a future of uncertainty and hardship. Many in this position will also have their income further eroded by the attacks on social security provision as a result of the so-called welfare reform initiative. Many workers who have declared themselves as self-employed struggle to make a living.

As TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady

the Trust to save money.

“It is absolutely clear that staff would be required to work fewer hours, receive less money but do the same volume of work.

“The work has not reduced but this is the latest penny-pinching proposal from the Trust, which will impact mainly on administrative and clerical staff.”

NIPSA is to resist this proposal which has just been received by union officials who have been given a short two-week period to respond.

NIPSA will be lobbying the Trust Board meeting, local politicians, and mounting a high level campaign to ensure this proposal is consigned, as one source commented, “to the wastebin where it belongs”.

Letters to the editor should be sent to: bob.miller@nipsa.org.uk - rules apply

NIPSA NEWS

NIPSA Harkin House, 54 Wellington Park, Belfast BT9 6DP, Tel: 028 90661831 Fax 028 90665847 or email: alison.millar@nipsa.org.uk Editorial contact details: Bob Miller email: bob.miller@nipsa.org.uk Correspondence should be sent to the above address.

Unless otherwise stated, the views contained in NIPSA NEWS do not necessarily reflect the policy of trade union NIPSA.

www.nipsa.org.uk

pointed out, “the economy is getting bigger but not better”. It is though getting better for some with Executive pay increasing by 14% in 2013 with the pay of others increasing by 0.6% over the same period.

It is not surprising then that both the TUC and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions are making pay a major issue. On Saturday, October 18, both bodies will be organising public rallies in towns and cities. The Northern Ireland rally will be held in Belfast under the slogan “A Pay Rise for All”.

We need to mobilise the community behind the campaign for decent wages. This applies to both the private and the public sectors and to workers who are unionised and those who are not.

However, surveys from different sources comprehensively demonstrate that unionised workers are better off and the campaign for a “Pay Rise for All” must have at its core the benefits of trade union membership.

Brian Campfield, General Secretary

‘False Promise and Real Threat of TYC’ booklet is published

AS REPORTED in the last issue of NIPSA News, NIPSA accepted an invitation to attend the Northern Ireland Pensioners' Parliament (NIPP) in May, taking part in a debate on health and social care reform.

NIPSA Policy/Research Officer John McVey’s presentation at the debate, based on his investigations into Transforming Your Care (TYC), has now been produced in booklet form.

Copies of the booklet – which is aimed at, in the first instance, NIPP attendees and NIPSA retired members – can be obtained by contacting Lesley Anne Scott at NIPSA Headquarters.

Alternatively members can download PDF versions of the document by clicking on the cover images at the following link: http://bit.ly/1oEmJ2b John McVey told NIPSA News: “The core of the presentation reinforced the point that there is such a thing as society and that it is held together by universally provided, accessible and high-quality public services funded from progressive taxation.

“This principle, of what in effect constitutes a civilised society, faces constant attempts to undermine it – not least from those who are attacking our National Health Service in order that it is broken up and re-shaped for their corporate, profiteering benefit.”

He added: “We have to see the false

promise of TYC put in a national and international context. In addition, only by developing the broadest possible campaign against the privatisation of the NHS will we save this ‘jewel in the crown’ of the Welfare State.”

Hospital staff to protest over parking charges STAFF at the South West Acute Hospital staged a lunchtime demo on Wednesday, August 20 to protest at the imposition of car parking charges at the health service facility.

It is understood these charges will apply to most parking spaces on site. The rate will be 70p per hour – which works out at approximately £1,500 a year.

A source told NIPSA News: “There has been no provision made for staff, nor has any considera-

tion been given to staff who work during peak hours between Monday and Friday.

“In addition, a number hospital employees work in community posts requiring them to visit clients across the local community.

“This will impact on them disproportionately as they will be entering and leaving the site at various times throughout the day making it virtually impossible to locate a free parking space.”

Strong support for strike

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NIPSA members together with thousands of other union members joined the strike on Thursday, July 10 in defence of their pay.

At a packed Grosvenor Hall in Belfast, strikers joined together to send a clear message to Local Government Employers to get back around the negotiating table to resolve this dispute. A similar message was delivered from the rally in Derry’s Guildhall Square.

Alison Millar, Deputy General Secretary said: “There are reports from across Northern Ireland that thousands of workers in Local Government,

Housing Executive, Education, Libraries, Youth Justice Agency NSL Traffic Attendants and other public sector workers have joined the call for strike action.

“The message from the striking workers was strong – ignore us at your peril.

“The unions collectively agreed that if the Employers refuse to negotiate then further strike action will take place in the Autumn.

“Our members do not want to be on strike, they want to be in work delivering vital public services, however they have had enough. The ball is now firmly in the court of the Employers

to resolve this major pay dispute before it escalates.

She added: “Workers, all of whom have experienced a significant reduction in real pay and purchasing power since the 2008/09 financial and economic crisis, need a decent pay increase, whether they are employed in the public or private sectors. We all no longer tolerate the further enrichment of the wealthy while ordinary workers struggle to live on reduced real income.”

NIPSA is now considering whether to join further strike action planned in October.

Tories ramp up rhetoric on strikes

Pictures: Kevin Cooper

A General Election can never be far away when the Conservative Party turns up the rhetoric over trade unions. This time the Tories have turned their attention to turnouts in ballots for industrial action.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said the Tory manifesto would include the requirement for at least half of eligible union members to vote in order for a strike to be lawful.

There would also be a threemonth time limit after the ballot for the action to take place and curbs on picketing.

As well as the 50% threshold, Maude also pledged to require unions to set out on the ballot paper the exact form or action they were proposing, with a vote on each aspect of the dispute.

Unions would also be required to give employers 14 days notice be-

fore taking industrial action, rather than seven days now.

The Tories would also end “rolling mandates” for industrial action with the three-month limit — citing the National Union of Teachers, which is using the result of a 2012 strike ballot to stage action now.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “These proposals are designed to make legal strikes close to impossible, and the Conservatives do not include a single proposal — such as allow- ing secret online balloting — that would increase participation.

“Britain’s strike laws are already some of the tough- est of any democracy. You do not have to support every bit of industrial action to see that the right to strike is an important human right — and always one of the first things banned by any dictatorship.

“You cannot have proper negotiations between employers and unions without some power for the union side. Making strikes near impossible will fundamentally shift the balance of power in Brit- ish workplaces in favour of the employer — and as union negotiations often set the pace for pay rounds, this will hit non-union workers as much as those in unions.

“The purpose of this is clear. It is to ensure that the fruits of recovery are reserved for the few and kept from the many.”

The TUC has written to business secretary Vince Cable urging him to modernise the rules that govern strike ballots and bring union voting methods into the 21st century.

General secretary Frances O’Grady has called on the Department for Business, Innovation and

Skills to change the rules so that union members might use their work computers, home laptops, tablets or smartphones to vote in future strike ballots.

O’Grady told Cable: “Three-quarters of adults now have access to broadband at home, 94% own a mobile and seven in 10 a smartphone.

"With these figures going up all the time — even for low-income workers — it seems strange for some ministers to slam unions for low turnouts, while having little enthusiasm for the 21st century methods of voting that would encourage greater participation.

“Unions already use digital means to reach mem- bers and when they use these modern methods to gauge feelings over pay offers, for example, they can secure turnouts as high as 96%.”

NIPSA concern over DVA Voluntary Exit Scheme

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THE Driver Vehicle Agency Voluntary Exit Scheme, provisionally set to be launched in November, “falls far short” of what is expected of local politicians in protecting NICS jobs, NIPSA has claimed.

It is understood, one of the key recommendations contained in a paper presented to the Northern Ireland Executive over the decision to concentrate Vehicle Licensing Services in Swansea concerned the setting up of a “a restricted NICS Voluntary Exit/Redundancy Scheme for the Administrative Assistant (AA) and Administration Officer (AO) grades, to deal with the surplus staff”.

According to the union, indications at this stage are that the scheme will be NICS-wide, albeit restricted to the non-mobile grades referred to above.

It is also likely that a restriction will apply on a geographical basis, as the purpose of the scheme is to create opportunities for these non-

www.nipsa.org.uk

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mobile grades.

Assistant General Secretary Kieran Bannon (pictured right) said: “NIPSA is extremely concerned with this recent development particularly as we have been pressing for more effort to be directed at finding alternative work to deal with this surplus.

“NIPSA believes this scheme falls far short of what was expected of political representatives in protecting NICS jobs particularly in the local economy of Coleraine, given the concentration of the surplus posts in that area.

“This proposed voluntary exit scheme, recent cosmetic announcements from DOE and DSD and a limited number of redeployments is all that has resulted from months of lobbying politicians and senior civil servants.

