NIPSA News February 2014

NIPSA NEWS THE NEWSPAPER OF THE LEADING PUBLIC SERVICE TRADE UNION

NJC anger over linkage with National Minimum Wage offer – See page 2

Tenants urged to say no to transfer – See page 3

Canteen closure bid demo – See page 5

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

Care workers must be paid for travel time – See page 8

Suicide figures are a major cause of concern in NI – Special Report – See pages 10/11

Ballot for action to push BCC in-house bid BELFAST City Council is to decide the future of its leisure services at a meeting of its SP&R committee – a decision that will then be ratified by a gathering of the full council in March.

The decision is to be taken following a re-

port by consultants Deloitte which put forward an NPDO (Non-Profit Distributing Organisation) for the future delivery of leisure services – a model that is backed by senior management.

Over the last number of months, NIPSA and

UNITE – the two principal unions affected – as well as a number of other unions have fought hard to oppose a NPDO or Trust body and have instead pushed for an in-house solution.

Continues on page 7

NIPSA General Secretary Brian Campfield (centre) joins Compensation Service members on their DOJ lobby.

JUSTICE DONE AS JOBS SAVED NIPSA members at the Compensation Service within the Department of Justice are breathing a huge sigh of relief after Stormont Justice Minister David Ford announced the service would be retained and investment made in new IT. Around 40 jobs were at risk as the Minister considered the findings of a review into the future delivery of the Service’s functions as well as looking at a range of options, including privatisation.

On February 14, NIPSA members from the Compensation Service held a lively and colourful protest as Mr Ford arrived to meet staff at Millennium House. They were joined by activists from other NIPSA branches and from the union’s HQ.

Protesters, carrying placards declaring ‘I love my job’ and ‘Keep calm and save our jobs’, wore David Ford masks while presenting the Minister with a letter on behalf of the staff.

Speaking after the protest, HQ Official Ryan McKinney told NIPSA News: “Over the past few months we have had real problems trying to engage with the Management Side who seemed oblivious to the concerns of staff and unwilling to meet with NIPSA. “Despite assurances from the Permanent Secretary, meetings never materialised and therefore we could have no meaningful input into the decision making process. However, we persevered with our efforts and when we became aware that the Minis-

ter was to visit the service, we ensured that he got a warm welcome!

“We handed David Ford a letter raising our concerns about the future of the service, pointing out that staff were not prepared to see victims of crime become victim of cuts through privatisation or outsourcing.”

NIPSA News understands that an analysis carried out by Deloitte found that although privatisation would have saved the Department money, it would have been at the expense of providing an inferior service – a point continually highlighted by the union in this and in other campaigns.

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Editorial

A&E crisis – breaking the vicious circle…

THE continuing crisis in critical parts of our health service is clearly about just more than cuts and financial underfunding.

There are complex issues to be managed relating to workforce planning, recruitment of doctors to A&E and the provision of adequate resources in the community to cater for and offer support to discharged patients.

The difficulty with attracting doctors to A&E, for example, is probably the result of a combination of factors, including a lack of planning and investment. These have, in turn, created a further difficulty in that under-pressure A&E departments became more pressurised/stressful workplaces, thus discouraging medical staff from working there.

This doctors’ shortage has been exacerbated by the decisions of some to choose less problematic and stressful career paths.

This vicious circle must be broken and pressure applied to force the correct political decisions needed to safeguard A&E services.

The solution will not be found in the creeping privatisation of the NHS in Northern Ireland. Recently NIPSA organised a protest outside the offices of the private health provider, 3fivetwo. Its Kingsbridge Private Hospital now has a private casualty provision. It opens 9am to 8pm, Monday to Friday, and to 5pm on Saturday and treats minor strains and burns, cuts and bruises as well as a number of other minor conditions. They prefer quick profit work so they don’t do chest pain, breathing difficulties, chronic medical conditions, serious head injuries or pregnancy-related conditions. They list their costs for initial nurse triage (£25), Consultant assessment fee (£100), X-Ray (from £90), stitching and plastering also for £90. I will leave you to reflect on such a stark, profit-based approach to health care.

We will hear an argument that this provision takes the pressure of our A&E departments. The obvious question is why consultants and specialists trained by public money in the NHS can spend time generating additional income through the commercialisation and privatisation of our health service? Have these medics chosen private practice over NHS work or do they spend their time with a foot in both camps?

Why is this resource not being utilised to assist with the crisis in A&E and how many doctors are not available for public health service work because they are generating profits elsewhere?

NIPSA is set to launch its latest research publication in March. This will look at ‘Transforming Your Care’, an initiative which involves a lot of ‘transferring your care’ to the private sector. We hope this will trigger a debate on what is really happening to our health service and why we need to ensure that the private sector vultures are not allowed to run riot through our NHS in the pursuit of profit.

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.

NJC fury over NMW linkage with pay offer

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News

Pay protest in Derry (above) and below NIPSA members in Belfast demo NJC Trade Unions have reacted with fury after Employers Side indicated on February 14 they will not make an offer on pay until the Government announces the new National Minimum Wage rate.

Unions are angered that Employers Side have made, what they called, “a spurious link” between the pay offer and NMW discussions.

An announcement on the National Minimum Wage is not expected until May. The NMW is currently £6.31 an hour, just 14 pence below the lowest pay rate of £6.45 an hour for workers covered by NJC. NIPSA Deputy General Secretary Alison Millar told NIPSA News: “It beggars belief and is a disgraceful ploy by the Employers Side. All NJC Trade Unions are calling on the Employers Side to immediately re-enter negotiations and stop playing fast and loose with members who continue to deliver vital public services in schools, libraries, local government, education and housing.

On February 4, NIPSA joined forces with UNISON, Unite and a number of other unions in a UK-wide day of protest and action over NJC pay.

Unions have demanded a decent pay increase to restore their members’ wage levels to pre2010 levels.

Pay for employees working in local government, housing, education and libraries has fallen by more than 16% in real terms over recent years.

Many NIPSA members find it increasingly difficult to cope with hikes in rent, mortgages, utility bills and other household essentials.

The union has pointed out that many of its members have to rely on top-up, in-work benefits while some even have to borrow from relatives or pay-day lenders just to make ends meet.

Speaking after the February 4 protest, Deputy General Secretary Alison Millar said: “For many members the government rhetoric that they want to make work pay is obviously not true for the thousands of our members who are forced to rely on in-work benefits.

“It is time for the Employers’ Side of the National Joint Council (NJC) to step up to the mark and redress the imbalance and ensure that work does pay for those working in schools, libraries, housing, local councils – all of which who provide vital public services to us all.”

Ms Millar vowed: “They [NJC Employers Side] can be assured that NIPSA members have had enough and our claim for £1 per hour is realistic and affordable.”

TENANTS URGED TO SAY NO TO TRANSFER!

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AS PART of NIPSA’s continuing campaign to retain the Housing Executive as one overarching body providing both strategic and landlord functions, attention has now turned to engaging with tenants over the coming months.

As reported previously in NIPSA News and elsewhere, tenants are set to be a vital and strategic component in the union’s campaign.

NIPSA has now produced a new leaflet and other material aimed directly at tenants. A copy of the leaflet is available on the NIPSA website at: www.nipsa.org.uk/Campaigns/Keep-ourHousing-Public/Say-No-to-Transfer or from NIPSA Headquarters or local Housing Executive branch.

Deputy General Secretary Alison Millar told NIPSA News: “It is very important that all tenants fully understand the possible implications if they are transferred to a Housing Association or to a similar type of organisation.

“The facts are that the Minister and his officials are of the opinion currently that tenants are not necessarily going to be given a formal vote on whether to transfer or stay with the Housing Executive.

“NIPSA believe this is a fundamental right. In the remainder of the UK where transfers have taken place, tenants have ALWAYS had the right to vote.”

She added: “NIPSA believes tenants and others must demand this right.”

NIPSA does not believe the transfer is in the best interests of tenants and prospective tenants.

The facts are straightforward: Privatisation: 90,000 homes will effectively be handed over to the private sector. While it is argued Housing Associations are not-for-profit organisations, this is untrue as they are set up to borrow money from the banks and other finan-

Public sector pension rise

AFTER recommendations contained in the Hutton report into public sector pensions, the Government determined that rises in public sector pensions would be based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rather than the Retail Price Index.

The increase figure is taken from the preceding September CPI index and then applied from April 1 each year.

For 2014, the pensions will increase by 2.7% from April 1.

What next for your pension? - see story on page 6.

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cial institutions who want to make a profit from their investments.

Rents will increase: Things has been widely accepted by the Minister and all other political representatives. A recent example of this is in the first voluntary stock transfer to take place in Northern Ireland at Rinmore, Creggan.

The pre-improvement rent was £52.43 per week. Had the Housing Executive been allowed to carry out the improvements, the rent would have increased to £53.93 per week. The current average rent now being paid by tenants of the Housing Association is £86 per week.

This is what tenants of any transfer can ex-

pect long term. In fact, currently Housing Association rents are up to 40% higher than Housing Executive rents.

Impact of Welfare Reform: If the “bedroom tax” is implemented in Northern Ireland for tenants in receipt of Housing Benefit who are deemed to have a “spare bedroom”, they will lose Housing Benefit of about £14 each week for one “spare” bedroom and £22 each week for two “spare bedrooms”.

This is despite in the vast majority of cases tenants will be unable to move to a smaller property – event if they want to as there is a shortage of all house types but, in particular, one and two-bedroom properties.

Location: Under the current proposals, it is unclear if any new or existing Housing Association will have offices in all of the locations where Housing Executive Offices are currently sited.

This will cause difficulties for tenants if they are unable to have access locally to their landlord to deal with the plethora of issues that Housing Executive staff currently deliver locally to their tenants.

The first public meeting is being held in Ballymagroarty on 19th February at 7.00 p.m. to raise these issues directly with tenants and the public. This will be the first of hundreds of meetings that will be held across Northern Ireland throughout the remainder of 2014.