“This news will further leave members disillusioned and despondent who undoubtedly will not see this as ‘the best way forward’ a matter that will be raised with NICS management.

“As this is effectively a political decision, NIPSA will be writing to the relevant Ministers and making representations at that level also.”

He added: “Political representatives must be made aware of members strength of feeling at firstly being let down by a GB Minister deciding to remove this work from Northern Ireland and now this decision by our own local administration.”

In May, the DOE announced the transfer of 50 permanent posts to Coleraine. Also in May, the DSD announced the creation of temporary work up to December. The union claimed these measures had no impact on the overall level of net surpluses and that in the case of the DSD move was no more than “a time-buying arrangement”.

In June, NIPSA raised a number of concerns with Management Side of the CWC Selection and Development Committee over how to address the staff surplus resulting from the move of Vehicle Li-

Austerity’s real winners and losers revealed

THE Nevin Economic Research Institute, a think-tank supported by a number of ICTU-affiliated unions including NIPSA, has just published a new report looking at hours and earnings in the Northern Ireland labour market.

Outlining the purpose of the paper, NERI economist and report author Paul MacFlynn told NIPSA News: “While UK economic growth is now reaching 3% per year, the economy has only just returned to its precrisis peak and it is nearly the last of the G7 economies to do so (Italy still lags behind).

“Furthermore most of the recent growth has been fuelled by population increases as GDP per capita is still almost 5% below peak. In Northern Ireland the situation is arguably worse… [and] these contrasting trends lead to questions about the type of labour market recovery we are having.

“It is not enough to look at employment versus unemployment; we need to examine how employment may have changed… how the profile of those in employment has changed, where they are employed and how they are employed.”

The paper underlines how emerging trends within the Northern Ireland labour market pose a series of “challenges for policymakers”.

Writing in the report, Mr MacFlynn states:

“The first challenge is to tackle low pay through increased wage floors and to promote wage agreements across sectors.

Regulation also needs to ensure that employees cannot be exploited through the use of flexible contracts by introducing minimum work requirements.

“The shift toward lower paid sectors of employment poses a challenge to industrial policy, that in order to achieve a significant increase in prosperity, more active and focused state intervention is required.”

Such findings demonstrate how the economic shift towards low pay and job insecurity is the economic reality behind the mainstream media’s propaganda about ‘recovery’.

Policy/Research Officer John McVey told NIPSA News: “By contrast to the ‘tip’ of the class pyramid in the UK – where we can observe the Sunday Times Rich List’s 1,000 entrants ‘holding’ £519 billion between them – the picture painted by NERI about what’s happening locally within the rest of that pyramid shows who have been austerity’s winners and losers and for whom the Cabinet of millionaires shapes its economic policy.”

(Check out the full report at http://bit.ly/1sJ9Ing)

censing Services to Swansea.

According to NIPSA, Trade Union Side called on Corporate HR to be “more proactive” in finding alternative work for the displaced staff.

Mr Bannon added: “Arrangements are also being put in place to urgently meet with NIPSA members in the DVA affected by the centralisation of their work in Swansea, to discuss our response to this most recent and disappointing development.”

Claimants suffer hardships

URGENT government action is needed to address problems in the new Personal Independence Payment (PIP) system, according to the campaigning charity, Disability Rights UK. Figures released by the Department for Work and Pensions in June showed that around 75% of claimants were still awaiting a decision. Of 349,000 new PIP claims made since the introduction of the new system in April 2013, only 84,900 had received decisions in the first 12 months.

Excluding those who are terminally ill, over 50% of those disabled people who had actually received a decision had not been granted any award at all.

Disability Rights UK has demanded an “end to the further roll-out of PIP” and urgent action “to reduce the scandalous backlog of PIP claims” responsible for “causing financial hardship, despair and frustration to nearly 300,000 disabled people”.

Kate Green, Labour’s shadow disability minister, commented that if the current rate of assessments were to continue, it would take “a staggering 42 years” to assess all claims.

PIP was introduced to replace the Disability Living Allowance. Assessments for claims in central England, Wales and Northern Ireland are carried out by Capita. Atos — which lost the contract to carry out work capability assessments earlier this year — undertakes the PIP assessments in Scotland and the rest of England.

A report by the House of Commons work and pensions select committee in March criticised the level of service offered to PIP claimants. www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/2014/june/pip-statsshow-broken-system

EOII internal competition ‘very welcome’

www.nipsa.org.uk

NIPSA has described news that the next Executive Officer II competition is to be internal as “very welcome” but has further underlined the need for an internal Administrative Officer promotion board.

The union has also raised questions over the working of the Line Managers Assessment process.

For a number of years, NIPSA has sought to end the promotion drought for Administrative Assistants (AA) and Administrative Officers (AO) in the absence of promotion competitions at AO and Executive Officer II (EOII) levels respectively.

At the 2013 NIPSA Civil Service Group Conference, a resolution put forward by the Executive Committee and calling for internal AO and EOII promotion competitions, was adopted following a resounding level of support from NIPSA Branches.

This lead to further renewed representations being made by Trade Union Side at Central Whitley level.

Trade Union Side highlighted the anger and frustration felt by members with many years’ experience over being denied promotion opportunities.

For some time, NICS Management insisted that the decision to conduct external AO and EOII recruitment exercises was based on an imbalanced pool of internal candidates in terms of religious background.

While TUS recognises the need for action to be taken to redress any imbalances from an equality perspective, concern was expressed over which dated data was being used in claims that there was an imbalanced internal pooI. In addition to Central Whitley

News

Trade Union Side raising these concerns, Departmental Trade Union Sides had also raised with Departments the serious morale problems that had built up due to the lack of promotion opportunities for many members of staff.

In response it appears that a number of Departments also made representations to Corporate HR on the matter.

At a meeting of the CWC Selection and Development Committee in June, Trade Union Side was advised that NICS Management was seriously considering the basis on which the forthcoming EOII competition would be held.

Shortly afterwards it was confirmed the competition would be by an internal promotion board.

Assistant General Secretary Kieran Bannon told NIPSA News: “It has been a long and robust set of negotiations and the news that the next EOII competition is to be an internal promotion board is very welcome, especially for members in the affected grades.

“Notwithstanding this, NIPSA continues to advance representations on the need for an internal Administrative Officer promotion board.”

He added: “Although we are pleased with this news, a number of issues remain to be addressed over the highly-questionable Line Managers Assessment (LMA) process and the use of assessment tools.”

Trade Union Side had raised concern about LMA and how these had been conducted, particularly in the recent Executive Officer I competition and drew upon members’ experiences at the June meeting.

The examples given suggested that, as previously

claimed by Trade Union Side, the LMA process was not operating on a fair and equitable basis with members rightly claiming it to be contrived in a number of areas.

While NICS Management was not prepared to abandon the LMA process as part of the EOI promotion competition, consideration was being given to whether it should be used in the EOII competition.

Another area of concern to members is the proposed use of an assessment tool (test) as part of the EOII competition.

Trade Union Side reiterated evidence-based concerns about the use of assessment tools within promotion competitions. To date these have been used at EOII and Grade 7 levels.

NICS Management confirmed that an independent examination of the 2007 and 2011 EOII competitions had been completed and would be shared shortly with Trade Union Side.

It was also confirmed that the NICS was developing bespoke tests in order to iron out potential adverse impacts and in a bid to incorporate a process based on best practice.

Earlier in the year a Branch Secretary Circular (CS14/14) was issued advising members that Departments had been asked to submit volunteers at EOII level to take part in developing a test for use in the next EOII competition. Members were also advised of the NIPSA Civil Service Group Executive’s concerns about the process and they were asked to exercise caution about volunteering their services. This remains the position as some Departments have renewed their efforts to seek volunteers for this purpose.

Organise to protect services, jobs, pay and pensions YOU HAVE A ROLE TO PLAY...SUPPORT YOUR UNION AND YOUR COLLEAGUES

NIHE stock transfer takes a new twist

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IN recent weeks, NIPSA has become aware that the process of voluntary stock transfers from the Housing Executive to Housing Associations has moved on considerably.

It comes months after a report by the Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) into the transfer of 55 Housing Executive homes in Rinmore, Creggan, to the APEX Housing Association.

The houses in Rinmore were the first Housing Executive homes to transfer to a Housing Association.

At the time, NIPSA voiced fundamental opposition to the move, warning of a potential landslide of transfers.

On a practical level, the 55 tenants in Rinmore were left with a Hobson’s choice – either to transfer to APEX Housing Association and have the major works carried out or stay with the Housing Executive and not have that work undertaken.