NIPSA has sought the assistance of Trades Councils, Community and Tenants groups, and a range of other housing organisations/groups to organise and mobilise against this unacceptable proposal of the Minister.

There are many alternatives open to the Minister which NIPSA will debate with him when we meet with him on 25th February 2014.

A protest will also be held outside Belfast District Office, Great Victoria Street, on Wednesday 26th February at 12.30 p.m. All welcome.

NIPSA calls for ‘ethical charter’ after losing PSNI Judicial Review

NIPSA has responded to the recent dismissal of its PSNI Judicial Review application by calling on the Policing Board to introduce an ‘ethical charter’ to ensure suppliers who fail to meet core requirements are not awarded multi-million pound contracts.

The union had been seeking to overturn the Chief Constable’s decision to outsource 1,000 civilian police roles but its Judicial Review was unsuccessful.

Assistant Secretary Ryan McKinney told NIPSA News: “This judgment should not be interpreted as a green light for the PSNI to outsource – just

because you can does not mean you should.

“Outsourcing is not the solution to budget cuts in the PSNI and is likely to see further controversy around ‘retiring and rehiring’ and the issues flagged up by the Audit Office and under investigation by the Public Accounts Committee.

“The PSNI are paying £180m of public money for a service to be delivered by workers on zero hours contracts, below a living wage and with no sick or maternity pay.

“It is all-too-common for shareholders to profit from cheap labour in this way. However, it is a bigger scandal

that this practice can occur within a leading public sector organisation.

“NIPSA now calls on the Policing Board to ensure that all suppliers abide by an ethical charter which has core principles such as a living wage, guaranteed minimum hours as well as commitments around human rights in other jurisdictions.”

It is understood NIPSA is to consult with its solicitors and has reiterated its determination to ensure that “those workers charged with delivering this public service are accountable to the Chief Constable and the Policing Board not faceless shareholders”.

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reasons to join NIPSA

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Why should you join NIPSA? NIPSA offers a wide range of services to its members. As a NIPSA member you will enjoy a great range of benefits, including:

1. Personal Representation: Access to advice, information and personal representation.

Whether you are experiencing difficulties at work in a grievance or disciplinary matter, feel overloaded, or believe you are being discriminated against, we are there to help you.

2. Collective Negotiation: NIPSA is viewed across the public sector as a formidable negotiator for improved pay and conditions.

3. Job Security: NIPSA campaigns for permanent contracts, career progression, adequate staffing and resources.

4. Professional Support: NIPSA provides you with a forum to raise professional issues, voice your concerns and influence decisions that affect your job.

5. Health and Safety Protection: NIPSA promotes good health and safety practices in your workplace.

6. Legal Advice and Assistance: Free legal assistance – NIPSA members won around £1m in compensation last year alone.

7. Other Membership Services: Membership Plus, latest discounts and offers.

8. Financial Services.

If you wish to become a member of NIPSA complete the application form or if you would like further information about becoming a member then please contact us:

Apply online: https://www.nipsa.org.uk/AboutNIPSA/Join-US/Apply-Online-%281%29 Or email us at: recruitment@nipsa.org.uk

Organ face o www.nipsa.org.uk

Don’t panic, organise!

Protest over DEL

ising in the f austerity www.nipsa.org.uk

THE unprecedented economic crisis and subsequent attacks on public services, including those who deliver these services, has laid bare the urgent need for the trade union movement to return to what it does best – organising.

To build our collective strength and deliver solidarity to communities, we must organise every workplace and every worker.

There is ample evidence that as trade union density has weakened over the past 30 years, the ability of workers to protect their interests and, in particular, defend wages has been undermined.

Every individual worker suffers the consequences of that collective weakness.

We have witnessed a growing gap between rich and poor, a reduction in the share of national

News

wealth allocated to wages, the growing threat of privatisation and the emergence of new forms of exploitative working practices, such as zero-hours contracts.

Many employers have taken advantage of their power as collective bargaining arrangements have declined. However, there is nothing that exploitative employers fear more than well-informed and wellorganised unionised workers.

The campaign to reverse these losses and challenge austerity must therefore start from the ground up by maximising trade union membership in every office, hospital, school and depot.

NIPSA has been quick to recognise this and to respond in kind by setting up an Organising Unit and developing a strategy over the past couple of years which encourages every union representative to see

recruitment as part of their role and every branch committee to see effective organisation as their aim.

Naomi Connor, who heads up the Organising Unit, flagged up some of its successes.

She told NIPSA News: “The encouraging thing is that wherever the Unit have gone, we have found members willing to get involved and existing reps that recognise the urgent need to be stronger collectively.

“A lot of branches are already doing great work for members locally, but feel they want to improve upon certain aspects of branch organisation, for example, communicating with members more effectively.

“There are also those branches who need to rebuild union structures from scratch and set up effective negotiating and campaigning

move to close canteen TRADE Union Side at the Department of Employment and Learning staged a protest outside the department’s Adelaide House headquarters in Belfast over a decision to close canteen facilities.