After many years of waiting in expectation of the work being carried out, the tenants had no real alternative but to transfer.

However, since the transfer anecdotal evidence clearly shows that tenants wish they had stayed with the Housing Executive.

Their rents have increased significantly but the service they receive from the Housing Association is inferior to the service and engagement tenants had with the Housing Executive as their former landlord.

At the time of the Rinmore transfer NIPSA had raised a number of concerns with the Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO). One of those was about the lack of a procurement or bidding process for the Housing Association.

In effect, North West Housing (now APEX Housing Association) were gifted these properties without competition.

The NIAO subsequently produced a report that was critical of a number of the issues concerning Rinmore including the lack of a procurement process.

NIPSA Deputy General Secretary Alison Millar has informed NIPSA News that the union has been made aware that the process of the possible voluntary stock transfer has moved considerably.

Social Development Minister Nelson McCausland made it known more than a year ago that he wanted 2,000 properties to be part of the stock transfer process.

The initial proposals were to transfer properties and this involved both large-scale and smallscale transfers – i.e. from 100 plus homes to in some cases a small block of rural cottages.

Under the new proposals agreed by the Housing Executive Board, it is proposed to transfer on an “estate-based approach”.

While the Housing Executive have refused to provide NIPSA with a copy of the Board paper, it is clear this current proposal has significantly upped the ante on stock transfer.

Alison Millar underlined NIPSA’s serious reservations about this proposed change which she pointed out could mean that Housing Executive homes which do not require any or substantial upgrading/maintenance could be hived off to a Housing Association.

NIPSA will continue to seek further detail on the proposal and it intends to raise the matter with the Social Development Committee.

It is understood the proposed “estate-based approach” will arise out of the Stock Condition Survey to be carried out by Savills.

NIPSA will be mounting a campaign to resist this approach which, in our opinion, is moving ahead of political decisions over the future provision of social housing in Northern Ireland.

Health payroll staff action pays off

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NIPSA members in the new Shared Services Centre at the Business Services Organisation (BSO) have expressed “relief” after a series of grievances were resolved in talks with management following a period of industrial action.

Members took part in an overtime ban and refused to cover the work of absent colleagues from July 21 in a bid to settle a dispute about staffing structures, among other issues.

Deputy General Secretary Alison Millar told NIPSA News: “NIPSA members working in Health as well as members of the union working in other sectors cannot have failed to notice the disaster that has unfolded over the last number of months with the new payroll, human resources and payments system (HRPTS).

“However, behind that we have around 50 staff who have been working tirelessly to fix Health Service employees’ pay with a system that is not fit for purpose.

“During this time, staff in the new Shared Services Centre in Belfast worked under immense pressure and stress because of system’s many failures.

“However, despite there being a plethora of issues being raised with management both prior to the Shared Services Centre being implemented and since, management had initially ignored all representations made by NIPSA.” Happily, that was subsequently to change after members voted for industrial action.

Tommy Brownlee, NIPSA Official for the BSO, went on to explain: “I have spent many hours over the last few months with the members in College Street and with management seeking to find a resolution. However, all of NIPSA’s suggestions have been rejected out of hand. This resulted in members being balloted for industrial action.

“The action commenced on July 21 and while initially management refused to engage, following a letter being sent to the BSO Chairman asking for speaking rights at the Board meeting at the end of August, the mood changed.

“This resulted in three weeks of intensive negotiations and a resolution of the issues, including the recruitment of six Band 4 posts (with a further two in October) as well as a review to be completed by March 2015.”

A NIPSA member in the BSO commented: “It is an absolute relief that NIPSA have negotiated a resolution to this issue. We are working under immense stress and pressure and we have been adamant that the structure proposed was never correct.

The member added: “It is deeply regrettable that we had to take a stand through industrial action just to be listened to.”

It is understood Tommy Brownlee and local representatives will be keeping a “very close eye” on issues impacting on staff as they move to a new building – which will hopefully address many of the health and safety issues that have arisen during this stressful time.

NIPSA raises concerns over Child Maintenance charges NIPSA has joined with sister union PCS and other organisations such as Gingerbread and the Child Poverty Action Group in hitting out at the introduction of charges by the Government under Phase 2 of the 2012 Child Maintenance Scheme.

Under Phase 2 of the scheme, new applicants will be charged a flat rate of £20 – whether they ever receive any maintenance or not.

The Government has claimed the charges are being introduced to boost the number of private arrangements brokered between parents.

This claim is hotly contested and has led to an Early Day Motion being placed in the House of Commons on the issue.

NIPSA has called on Northern Ireland MPs to support the motion.

The union fears the changes – to be introduced from August 11 – will further deepen child poverty in Northern Ireland.

It means that “paying parents” will be charged 20% on top of their maintenance assessment and the “receiving parent” will be charged a further 4% of the maintenance collected.

NIPSA Assistant General Secretary Kieran Bannon told NIPSA News: “For every £12 collected by the Child Maintenance Service, only £9.60 will be paid to the parent receiving support for their child.

“In addition, there will be levies applied for tracing the ‘paying parent’ should their whereabouts be unknown and for enforcement action, if required, which will further reduce this figure.”

NIPSA claims that this is another at-

tempt by the Government to raise funds for the Exchequer at the expense of parents trying to make ends meet – the very parents Ministers insist the Child Maintenance Scheme was set up to assist and benefit.

In July 2013, the Child Poverty Action Group published estimates of the costs to the economy and to government, generated by child poverty rates in every Northern Ireland parliamentary constituency.

These estimates show that almost 100,000 children are living below the relative poverty line.

Another issue that will have an impact on child poverty is the fact that “paying parents” cannot have their payment level reviewed unless their income has changed by more than 25%.

As average earnings in Northern Ireland are £22,000 a year, a cut of more than £5,500 of income would be needed before a review could be conducted.

A number of these points was included in a NIPSA submission prepared by John McCloskey, Deputy Section Secretary, NIPSA Headquarters, and the Child Maintenance Service Trace Union Side.

Concerns were also raised on the staffing front in the submission which flagged up the fact that inadequate training prevented staff from being able to operate the system in a live environment.

A number of other concerns over finance training were also featured in the submission – issues of how arrears are to be paid and the fact that no payment schedules are being provided to “receiving parents”.

It was pointed out that Deduction of

Earnings Orders were very time-consuming and that much time would be spent reviewing information on the new system.

NIPSA activists and members working in the area have pointed out management’s reluctance to admit that there are problems both with the computer system and with the level of training.

In addition, staff raising legitimate concerns are branded as being negative.

Members have also reported that priorities are constantly being changed – sometimes almost on a daily basis.

According to NIPSA, this situation has led to morale problems among staff as well as creating uncertainty and a lack of confidence in the 2012 computer system and the scheme as a whole.

Kieran Bannon added: “Our members are frustrated as they are committed to providing a high-quality service. Not only are they being prevented from doing so but they are also on the frontline, at the receiving end of the understandable frustration expressed by angry parents about these changes.

“It is crucial that all parents support their children financially and that more children are lifted out of poverty to improve their standard of life, health and education.

“Parents should be encouraged to enter ‘family-based arrangements’ but where this is not possible ‘receiving parents’ and more importantly, their children, should not be penalised through what are effectively financial sanctions while the Exchequer appears to profit from the proposed changes. Surely there is a moral issue to be addressed here.”

Fracking protest decision welcome

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ANTI-FRACKING protesters have been celebrating a decision to block permission for an exploratory borehole for shale gas in County Fermanagh.

Environment Minister Mark H Durkan said drilling could have a significant impact on the environment.

Tamboran Resources wanted to drill a 750m deep hole at a quarry at Belcoo, using permitted development rights.

It issued a statement saying it was "deeply concerned" by the minister's decision.

"The company is currently reviewing its position and will release a further statement in due course," Tamboran said.

Tamboran will now have to make a full planning application with an accompanying environmental statement.

Tamboran staff moved into the quarry three weeks ago and carried out work to secure the site.

Protesters objecting to both fracking and gas exploration had held a permanent vigil at the quarry.

The aim of the borehole was to check if there was enough gas below ground to warrant seeking a licence to set up a fracking operation.

Protesters said they feared a borehole could be the first step towards the setting up of an industry that they believe could damage the environment and the health of local residents.

The borehole drilling process would not have involved fracking.

NI Water pension proposals opposed

www.nipsa.org.uk

CONSULTATION on a new pensions scheme for NI Water staff recently commenced and it is understood staff are far from content with the proposals.

Although NI Water is officially classified as an NIPB, staff are no longer classed as civil servants having been forced to TUPE into a so-called Government Owned Company (GOCO) in 2007.

A new pension scheme and new pay system were also introduced following the transfer.

However, staff now fear that they are facing cuts to their pension benefits as well as increased contributions.

The consultation, which lasts until the end of September, is based on proposals which resemble changes made to other public sector pension schemes.

Options galore in new training programme

NIPSA MEMBERS can now choose from a wide range of courses available in the new ICTU and NIPSA Autumn/Winter 2014 Training Programme.

And there is something for everyone on offer: courses for NIPSA Reps as well as training in Health and Safety, Union Learning, Negotiation Skills, Handling Grievance and Discipline.

Training Officer Naomi Connor told NIPSA News: “These courses focus on the everyday practical skills reps need to carry out their trade union duties.”

As well as long-standing courses, ICTU and NIPSA have developed new courses such as Social Media for Trade Union Representatives, Governance Skills and Trade Unions and the Economy.

Ms Connor said: “It is important that reps are trained not only in the skills to represent people in the workplace, but are also provided with the opportunity to discuss and develop arguments around wider issues including the role of unions, equality for all and the austerity agenda – key issues which affect our daily working lives.”

She added: “We all know having a good teacher is essential and ICTU and NIPSA courses are taught by trade union tutors with many years experience in the trade union movement.

“Our courses are designed to encourage everyone to learn in a friendly, supportive environment. There are no tests or exams and tutors are on hand to help support everyone’s learning.”

Interested?

Simply complete and return an application form either by hard copy or scanned email as soon as you can. Don’t forget to seek time-off to attend from your employer at an early stage! Confirmation of attendance on your chosen course will be issued as early as possible.

However, to ensure your employer has reasonable and sufficient time to put cover arrangements in place, it is recommended that time-off is sought immediately upon application for the course.

Course details can also be found at www.nipsa.org.uk or by contacting Naomi Connor at naomi.connor@nipsa.co.uk or Tel: 028 9066 1831 or Mobile: 07435 786 055

News

Essentially, if the proposals are accepted, then NIW workers will have to pay more, work longer and get less in return.

However, NIPSA News understands staff at NI Water may be gearing up for a fight to defend the current scheme.

NIPSA Assistant Secretary Ryan McKinney said: “The rationale for change has not been made out. Unlike the NICS scheme, for example, the NIW scheme is private, it is funded by the scheme members, has its own trustees and is in rude health.

“There is no need to change the benefits and much less to force huge contribution increases on workers who have seen no real pay increase for several years. Some staff will be asked to increase their contribution from 1.5% of salary to 7.6%. The arguments for changes

Page 7 NIPSA NEWS

don’t stack up.

“So far NIPSA have held three consultation meetings and members have been unambiguous in their response. They feel that enough is enough, they agreed to change their pay and pensions after they transferred from the NICS in 2007, they have absorbed ‘efficiencies’ and met tougher and tougher performance targets.

“Staff have saved the public purse millions over the past three or four years and now they are being asked to give away pension benefits and work to they drop.”

It is understood all three unions at NI Water have agreed to work together to defend the interests of water workers and further meetings between the unions and management representatives are planned.

Jobs shock for NIEA casual staff

NIPSA has reacted strongly to news that the Northern Ireland Environment Agency is to end the temporary contracts of more than 100 casual staff.

Many of the staff are based at historic monuments, parks and tourist attractions and some staff are concerned about the implications for health and safety and public access.

Union official Ryan McKinney told NIPSA News: “After a summer in which we showcased NI to the world via the Giro d’Italia it is incredible that local people and tourists could find some historic sites closed due to cuts in staff.

“The fact that the Minister for the Environment suggested that ‘interest groups’ could take on responsibility for managing and running some sites is shocking too.

“NIPSA will be working with these same interest groups to ensure these publicly owned assets are run by public servants.”

NIPSA membership: school-based staff take note

WHENEVER you get your first pay towards the end of September, check your NIPSA deductions are still being taken to ensure you are still covered for all the excellent services NIPSA can provide.

In the past a number of members – particularly those who work termtime – have had their NIPSA deductions, and effectively their membership, terminated by their employer.

It’s important you make sure your employer continues your NIPSA subscriptions.

Any queries please contact your employer or NIPSA Membership Section on 028 9066 1831 or membership@nipsa.org.uk

The reality behi

Page 8 NIPSA NEWS

www.nipsa.org.uk

News

OUTSOURCING is now entrenched in a swathe of the UK’s public services. And the reality is that the government’s reliance on a small number of large private sector firms has made these companies “too big to fail”.

Pioneered under the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s, and cemented under their Labour successors, outsourcing of public services has soared further under the current Conservative-led coalition government since 2010.

Outsourcing is already entrenched in a number of public sector areas, including a swathe of local government services, welfare-to- work programmes, disability assessments, social care services, border security, housing of asylum seekers and prison and offender management.

According to the National Audit Office (NAO), about £187 billion is spent in the public sector on goods and services each year. Around half of this is estimated to be spent on contracting out services to third parties.

Contracts cover both “back office” functions, such as IT services and facilities management, and “frontline” activities, ranging from Work Capability Assessments to management of prisons and maintenance of nuclear weapons.

Dominance of major outsourcing companies

Since 2010, government reforms have involved increased outsourcing of central government services which is increasingly dominated by a small number of private companies.

The NAO report, The role of major contractors in the delivery of public services, published at the end of last year, showed that over £4 billion of public funds was paid out to four of the largest outsourcing companies — Atos, Capita, G4S and Serco in the year 2012-13.

the DWP, £154 million from the Treasury for running NS&I, and £107 million from the Ministry of Justice.

UK employees numbered 10,400. This included 2,800 TUPE transfers from the public sector or other private companies.

Serco

Capita

Capita developed following a management buy-out of a division of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy in the 1980s, taking advantage of the new emerging markets in local government outsourcing.

It generally focuses on back-office operations, including IT services, human resources and recruitment, as well as financial services and customer contact operations. It also administers hundreds of occupational pension schemes.

For the year 2012-13, its worldwide revenue was £3.4 billion. Its UK public sector revenue was £1.1 billion. This included £506 million from local authorities, £146 million from the DWP, £99 million from the Home Office and £71 million from the NHS. UK employees numbered 54,640. This included 35,800 TUPE transfers from the public sector or other private companies.

Who are the major outsourcing companies?

G4S

Atos

Atos is a French-based multinational company, formed in the 1980s out of a merger of IT companies.

It later broadened its operations through mergers and acquisitions, acquiring Schlumberger Sema in 2004 — which held employment assessment contracts for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) — and Siemens ISS in 2011, which operated National Savings and Investments (NS&I).

For the year 2012-13, its worldwide revenue was £7.2 billion. Its UK public sector revenue was £0.7 billion. This included £155 million from

G4S was formed out of a merger between UKbased Securicor and Danish-based Group 4 Falck in 2004 — itself the product of a merger of British and Danish companies.

It claims to be the world’s leading global security solutions group, providing security for buildings, people and cash in 125 countries. It has held a number of contracts to run prisons, custody and secure training facilities for offenders.

For the year 2012-13, its worldwide revenue was £8 billion. Its UK public sector revenue was £0.7 billion.

This included £303 million from the Ministry of Justice, £118 million from the DWP, £80 million from the Foreign Office, £76 million from the NHS and £71 million from local authorities.

UK employees numbered 44,840. This included 11,463 TUPE transfers from the public sector or other private companies. .

Serco was originally formed as the UK division of the Radio Corporation of America in 1929 to support the cinema industry.

From the 1960s onwards it won contracts to maintain and provide technical support for military installations.

A management buy-out established Serco as a separate company in 1987, and it expanded and diversified through a number of acquisitions.

It holds a number of defence and security-related contacts, including the operation of prisons and immigration removal services. It also operates rail franchises, the London Cycle Hire Scheme, school inspections and is expanding in the NHS. Nearly half of its revenue comes from overseas governments.

For the year 2012-13, its worldwide revenue was £4.9 billion. Its UK public sector revenue was £1.8 billion. This included £611 million from the Ministry of Defence, £382 million from local authorities, £214 million from the Ministry of Justice, £209 million from the Department of Transport, and £201 million from the NHS. UK employees numbered 36,368. This included 16,968 TUPE transfers from the public sector or other private companies.

Overall, there are around 200,000 providers delivering public contracts for government. However, there are some public services that are only provided by a few large providers. A small number of larger providers tend to predominate in sensitive “frontline” activities delivered on behalf of central government, and in certain sectors.

This is notable in the justice sector, where there are three providers of private prisons — Serco, G4S and Sodexo. Serco and G4S are also the only two providers of child custody establishments and — along with a third company, Clearel — hold the contracts to manage asylum seeker accommodation.