The February 7 protest comes after senior management decided to make all accommodation open plan to maximise the number of staff on the site.

Employees are particularly angered at the decision to close the canteen.

A DEL TUS source said: “Not only will this lead to a reduction

in good quality and reasonably priced food to staff but it will also mean the loss of the jobs of three long-standing canteen employees who are all NIPSA members.”

Trade Union Side have strongly opposed the move to open plan offices citing the very critical reports issued when the Government decided to do the same at Clare House.

Subsequently there were many complaints about overcrowding and lack of privacy as well as problems with ventilation an lighting.

Closure of canteen facilities leads to demo

The source added: “It appears that no lessons have been learnt from that. The closure of the canteen is supposed to be joined up government thinking.

“On the one hand the Department of Health urges all citizens, including civil servants to eat good quality, nutritious food at lunchtime but instead of providing that to the staff they are closing the canteen and forcing people to go to local burger bars.”

DEL is a medium-sized department yet smaller departments within the NICS – such as DHSSPS, DETI and the Department of Education – will all still continue to enjoy the use of canteen facilities in their Headquarters buildings.

Speaking at the protest, NIPSA President Padraig Mulholland said that this was part of an ongoing fight for NIPSA to save jobs and services and labeled the decision “disgraceful”.

Carmel Gates, a member of the DEL Secretariat, welcomed the large turnout at the protest at which a rapturous ovation was given for the canteen staff.

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mechanisms that will deliver the workplace democracy they rightly deserve.

“Organising isn’t something new to trade unions, it’s what we’ve done for years and it is time to refocus our energies into building capacity in union branches and increasing membership density.”

NIPSA Organisation and Recruitment Unit can offer practical advice and help with organising, campaigning and recruitment initiatives within your branch. These range from assisting branches to develop effective industrial relations structures, through to strategic and planned approaches to campaigning and recruitment.

NIPSA’s Organisation and Recruitment Unit can be contacted on recruitment@nipsa.org.uk

International Women’s Day – on March 8 – join the celebrations

MARCH 8 is International Women’s Day – a day celebrated each year throughout the world that recognises the struggles and achievements of women.

The annual celebration grew out of the struggle of working class women to form trade unions and the fight for women’s right to vote. The theme for the event this year is HERstory.

This year’s Annual International Women’s Day march and rally will be held on March 8, 2014.

Members are asked to assemble at 12 noon at the College of Art, York Street, Belfast. The march will start at 12.30pm and move towards Belfast City Hall for speeches and a welcome address from the Lord Mayor.

We urge all Branches and members to make a special effort to attend. The NIPSA banner and flags will be available.

Further details about the march and rally and other events can be found on the NIPSA website at: www.nipsa.org.uk/NIPSA-inAction/Equal-Opportunities/Gender Please do all that you can to maximise NIPSA participation in the 2014 International Women’s Day celebrations demonstrating our support for equality and social justice throughout the world.

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News

NICS Performance Management consultations under way NIPSA members have reacted strongly to a statement published by NICS management about the NICS Performance Management System and Core Competence Framework.

It referred to a planned change moving from a 5 Box performance rating system in April 2014 to a 2 Box system.

Understandably members took this to mean the move had already been agreed with Trade Union Side but this is not the case as consultation on the proposed changes is still under way.

In 2013, NICS management consulted Trade Union Side on a draft NICS People Strategy and later on an associated draft People Action Plan.

Within those documents NICS management’s intention to introduce a 2 Box performance rating system and revisions to the Core Competence Framework was referred to. The consultation on this started in December 2013 when Trade Union Side received formal proposals.

The main elements of the changes to the Per-

formance Management System, apart from the proposed introduction of a 2 Box system, were: n greater emphasis on regular performance discussions throughout the year; n a new performance review appeals procedure; and n guidance on dealing with a declining job performance.

From Trade Union Side’s perspective, a key priority is to ensure that any move to a 2 Box system does not accelerate an inefficiency route for poor performance.

Trade Union Side has insisted that the current processes required of line managers to assist those with a Box 4 or Box 5 rating to enhance and improve performance will remain a requirement under a 2 Box system.

Core Competence Framework

The Core Competence Framework was introduced several years ago without Trade Union

Side agreement. Despite this, changes to the document have been the subject of consultation and this remains the case.

NICS management are again engaging in a review of the competences for all grade levels from Administrative Assistant to Senior Civil Service grades.

This could well have been prompted by the new GB Civil Service Competence Framework introduced in April 2013.

It appears that the Permanent Secretary SubGroup on People Issues have expressed a strong preference that the NICS review considers to what extent the changes in GB could be adopted to meet NICS requirements.

Members could expect much of the same as both the GB and NICS documents are described as reflecting national competency standards.

The review is also to consider the potential for alignment of professional competences within the overarching framework.