Government contracts have helped the major outsourcing companies grow significantly in the last decade or so. Much of this growth has come from buying other businesses, particularly small and medium enterprises already involved in delivering public contracts.

Acquisition of smaller companies has also enabled the major outsourcing companies to consolidate in existing markets and to enter new markets. Atos, which was originally an IT company, acquired Schlumberger Sema in 2004, enabling it to become the sole provider of medical assessment contracts for the Department for Work and Pensions.

Companies have managed to diversify their markets to an astonishing degree, and sometimes from rather unlikely origins. For example, established as the UK-arm of the Radio Corporation of America in the 1920s, Serco spun off in the 1980s after diversifying into defence contracts and now operates contracts in the health,

nd outsourcing www.nipsa.org.uk

education, transport and justice sectors.

While the NAO investigation focused on these high-profile companies, a recent briefing by the Unite general union refers to a top 10 of outsourcing companies in terms of value of contracts. Capita is the biggest, but such luminaries as Telereal-Trillium, HP Enterprise Services, Airwave, EAGA and A4E also figure.

Although A4E found itself in the spotlight in 2012 over fraud investigations in its administering of welfare-to-work contracts, a number of these companies focus on “back-office” or less high-profile functions and have avoided public attention. For example, HP Enterprise Services is a division of Hewlett Packard, delivering IT and business processing services, while Telereal-Trillium manages a number of government properties.

Government failure to exercise proper oversight

The NAO investigation was requested by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) when it became clear that government departments were unable to put a figure on just how much public money the contractors were getting.

The PAC issued a report in February criticising both the government’s failure to provide proper oversight over the management of public contracts and the lack of transparency within the companies regarding performance and costs.

PAC committee chair Margaret Hodge referred to a number of high-profile failures and scandals involving the contractors.

This included “the astonishing news that G4S and Serco had been overcharging the Ministry of Justice on their electronic tagging contracts for eight years, including claiming for ex-offenders who had actually died — and the complete hash that G4S made of supplying security guards for the Olympics”.

The report also highlighted Capita’s failure to fulfil a contract to deliver court translation services, concerns over Atos’s Work Capability Assessments, and misreporting of out-of-hours GP services by Serco. The Committee echoed the concerns of the NAO that the increasing reliance by the government on a small number of companies to run highly complex public contracts had made them “too big to fail”.

Government over-dependence on big outsourcing companies

While some companies are highly reliant on taxpayers’ money for income, the government has in turn become highly reliant on these companies to deliver public services.

A similar argument was made in a 2012 report

by Social Enterprises UK, the national body for social enterprises. The report, The shadow state, refers to emerging “private sector oligopolies … where a small number of companies have a large share of the market”. It adds that these firms — on which the running of a multiplicity of public services now depends — are now regarded as “too big or too complex to fail”.

Smaller providers, including the charities and social enterprises that governments have championed, are unable to compete with larger companies benefiting from economies of scale and able to take on bigger and more complex contracts. The Unite briefing, No to selling off our

News

Analysis by outsourcing company Arvato, suggests that the value of UK public sector outsourcing contracts increased by 168% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2014.

services, emphasises the favourable conditions the current policy climate is providing to the big contractors.

“When contracts are being decided on cost, and at a time of the most savage spending cuts ever in this country, large private companies have the capacity to tender at a very low price because of economies of scale and on a ‘loss leader’ basis to get their foot in the door,” it points out.

Poor performance no obstacle to winning more contracts

The lack of alternatives to run complex services means that even where the larger providers fail to deliver, they often go on to win more business. In the wake of the electronic tagging scandal, Capita was made the sole provider for this contract while G4S and Serco were barred from bidding for further Ministry of Justice contracts pending a government review.

Although the Serious Fraud Office is continuing to investigate G4S and Serco over the electronic tagging scandal, and is also investigating G4S over overcharging in facility management contracts for UK courts, the government nevertheless gave G4S the green light to bid again in the justice sector in April.

Shortly after this decision, another report from the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee was issued criticising the handling by Serco and G4S of contracts to house asylum seekers. The report concluded that the asylum seekers had been placed in “unacceptably poor” housing, and that G4S and Serco had lacked the required experience to deliver the contract.

Serco and G4S have continued to be awarded new contracts this year as the market expands further. Analysis by outsourcing company Ar-

Page 9 NIPSA NEWS

vato, suggests that the value of UK public sector outsourcing contracts increased by 168% yearon-year in the first quarter of 2014.

Level of outsourcing increases

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 has further accelerated the entry of private providers into the NHS. The government’s academy and free schools programme is doing likewise in the education sector, while reform of the probation service means that 70% of its work will have been put out to private tender by next year.

The government’s drive to hand over more public services to private companies has been denounced by public service unions.

“A shocking £13 billion worth of NHS contracts were up for sale last year,” a spokesperson for the UNISON public services union told Labour Research.

“And a growing number of public services are under threat from takeover by Serco, G4S and other profit-driven private companies with poor track records.”

Advocates of outsourcing claim that competition among private providers will generate more efficient services and cost-savings.

However, recent reports have highlighted the increasing dominance of the market for outsourced public contracts in Britain by a small number of private companies, meaning that the competitive pressures that are supposed to drive optimum service delivery are somewhat diminished.

The unions link the government’s outsourcing drive to changes to TUPE regulations earlier this year which make it easier to weaken workers’ terms and conditions once transferred to new employers. The UNISON public services union warns of the “devastating impact” on the terms and conditions of workers transferred from the public sector to private contractors.

At the same time, the quality of service levels is predicted to decline further.

John Medhurst, policy officer for the PCS civil service union, told Labour Research that because the primary goal of outsourcing companies is to deliver profit to their shareholders, “one of the main ways in which they will go about delivering that goal will be to downsize headcount, cut pay, and restrict the reach of the service”.

And, Medhurst pointed out, “all the evidence indicates that this is what has been occurring”.

National Audit Office

The role of major contractors in the delivery of public services www.nao.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2013/11/10296-001-Deliveryof-public-services-HC-8101.pdf

Public Accounts Committee

Private contractors and public spending www.parliament.uk/business/committees/co mmittees-a-z/commons-select/public-accounts-committee/news/public-services-private-contractors-report

Social Enterprise UK

The shadow state www.socialenterprise.org.uk/uploads/files/20 13/02/the_shadow_state_report.pdf

Making twice the impact: giving a life free from human hunger

www.nipsa.org.uk

Give Your Support

Four out of five members of the Northern Ireland public say that it’s unacceptable that so many people in the world still go hungry. And nearly two thirds of them believe that more could be done for children in poor countries who are affected for life because of malnutrition.

THE survey findings have been revealed by international humanitarian organisation, Concern Worldwide, who are about to launch their Hunger Stops Here appeal in Northern Ireland, backed by the UK government and supported by NIPSA.

Millions of children in the developing world do not have access to enough nutritious food and, as a result, hunger will kill 8,000 children today – that’s one child every 10 seconds. Even if a child survives, it is likely that their childhood will be plagued by sickness and poor performance at school, and a life-sentence of disease, debt and fear.

This autumn, Concern has a unique opportunity to help stop hunger for thousands of the world’s poorest children.

Every donation made to the aid agency between 15th September and 14th December will be matched pound for pound by the UK government, meaning even more children can be helped.

Peter Anderson, Head of Concern in Northern Ireland, said: “Nearly 80 per cent of people in Northern Ireland surveyed think that hunger in the developing world is unacceptable. Hunger Stops Here is our chance to do something about that and make twice the impact on giving children a life free from hunger.

“Hunger is the world’s biggest health problem but it is also the most solvable.

This is an amazing opportunity for us, in partnership with NIPSA, to make even bigger strides towards a world where people’s lives are not put at risk or limited

NIPSA is delighted to support this appeal to advance our aim to tackle hunger in the world’s poorest places

by a lack of access to enough nutritious food.”

NIPSA Assistant Secretary Geraldine Alexander said: “As a socially responsible organisation, NIPSA is delighted to support this appeal to advance our aim to tackle hunger in the world’s poorest places, providing an opportunity to show solidarity with those who are voiceless, desperate and living in poverty” Concern has more than 40 years of experience working with some of the poorest

Photo: Gareth Bentley/2014/Zambia

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communities in the world, combining their expertise with local knowledge to create lasting solutions. Last year, they helped more than 24 million people in 28 countries.

All donations to the Hunger Stops Here appeal will go towards projects that will free thousands of people from hunger for good in places such as Zambia, where more than half of all children under five suffer from chronic malnourishment.

In Mumbwa, one of the poorest provinces, many people have only maize to eat which does not have the nutrients growing children need to stay healthy. This causes stunting, making them more susceptible to disease and impacting their ability to grow and learn.

Concern is enabling mothers in the region to provide more varied and nutritious food for their children by supplying them with the seeds, tools, and know-how to grow their own food at home.

By supporting Hunger Stops Here, you can help Concern make twice the impact in reaching thousands more children to give them a life free from hunger - allowing them to grow up, able to learn, earn and aspire.

For more information: www.concern.net/ hungerstopshere

Transforming lives: getting the right food at the right time

www.nipsa.org.uk

IT’S crucial that in the first two years of a child’s life, they receive adequate nutritious food.

Without the right food at the right time, their health will be damaged forever. They become chronically malnourished and can’t grow mentally or physically. That’s why Concern Worldwide is working with women like 36-year-old Monica Malunda to provide them with the knowledge and skills to grow the food their children desperately need.

Monica, who lives in rural Zambia, used to find it difficult to provide three meals a day for her children, and, when she did, they rarely contained the nutrients needed for her children to grow up healthily. They would eat nshima, made from maize and water, meal after meal.

While maize is a staple crop, it has little nutritional value.

Sometimes they would have to miss meals.

“Before, there were times we just had one meal a day,” said Monica.

“At other times, we would just eat the same things for each meal for over a month. Hunger became normal. I was weak and so my child was weak.”

Concern worked with Monica, teaching her about different crop

Give Your Support

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Monica Malundu, 36, a participant in Concern's nutrition programme, can now feed her family.

Photo: Gareth Bentley/2014/Zambia

varieties, farming techniques and food preparation. After receiving seeds and livestock from Concern’s Realigning Agriculture to Improve Nutrition (RAIN) project, as well as vital farming and nutrition training, Monica has been able to provide a varied diet for her children, includ-

ing tomatoes, carrots, green beans, rapeseed, okra, and sweet potato.

“I’ve learnt a lot about nutrition. I know more about how to grow food and now have enough to last throughout the year. The children’s performance at school is better. They

A healthy fish and vegetable dish cooked by Monica Malundu for her family.

Photo: Gareth Bentley/2014/Zambia

now leave home in the morning with a full stomach.”

By donating to Hunger Stops Here you can help Concern train more mothers like Monica how to grow nutritious food and ensure their children get the happy, healthy life they deserve.

Super organising drive for ‘Super-Councils’

Page 12 NIPSA NEWS

www.nipsa.org.uk

News

OVER the summer, NIPSA’s Organising Unit has been engaging with local government Branches by holding information sessions on the Review of Public Administration (RPA) in Councils.

To date most of the existing 26 Councils have been visited by NIPSA organisers and officials with responsibility for Councils in the run-up to the setting up of the 11 ‘Super-Councils’, planned for April 2015.

The sessions have involved presentations by organisers urging members to be active within their Branches as well as encouraging nonmembers to join the union.

The range of services and benefits provided by the union has also been outlined to members

and non-members alike.

Sessions have given existing members the opportunity to meet with experienced NIPSA officials so they can air any concerns they may have over changes to the Councils set-up.

These have also included recommendations as to how they best use their NIPSA membership to secure the most value from their subscriptions.

With considerable uncertainty still attached to many aspects of the RPA process, NIPSA’s proactive measures to engage directly with members and non-members have had a positive impact and generated an uptake in new members across those areas visited.

A source told NIPSA News: “The sessions have demonstrated that NIPSA is the union with the

experience and commitment to deliver for local government staff bearing in mind the major changes that RPA will undoubtedly bring.”

Given the success of the sessions it is envisaged that a series of follow-up meetings will take place during the autumn.

The need for workers to join NIPSA is greater than ever and the Organising Unit can assist Branches with the essential task of recruiting new members and encouraging existing members to be better organised and more active within their Branches.

If you require help from the NIPSA Organising Unit in your Branch, please contact the Organisation and Recruitment Unit at NIPSA Headquarters and they will be happy to assist.

A guide to buying and selling a house

BUYING and/or selling a house can be an exciting time. It can also be a very daunting and stressful experience. Having an understanding about how the process works – from agreeing a price to dropping off or picking up the keys at the estate agent's office – can make the experience much more manageable and a lot less stressful.

This article aims to give you a basic understanding of the practicalities of buying or selling a home and particularly what your solicitor has to do during the process.

SELLING A PROPERTY

The first step to selling your property is to instruct an estate agent to market the property. Once you have agreed a price with a buyer, your estate agent will pass matters over to your solicitor and send your solicitor a sales advice note.

This sales advice note provides details such as the property address, the agreed price, the buyer's solicitor, your solicitor and sometimes an anticipated completion date.

It is important to understand at this stage that the anticipated completion date is for guidance only as there are many matters which can arise during the sale process which may require the date to be changed.

So what does your solicitor do next? n Your solicitor will request your title deeds from your mortgage lender.

• Once the title deeds arrive, your solicitor will prepare a draft contract and send it along with the bulk of the title deeds to the buyer's solicitor. n Your solicitor will ask you to complete a "pre-contract enquiries" questionnaire and a fixtures and fittings list and both will then be sent to the buyer's solicitor. If you need to negotiate a price for various fixtures and fittings you would normally do this through the estate agent. n Next your solicitor will obtain a Department of Environment (DOE) and a Local Council property certificate.

Both of these certificates are required when you are selling a property. The DOE property certificate provides details about the property being sold

ceeds with any legal work.

So what does your solicitor do next?

Chancery House, 88 Victoria Street, Belfast BT1 3GN Tel: 028 9032 9801 www.mtb-law.co.uk

and the surrounding area including planning permission applications and details in relation to whether the roads and sewers servicing the property are adopted by the DRD and NI Water. The Local Council property certificate provides details in relation to building control applications, building licensing matters and environmental health matters. n Your solicitor will then carry out a number of searches to include a Land Registry search against the property being sold, a Bankruptcy search and an Enforcement of Judgements search against you as the seller. Again, all of these searches are required during the sale process. The Land Registry search will provide details as to who the owner of the property is and whether there are any mortgages registered against the property. The Bankruptcy and Enforcement of Judgments searches are carried out to ensure that a seller is not subject to any bankruptcy proceedings or enforcement proceedings (e.g. in relation to an unpaid debt) via the Enforcement of Judgments office. n The property certificates and searches will then be sent to the buyer's solicitor. At this stage the buyer's solicitor may raise some queries relating to the property and the paperwork furnished and your solicitor will then deal with these various queries. n Once all matters have been ironed out the buyer's solicitor should be in a position to release a signed "Offer to Purchase" (i.e. the contract) to your solicitor (the buyer will have already signed the contract). You will then be

By Marie-Anne McVeigh

asked to accept the offer by signing the contract, subject of course to you being happy to proceed. It is important to note that the contract is not binding on either you as the seller or the buyer until a copy of the accepted contract has been sent to the buyer's solicitor. n A completion date will have been agreed at this stage and you will therefore be able to get organised – packing boxes, booking a removal van, sorting out matters such as gas/electric/rates accounts. n On the day of completion it would be normal to expect the seller to have vacated the property by in or around 12 noon and to have removed all personal belongings from the property.

Once your solicitor has received the purchase funds from the buyer's solicitor and has dealt with the completion formalities he or she would normally phone you to let you know that everything has been completed.

At this stage you can close the door of your home for the last time and head to the estate agent to hand in the keys (if you haven't already done this).

BUYING A PROPERTY

Once you have agreed to buy a property the first step is to let your solicitor know that your offer has been accepted and that he/she should expect to receive a sales advice note from the estate agent. For the majority of buyers a mortgage will be required and it is very important to ensure that if you do require a mortgage, you have an offer of mortgage in place before your solicitor pro-

n Your mortgage provider will send the mortgage documentation to your solicitor. Your solicitor should at this stage have already received a draft contract and the title deeds from the seller's solicitor. He/she may already have the required searches and property certificates too. n Your solicitor will review all of the paperwork and meet with you to advise you in relation to the property that you are buying and the mortgage you will be obtaining. n At this stage you will probably be ready to sign the contract and will have a completion date in mind. n Once the contract (already signed by you) has been signed by the sellers and a copy of the signed contract has been sent to your solicitor, you are at this stage in a binding contract to purchase the property. n Before completion your solicitor will request the balance purchase funds from you (if you are not obtaining a 100% mortgage). n On the day of completion your solicitor will have already sent the purchase funds to the seller's solicitor and will then ask the seller’s solicitor to authorise the estate agent to release the keys of the property to you. n Once the estate agent has received this authority you can go to the estate agent's office and pick up the keys. The property is yours and you can start the moving in process!

Lastly, don't forget to make sure you have home insurance in place to start on the day of completion.