What next for your pension? Potential redundancies

THE Northern Ireland Assembly has been debating the Northern Ireland Public Service Pensions Bill. The Bill, which was passed by the Assembly in early February and will become law shortly, means that the effective date of the changes to all public sector pension schemes will be April 2015.

The Bill was based on the Westminster Public Service Pensions Act and had the DFP Finance Minister Simon Hamilton had his way, the Westminster Act would have automatically applied to Northern Ireland.

Following pressure from NIPSA, the Northern Ireland Executive did not agree to legislative consent and a Bill had to be produced for the Assembly.

NIPSA and NIC-ICTU were able to get a number of amendments tabled to the Bill at various stages as well as providing evidence to the Assembly’s Finance Committee.

A total of 41 amendments were tabled with a large number of these coming from NIPSA. While critical amendments, especially in respect of Clause 10 (the linking of normal retirement age to state pension age) didn’t pass, nevertheless the Assembly legislation differs considerably from the Westminster Act. At the penultimate stage, the SDLP’s Alex Attwood described the Bill as “arguably the most significant legislation to come before the Chamber thus far in the mandate”.

The Finance Minister agreed with that statement at the Final Reading as it impacted on more than 215,000 public sector workers in Northern Ireland.

Had it not been for NIPSA the Bill would have had an even more adverse impact on all public servants.

The changes secured over and above the Westminster Act include: n Delaying the changes to the NILGOSC scheme from April 2014 to April 2015; n A requirement that DFP must, in consultation with the unions, bring a report every two years before the Assembly on the impact of the link between the state pension age and normal retirement age. Following such a review, DFP may introduce an order to provide flexibility in pension age; n A requirement for DFP to formally consult on directions it issues in respect of cost controls and actuarial assessments; n Flexibility in setting the age of retirement for firefighters between 55 and 60; and n Actuarial assessments must be conducted by an independent person undertaking an independent verification.

While the trade unions would have wished to have seen more of the amendments passed, nevertheless

the changes over and above the Westminster Act are significant and confirm that legislative consent is not appropriate when dealing with matters of such importance.

What next?

Each of the various pension schemes will, in effect, cease from March 31, 2015 and be replaced with new schemes that have to be modelled on the content of the Bill – i.e career-average, revalued earnings rather than final salary, link between State Pension Age and normal retirement age as well as new governance arrangements.

A number of Departments will therefore have to bring forward secondary legislation via regulations to provide for the new schemes.

In respect of NIPSA members, the main areas and schemes will be: n DFP – new Northern Ireland Civil Service Scheme; n DOE – new NILGOSC Scheme; n DHSSPS – new Health and Social Care Scheme; n DRD – new NI Water Scheme; and n DFP – new Cross Border Scheme.

In each of these areas there will be a need for detailed negotiations not only on the content of the new scheme regulations but also on transitional arrangements and the detail of protections for those staff who at April 1, 2012 were within 10 years of the normal scheme retirement age at that date.

NIPSA is already engaged in preliminary discussion on a number of these schemes.

Work will also continue in the central public service pensions group between DFP/sponsoring Departments and NIC-ICTU. The group will need to deal with issues such as: n The biennial review of the link between state pension age and normal retirement age; n DFP directions on cost control; and n Fair Deal.

In both the ongoing central engagement as well as the Departmental negotiations, NIPSA will be the lead union fighting to minimise as best as possible the impact of the Bill.

Members in the unfunded schemes (all schemes other than the NILGOSC scheme) will see from April 1 the third round of increases to their pension contributions.

These increases are not related to the contribution rate for the new schemes and represent an arbitrary pay grab that is all to do with the Westminster Government’s austerity measures rather than the cost of the existing public sector pension schemes.

at RDC after loss of funding

In January NIPSA started talks with senior management at the Rural Development Council (RDC) after it was revealed a redundancy programme was being considered.

This move was prompted by the ending of one of RDC’s main funding streams, the International Fund for Ireland.

It was initially estimated that eight posts would be affected at Deputy Principal, Staff Officer, Executive Officer I, Administrative Officer level and Staff Officer levels.

The news came as a blow to NIPSA members at the RDC particularly as talks had taken place in October and November last year over management proposals to alter the redundancy policy.

Since the announcement, NIPSA has been in constant contact with members holding several meetings and individual representation.

Expressions of interest were sought for a voluntary redundancy scheme which, together with some redeployment, has reduced the numbers of posts under threat to five.

By mid-February members were expecting formal notification of the posts/staff to be selected for redundancy. It is understood the period of notice will extend to May 2014 by which time funding from other sources may have been secured.

In the discussions, it was established that – subject to the additional funding coming through – the number of posts under threat could reduce to 2.5 with new projects extending over the next two years.

NIPSA continues to support members and will assist further in any selection for redundancy appeals that are lodged.

www.nipsa.org.uk

WORKING FOR POVERTY - UK PAY SCALES REVEALED

The Living Wage Commission’s first report, Working for poverty, has been released this month.

The report warns that the economic recovery could fail one in five people in paid employment.

The report, which provides a detailed analysis of the rise of low pay and working poverty, shows that spiralling living costs and stagnating wages at the bottom create a “double squeeze” on the lowest paid.

The five million people in low paid employment have the smallest budget elasticity, and are therefore hit hardest by rising living costs.

Working for poverty outlines the changing nature of low pay and poverty in the UK: n 6.7 million of the 13 million people in poverty in the UK are in a family where someone works – over half the total for the first time n 5.24 million workers in Britain – equal to 21% of the workforce – are paid below a Living Wage: an increase of 420,000, or 9%, over the last 12 months n Housing costs have tripled in the last 15 years, one and a half times the amount by which wages have risen, and electricity, gas and water bills have risen 88% in the last five years n 2.9 million people classed as over-indebted have a household income below £15,000 a year. n Low paid workers are increasingly turning to support to get by, the report finds. This includes a growing dependence on debt, food banks and in-work benefits.

Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York and Chair of the Living Wage Commission, said: “The idea of making work pay is an empty slogan to millions of people who are hard pressed and working hard; but find themselves in a downward social spiral. They are often in two or three jobs just to make ends meet.

Meanwhile the UK taxpayer picks up the bill in tax credits, in-work benefits and decreased demand in the economy.

“With the economy showing signs of recovery, employers that can pay a Living Wage must do so. They should choose between continuing to make gains on the back of poverty wages, or doing the right thing and paying a fair wage for a hard day’s work.”

The Living Wage Commission will release its final report in June 2014.

The interim report is available to view here: http://livingwagecommission.org. uk/wpcontent/uploads/2014/02/LivingWage-Commission-Report-v2_f-1. pdf This post originally appeared on the Living Wage Commission blog http://livingwagecommission.org. uk/new-report-from-the-livingwage-commission-sets-out-thescale-of-low-pay-in-the-uk/

NIPSA members attend peace rally in Belfast

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NIPSA members brave the inclement weather to attend the ICTU organised reace rally outside Belfast City Hall at the end of January.

They joined with other trade union members along with ICTU President John Douglas and the

Leisure services ballot for action

Mayor of Belfast, Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, to hear calls for peace, progress and equality and a demand for action to obtain these objectives.

Assistant General Secretary for ICTU, Peter Bunting, explained that the rally was a focus to facili-

Continued from Page 1 Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE) consultants – who have vast experience in developing in-house models – were engaged by the trade unions to carry out a response to the Deloitte report and formulate a set of arguments to support an in-house bid.

Management stated in a response to the APSE report that both models would require change to terms and conditions of employment as well as management practices.

As such, the trade unions argued that management should develop an in-house bid in consultation with them. To date, management have refused to do this and have put forward the view that the unions should be responsible for producing an inhouse model while they work on an NPDO model.

This is clearly unacceptable to NIPSA and the other trade unions and their members.

The unions organised a number of joint meetings with their members where an almost-unanimous decision was taken to move to a statutory ballot and subsequent industrial action to force the council to take the in-house option seriously.

The unions intend to meet in the near future to draw up a timetable for the ballot.

tate civil society and citizens to send a message to the leadership of all political parties at Stormont.

He said the message being sent out was the need for politicians to start addressing issues "crucial for the social and economic wellbeing of Northern Ireland".

"We, the people, demand that action be taken to end political stalemate, to end all violence and to end inter-communal strife," he said.

"We are convinced that the people of Northern Ireland would like to see the NI Assembly concentrate on delivering decent public services, like schools and hospitals, while facilitating more and better jobs, especially for our young people. We want an economy that works for all."

Also speaking were community worker Claire Hackett; Ruairi Creaney, secretary of ICTU Youth and community worker and human rights activist Fiona McCausland.

Education sector members reaching breaking point over increments delay

Picture: Kevin Cooper

NIPSA has warned that members working in the Education Sector were reaching breaking point over delays in the payment of annual increments due to them.

According to the union, members have waited patiently since April 2013 for their annual increment – a contractual entitlement which all eligible staff were entitled to receive in their April wages last year.

Commenting on this totally unacceptable delay, Paddy Mackel, Assistant Secretary told NIPSA News: “Our members in the Education Sector have demonstrated extreme patience and unquestionable tolerance as excuse after excuse was presented by the Department of Education for the delays month after month.

“After intense pressure and the threat of industrial action, approval was eventually received by DFP and DE to en-

able Education and Library Boards to finally commence their work to issue payments to members.

“Unfortunately arrears of payments are not likely to reach the majority of members until after the end of the financial year.”

In response to this delay, the Education Panel has vowed to react swiftly this year if there is any repeat of the 2013 fiasco.

Paddy Mackel warned: “Members simply will not show the same patience this year – and why should they?

“It is likely that if there are delays from April, members will lodge grievances and court cases and also consider industrial action to ensure that members not only receive what they are contractually entitled to but also when they are due to receive payment in their wage packet.”

He added: “Enough is enough!”

Unions voice fury over cutbacks in flood defences

Page 8 NIPSA NEWS

WITH winter floods and storms devastating communities around the country, unions have called for a re-think over plans to axe 1,500 jobs vital to flood defence.