If you have recently agreed to buy or sell a property please feel free to contact our conveyancing department for a fees quote. McCartan Turkington Breen offers reduced conveyancing rates for NIPSA members and for family members of individuals with NIPSA membership. If you wish to obtain a quote please contact our office on 02890 329801 or send us an email to legal@mtb-law.co.uk

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Employment law

Capability procedures

Health unions to ballot in pay row

Page 13 NIPSA NEWS

News

Q. My employer has started formal capability procedures against me.

What are my rights?

A. You have the right to be treated fairly and reasonably in a formal capability procedure.

You should contact your union rep as soon as your employer tells you that they have decided to use a formal capability procedure to assess your work.

You might find it helpful to prepare a diary of events at work. This diary will help you to spot any problems with your work that you might want to raise during the procedure.

By noting down details of any particular dates, tasks and names of individuals concerned in your diary, you can easily refer to any particular situations later on.

Your employment contract is likely to have a section about formal capability procedures. Your employment contract might also refer you to your organisation’s formal capability procedure. You should check this procedure as soon as possible to make sure that it is followed properly.

There should be reasonable notice of any formal capability meeting in writing. The letter from your employer should include details of any allegations against you, as well as an indication of what could happen if the capability procedure does not go in your favour.

The letter should also include any evidence found against you during an investigation.

You have a legal right to be accompanied by someone at a formal capability meeting. There is an entitlement to bring a trade union rep or a work colleague to support you at the meeting.

After the formal capability meeting, you should be given details of the decision as soon as possible with reasons for it. If you disagree with the decision, you should have the right to appeal the decision within a reasonable amount of time.

If you find yourself to be unfairly dismissed for an unfair reason or procedure, or both, you can bring a claim at the Industrial Tribunal if you have been employed for at least one year.

UNIONS representing over half a million NHS workers have announced plans to ballot for industrial action over pay, with strike action planned for the autumn.

At this point in time, NIPSA (and Unison) are not balloting in NI, however, this may change.

The decision will be take

by NIPSA Health Panel.The announcements from Unite, UNISON, the GMB and the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) came following member consultations on the government’s imposition of a 1% non-consolidated increase for some staff in England for each of the next two years.

The increase applies only to staff at the top of

their incremental pay band, meaning that around 60% of NHS staff and 70% of nurses will get no pay rise at all for the two years.

Pay for NHS staff has fallen in real terms by around 15% since the government entered office in 2010. UNISON head of health, Christina McAnea said balloting for strike action was not an easy decision, but the government was showing

“complete contempt for NHS workers”.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt had rejected the recommendation of a 1% consolidated pay increase for 2014-15 for all NHS staff made by the independent pay review body.

The RCM industrial action ballot will be the first in its history. RCM chief executive Cathy Warwick said that midwives were “at the end of their

tether” after accepting years of pay restraint and changes to their pensions and terms and conditions.

Members will not be balloted in Scotland where the pay review body’s recommendations were implemented.

Unite is also balloting in Wales, where a nonconsolidated payment was also imposed, and Northern Ireland, where a decision on pay is yet to be taken. Unite head of health Rachael Maskell said that action “will be carefully calibrated to balance the real and deep anger that our members feel about their falling incomes, with concern for patient care”.

The ballots will run in August and September.

Economic costs of work-related stress

A new report by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) looks at the economic costs of work-related stress.

The report, a literature review summarising studies in this area, examines how it costs more to ignore this problem than to address it.

The report, Calculating the cost of work-related stress and psychosocial risks, looks at work-related stress and its effect on ill-health and identifies new challenges to tackling it.

These include increasing globalisation, advances in information tech-

nology and new types of contractual and working arrangements.

Working life today is described as becoming more difficult due, among other things, to the constant pressure of time and multi-tasking.

The report reaches three conclusions around the costs of work-related stress, job strain, workplace violence and harassment (bullying) and psychosocial risk factors such as lack of support at work and an excessive workload.

The first conclusion is that studies indicate that there is a strong business case for preventing stress and

psychosocial risks at work. Secondly, simple systematic analysis is needed to help organisations assess the costs related to stress and psychosocial risks. These costs relate to absence at work, presenteeism and staff turnover.

Finally, the report looks at the relationship between work-related stress, psychosocial risks and mental health problems, cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal disease and diabetes. https://osha.europa.eu/en/teaser/calculating-the-cost-of-work-relatedstress

NIPSA Youth launch youth charter

THE NIPSA Youth Committee has launched a charter for young people.

At the launch event, NIPSA Youth Chairperson Grainne McGinley set out a series of simple demands which she claimed would help build a future that works for young people in Northern Ireland.

These were: n All young people are paid a living wage as a basic minimum; n Young workers are treated with respect, free from bullying, harassment and discrimination;

n An end to the use of zero-hour contracts; n Real apprenticeships in all sectors; n Genuine and sustainable employment opportunities for young people; and n Proper training opportunities for all young people.

Why is this important?

Austerity and recession are destroying employment opportunities in Northern Ireland.

More than 24,000 young people, aged 18-24, are

now out of work in Northern Ireland. There are 34,000 young people who are not in Education, Employment and Training (the so-called NEETs).

With one in five young people jobless, many are faced with taking unpaid internships or work experience. Others simply become detached from society.

Meanwhile, increases in tuition fees are preventing thousands from gaining qualifications and new skills for the job market.

Take action!

Urgent action must be taken to give all young people of Northern Ireland a future that works.

Taking positive action to help our young people will demand commitment, determination and real re-

sources from our Government, employers and trade unions.

The NIPSA Youth Committee pledges its part and we urge you to pledge yours by signing up to our Youth Charter online at www.nipsayouth.co.uk

Improving workers’ voices

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Books

ADRIAN WEIR reviews the latest TUC booklet on corporate governance Beyond Shareholder Value: The Reasons and Choices for Corporate Governance Reform Edited by J Williamson, C Driver & P Kenway

THE TUC has set out a four-point campaign called Respect at Work on employment rights that it hopes will inform the debate in the run-up to next year's general election.

The four elements are: n Stemming the tide of casualisation, including ending the abuse of zero-hour contracts and winning equal pay for agency workers n Abolition of employment tribunal fees n A new framework of employment rights, including reversal of the coalition attack on statutory redundancy and Tupe and bringing about unfair dismissal protection from day one n Improved worker voice, including promotion of collective bargaining, better information and consultation rights and, worker directors.

It is in connection with the fourth point that this booklet has been launched by the TUC, a collection of essays on reforming corporate governance that includes some discussion about the possibility of worker directors in Britain.

There is now no question that reform of the way our large corporations are managed is clearly overdue.

A recent study by the High Pay Centre found that directors' pay was now running at almost 180 times that of the lowest-paid workers.

The booklet points out that, 30 or so years ago, directors' pay may have seemed reasonable in relation to other wage earners, but it has grown exponentially under neoliberalism, prompting some to argue that if they could have got away with this before they probably would have done, but there were social brakes preventing them from doing so. These brakes are now gone.

At the public launch of the book, Labour shadow business minster Ian Wright MP was moved to promise a worker representative on company remuneration committees and even Tory Jesse Norman MP spoke about crony capitalism - the broken link between corporate reward and company performance.

Readers will soon discover that the debate on

reform of corporate governance may be divided into two schools of thought - reform to improve economic performance and reform to provide worker voice, although of course there is some crossover between the two positions.

In the former camp, some reformists argue against the corporate greed discussed above.

Others are more concerned about moving away from a duty to solely promote shareholder value and open up duties to other stakeholders, which is the central thesis of the booklet.

An exclusive focus on shareholder value is said to promote short-termism in that directors in Britain work to the publication of quarterly reports and eschew long-term measures that may not synchronise with a quarterly reporting structure.

Corporate bonuses are structured to shortterm results. Further, how does the advent of high-frequency share trading in the Anglo-US world fit in with the long term?

Colin Crouch's essay also raises the dubious practice of private equity investment delisting stock exchange-listed companies, often to strip out the assets before returning the significantly poorer corporation to the market.

The crossover for advocates of improved economic performance and worker voice is found

with those who argue that an involved workforce with access to the highest levels of decisionmaking bring to the table knowledge and information otherwise unavailable to management.

Worker voice is the key to open improved performance.

There are statutory provisions for worker directors in 19 European countries - 14 with widespread rights across the public and private sectors - Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Slovenia and Slovakia plus a further five with more limited rights - Greece, Ireland, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

It's clear from this list that although worker directors do not guarantee improved economic performance, those countries that are economic high-flyers are also the ones that have a system of industrial democracy that includes worker directors.

Michael Gold's essay argues that our system of corporate governance denies to workers the fourth element that makes a democratic whole.