Unions who organise staff at the Environment Agency (EA), have warned that cuts are reckless as well as short-sighted (every £1 invested in flood defences benefits the economy by £8).

Meanwhile, firefighters are backing a House of Commons motion arguing for a formal obligation for them to attend incidents of flooding.

One union leader pointed out that while EA staff were working round the clock to minimise the risk of damage to lives and homes, they were facing job cuts. “As pressure mounts to build more homes in flood risk areas, the government should be looking at strengthening defences not cutting budgets,” he said.

While another union negotiator

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pointed out that the flood defence budget has been cut from an average of £664 million in 2009 to an average of £546 million up to 2015.

The public is being misled by the suggestion that extra money is being spent on flood defences.

Current investment is barely enough to stand still.

And the last time the government cut thousands of jobs from

the EA they were forced to rehire because the agency couldn’t cope, “Climate change means that the catastrophic storms over the past year may become a regular feature and the country needs to be prepared,” one union leader warned.

Adding: “Cutting vital jobs will have a drastic effect on that first line of defence that protects mil-

lions of people with homes and businesses.”

For firefighters, also on the front line, there is an expectation that fire and rescue services will attend flooding, but no formal requirement that they must do so in England and Wales.

The FBU firefighters’ union believes this should be a statutory duty and has launched a campaign to get MPs on its side.

Care workers must be paid for tr

In Whittlestone v BJP Home Support Limited [2013] UKEAT 0128/13/1907, Whittlestone was a care worker employed to provide care to service users in their own home. Under her contract, she was paid hourly for “shifts”.

Each shift was calculated from the moment she arrived at the home to the moment she left.

She had a number of different service users to visit each day, with no realistic prospect of going home between visits.

Under her contract, time spent travelling, which she did by bus between the homes of the different service users, was not paid.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) said the employer’s non-payment of time spent travelling between appointments was a breach of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) regulations.

Whittlestone was a “time worker” under these regulations. In other words, her work was paid for by reference to the amount of time taken.

The EAT said that she was entitled to be paid for her travel time between each appointment because it qualified as “assignment work” under regulation 15(3)(b).

In other words, the work consisted of “assignments of work to be carried out at different places between which the worker is obliged to travel that are not places occupied by the worker’s employer”.

Whittlestone was on a rota organised by her employer, and since she was obliged to visit each service user in turn during the course of the day, there was inevitably travelling between

This month’s Labour Research Law Back-up looks at an employment tribunal decision with very important ramifications for care workers across the country. An Employment Appeal Tribunal has confirmed that under the National Minimum Wage regulations, hourly-paid care workers must be paid the National Minimum Wage, both for travel time between assignments and also for time spent sleeping on overnight stays.

them. That time was within the employer’s control when arranging the assignments, said the EAT. With the exception of any periods when the gap between assignments was long enough for Whittlestone to go home (there were none in this case) the time spent travelling was “assignment work” and she was entitled to be paid for it.

Continued failure by employers to pay the NMW following this case can be expected to result in strategically targeted large-scale tribunal claims supported by unions, as well as naming and shaming of employers to the Inland Revenue.

One UK union describes this case as setting a “very clear benchmark” for what is expected of employers in this sector. It is good news for workers, including those on so-called “zero

hours” contracts and it will help strengthen union campaigning on this vital issue.

Some rogue employers may try to take evasive action in response to the judgment, for example trying to rearrange schedules to allow enough time (in theory) to go home between each visit, only recruiting workers who live within a fixed geographical area or breaking employment continuity to make it harder for workers to make large backdated claims based on past failures to pay.

The case is also important because of what it decides about overnight stays.

Whittlestone’s contract required her to perform extra duties, described in the contract as “on call shifts”. Failing to make herself available for an on call shift could result in disciplinary action.

She had one regular weekly overnight shift at the home of three young adults with Down’s Syndrome for which she was given a camp bed and bedding, set up in the living room. As it happens, she never had to wake up to provide any specific care.

The EAT said that she was entitled to the NMW for the whole of the time spent providing this overnight shift, even though she was sleeping and did not have to wake to provide any specific care.

Where a person’s presence at a place of work is required as part of their work, said the EAT, the hours spent there will be time work for which the NMW must be paid.

This is regardless of how much physical or mental activity they are engaged in. Simply

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Page 9 NIPSA NEWS

50p tax rate only Retired Members Group hold AGM affects 2,000 in NI

By Paul MacFlynn (NERI)

MUCH has been made of the recent announcement by the Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls MP that a Labour government would reintroduce a 50% tax on incomes over £150,000.

The motivation of this policy is to reduce the deficit, and taxing higher incomes is clearly far preferable than withdrawing even more state benefits from some of the most vulnerable in our society.

The government claim that the 50% tax rate that was in place between 2011 and 2013, raised much less income than expected.

However it is worth pointing out that nearly all of the shortfall was accounted for by people withholding or not declaring income.