First, we have civil citizenship, the rights to individual freedom. Second, we have political citizenship, the right to vote. And third, we have social citizenship, the right to social welfare, which is gradually being eroded.

In Britain, what is missing is citizenship at work, which meaningful participation rights, including worker directors, would go some way in meeting.

At the level of mobilising workers to support the demand for a voice, we should leave the argument linking worker directors with improved economic performance slightly to one side, important though it is - see Frances O'Grady's essay on promoting a high-investment, high-skill and high-productivity economy.

We should shift the argument to a rights issue, workers' rights to seats on the board to act as a countervailing power to the obsession with shorttermism and boardroom excess.

These issues have contributed to the crisis, a crisis under which working people are bearing the brunt with overbearing austerity measures and attacks on their limited rights at work.

Adrian Weir is assistant secretary of the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom on whose website this article first appeared: www.tradeunionfreedom.co.uk. The TUC booklet is downloadable as a pdf via www.tuc.org.uk

Hack Attack by Nick Davies: A panoramic account of the hacking scandal

IN HIS first-hand, panoramic account of the hacking scandal from 2008 to the present day, Nick Davies artfully draws the connections between Murdoch’s newspaper group and the officially powerful, and their corrosive impact on the public’s interests.

After investigating a £1m hush payment by Murdoch’s News International to a hacking victim in 2009, the investigative journalist came up against a wall of official obfuscation and deceit. Hack Attack is especially good in tracking the sustained and intractable obstruction of the Metropolitan Police.

He sets out too the threats of retaliation against himself, his editor Alan Rusbridger and The Guardian (absent is the parallel campaign of unsuccessful intimidation against The Independent).

Mulcaire was just one of dozens of ghosts in the machine. An appendix lists 41 private detectives who worked – some legally – for Fleet Street newspapers, and their specialisms. Many of these characters were previously unknown.

Davies captures the use some of this information was put to: not just for stories, but threats against politicians and other policy-makers.

His set-pieces – a close-up of

Andy Coulson’s dirt-digging, backstabbing newsroom and Rebekah Brooks’s wedding in 2009, attended by anyone who was anyone in Britain (240 people) – are breathtaking. In captivating imagery, he muses that, while it took a small band of lawyers, politicians and journalists years to smash down the company’s fortifications, once the outrage of summer 2011 had dimmed, the public’s advance was washed away by the incoming tide “like sandcastles”.

Murdoch’s power was sometimes deployed subtly, often brutishly. In essence, Davies writes, the scandal is about the “everyday occur-

rence of a natural exchange of assistance between those who occupy positions in society from which they can look down upon and mightily affect the everyday worlds of ordinary men and women…”.

We have “the casual arrogance of a group of people who take it for granted that they have every right to run the country and, in doing so, to manipulate information, to conceal embarrassing truth, to try to fool all of the people all of the time”. Hack Attack captures a picture of bullying and nepotism that should be absent from a democratic society.

Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught Up with Rupert Murdoch

by Nick Davies 448pp, Chatto & Windus, (RRP £20, ebook £5.98

www.nipsa.org.uk

European and world affairs

Page 15 NIPSA NEWS

World peace? These are the only 11 countries in the world that are actually free from conflict

WITH the crisis in Gaza, the rise of Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria and the international stand-off ongoing in Ukraine, it can sometimes feel like the whole world is at war.

But experts believe this is actually almost universally the case, according to a think-tank which produces one of the world’s leading measures of “global peacefulness” – and things are only going to get worse.

It may make for bleak reading, but of the 162 countries covered by the Institute for Economics and Peace’s (IEP’s) latest study, just 11 were not involved in conflict of one kind or another.

Worse still, the world as a whole has been getting incrementally less peaceful every year since 2007 – sharply bucking a trend that had seen a global move away from conflict since the end of the Second World War. The UK, as an example, is relatively free from internal conflict, making it easy to fall to thinking it exists in a state of peace. But recent involvement in foreign fighting in the likes of Afghanistan, as well as a fairly high state of militarisation, means Britain actually scores quite poorly on the 2014 Global Peace Index, coming 47th overall.

Then there are countries which are involved in no actual foreign wars involving deaths whatsoever - like North Korea – but which are fraught by the most divisive and entrenched internal conflicts.

The IEP’s findings mean that choices are slim if you want to live in a completely peaceful country. The only ones to achieve the lowest score for all forms of conflict were Switzerland, Japan, Qatar, Mauritius, Uruguay, Chile, Botswana, Costa Rica, Vietnam, Panama and Brazil.

And even those countries are not entirely ex-

Israeli military in heavy bombing of Gaza

empt from other problems that, the IEP says, could lend to conflict further down the line.

In Brazil and Costa Rica, for instance, the level of internal conflict may be the lowest possible – but civilian access to small arms and the likelihood of violent demonstrations are worryingly high.

Switzerland is famously detached when it comes to any external conflict, and has a very low risk of internal problems of any kind – but loses a number of points on the overall index because of its proportionately huge rate of arms exports per 100,000 of the population.

The IEP says that for a country to score at the lowest level for all its indicators for conflict, it must not have been involved in any “contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in a year”.

Harder still, analysts from the Economist Intelligence Unit must be satisfied that it has “no conflict” within its borders. This rating on civil unrest cannot even include “latent” conflict involving “positional differences over definable values of national importance”. he Global Peace Index measures the latest data up to the end of the year before – meaning that the state of international conflict right now is actually even worse than the study suggests.

With the protests over the World Cup still vivid in collective memory, for instance, Brazil might find itself off the list of peaceful countries by 2015.

Speaking to The Independent, the director of the IEP Camilla Schippa warned that the state of peace in our time has been “slowly but steadily decreasing” in recent years.

“Major economic and geopolitical shocks, such as the global financial crisis and the Arab Spring, have left countries more at risk of falling into conflict,” Ms Schippa said.

“In the last year we have seen a large increase in terrorist activity, a resurgence of conflict in Gaza, and no resolution to the crisis in Syria and Iraq.

“Outside of the Middle East, civil unrest in Ukraine has turned into armed rebellion, and there has been increasing violence in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

She added: “Continuing global unrest means that there is unlikely to be a reversal of this trend in the short run.”

To explore the 2014 Global Peace Index in full, visit the IEP’s website here: http://www.visionofhumanity.org/#/page/indexes/globalpeace-index

Inflation figures cannot disguise fall in living standards

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FALLING inflation figures do not disguise the longest fall in living standards, the TUC has said.

Commenting on the latest inflation figures showing RPI at 2.7% and CPI at 1.7%, TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “The longest fall in living standards continues.

“Lower inflation is good news, but this cannot hide the longest cut in real wages since the 1870s.

News

An average worker is getting nine pounds in pay for every ten pounds they were getting before the crash. Pay packets are about the same level that they were ten years ago.

“These figures underline just how far we have to go to restore living standards so that ordinary people share in the recovery.

Britain needs a pay rise.”

One senior union official

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added: “Today’s inflation figures will not repair the holes in the pockets of millions of public service workers.

“Hundreds and thousands of health workers, including nurses, paramedics and therapists, will not get a pay rise this year, with the remainder getting just 1% – below both of today’s inflation markers. And only last week, more than a million Local Gov-

ernment workers were offered a 1% increase for the second year running – on top of a three year pay freeze.

“The Government must move away from beer and bingo budget gimmicks and do more to close the gap between what people are earning and the cost of everyday essentials. This gap is not closing fast enough for families struggling on low incomes.”

Pride brightens up Belfast despite the downpours Camera lens couldn’t cope with the rain as NIPSA LGB&T members and supporters attend Pride event in Belfast

HEAVY RAIN it did not dampen the spirits of thousands of people who came out to support and take part in this year’s Belfast Pride Parade on August 2.

NIPSA has not only supported the Belfast Pride Parade for some years but has also backed Foyle Pride Parade on August 23 and Pride in Newry Parade on August 30.

A source told NIPSA News: “The union is proud to be part of this celebration of diversity of communities and cultures in Northern Ireland. We believe this public expression demonstrates our commitment to equality for all.

“It also demonstrates our commitment to fight against homophobia, transphobia, biphobia and all manifestations of discrimination and intolerance in our society.”

JOIN NIPSA LGB&T GROUP

If you are interested in joining our LGB&T Group please complete the application form below or join confidentially by calling our direct line on 028 90686566 or email lgbt.group@nipsa.org.uk.

NIPSA’s LGB&T Group is open to both LGB&T members and non-LGB&T members.

The objectives of the group have been formulated around the principles of equality, inclusiveness, raising awareness, enabling activism, holding employers to account, ensuring confidentiality and a safe environment for the group.

Strict confidentiality procedures have been put in place.