When the rate was reduced to 45% in the 2012 Budget, many high income earners suddenly reappeared.

Increased tax avoidance is no reason to reduce tax rates.

The 50% additional rate represents a fair and equitable way to reduce the deficit .

As expected, many news outlets have alleged that this policy will cost jobs and and disincentivise "wealth creators".

However it is worth examining just how many people this rate would actually effect.

To look at Northern Ireland, the NERI Quarterly Economic Facts, give a breakdown of earnings in Northern Ireland in indicator 4.6b.

This shows that only 2000 people could possibly be affected by the new additional rate.

While small in number this group of 2,000 earns as much per year as the 106,000 workers who earn under 10,000.

The 50p tax rate is asking a small group of the wealthiest in our economy to contribute modestly to rebuilding the public finances.

avel time

being there, at the disposal of the employer, is what makes it work.

In this case, specific hours at a particular place were required, under threat of discipline if she failed to attend. She was at the disposal of the employer during that period. “She could not, for instance, slip out for a late night movie or for fish and chips”.

The EAT added that terms like “on call” or “core hours” appear nowhere in the National Minimum Wage regulations and are unhelpful.

In particular, they encourage employers to believe that what matters is the level of physical or mental activity at work.

That is not relevant. Instead, all that matters is whether the individual is working under a contract to provide services personally during the hours for which pay is claimed. If so, the National Minimum Wage must be paid.

In the past, said the EAT, confusion has resulted from regulation 15(1) of the NMW regulations.

This says that where a time worker “by arrangement sleeps at or near a place of work and is provided with suitable facilities for sleeping, time during the hours permitted to use those facilities for the purposes of sleeping shall only be treated as time work when the worker is awake for the purpose of working”.

This regulation is not relevant where a worker is contractually obliged to be at work, even if asleep. www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2013/0128_1 3_1907.html

THE NIPSA Retired Members Group (RMG) held its Annual General Meeting at the Grosvenor House in Belfast on January 15.

Among the guest speakers were Eddie Lynch of the Age Sector Platform, NIPSA’s LGB&T Group and Assistant General Secretary Kieran Bannon.

Both Chairperson Tony Cluskey and Kieran Bannon spoke of the work carried out by the RMG over the past year and in particular noted the significant contribution it had made within the trade union movement.

Some of the RMG activities included: n Attending the launch of UnLtd/NESTA, a project on social entrepreneurship in later life; n Building upon the links with the Age Sector Platform. RMG member Nixon Armstrong is currently the Chairperson of the Westminster Campaign Committee and is heavily involved in the lobby group on issues for pensioners; n Speaking at NIPSA’s preretirement seminars; n Building links with NIPSA’s Youth Committee and LGB&T Group; and n Becoming involved in work with the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (NIC-ICTU) as well as also becoming active within local Trades Councils.

Due to RMG’s increased activity, its membership has seen a steady increase and the group boasts a tangible identity through the work it

now undertakes.

Tony Cluskey also indicated that he wishes to hold further discussions with the President and General Secretary on further enhancing the activities and role of the RMG. At the AGM, Kieran Bannon awarded a Meritorious Service medal and certificate to the RMG Secretary Billy McConnell (pictured below).

The veteran activist started his involvement with the union as a member of Branch 303 in the late 1960s. Having spent all his working life in the Scientific Services of the Department of Agriculture, Billy held positions at Branch Officership level and was also a member of the DARD Departmental Committee. He also showed a keen interest in health and safety issues – an important subject within the science field.

One of Billy’s last major roles was as a member of the NIPSA negotiating team during the creation of the Agri-Food Bio Sciences Institute involving the transfer of scientific services from DARD and other bodies.

Billy’s legacy is the activity now undertaken by others he recruited to NIPSA and mentored.

Branch 303 Secretary Pauline Caves noted: “Without Billy I would not have become active in NIPSA, he helped create Branch 303 and built it into the strong branch it is today.”

‘Flawed’ zero hours consultation criticised

THE government’s consultation on zero hours contracts closes on 13 March 2014 — and unions are not optimistic.

As one general union has pointed out, it is a flawed consultation because it ignores the wider structural failings that have led to the growth of precarious working and under-employment, of which zero hours contracts are just one example.

Instead, fearful of upsetting employers and undermining the “valuable role zero hours contracts can play in the economy”, the focus is on individual abuse and exploitation.

Unsurprisingly, given the government’s track record to date, there is no recognition of bargaining inequality, or of the need for any collective dimension in the workplace. The consultation focuses on just two issues. The first is exclusivity — where express contract terms prevent someone working for another employer even if their current employer has no work.

But as one union leader points out, the government has hit the “wrong mark” because “exclusive contracts are not the big issue. People

need a regular source of income”.

It is the lack of security over the next shift of work, combined with the fear of not being offered work in the future — rather than the wording of the contract — that leads people to keep themselves free for the employer just in case work is offered. Many workers do not even read their contract terms, and most are presented with their terms on a take it or leave it basis.

The second issue highlighted is lack of transparency, in the sense that workers are not always clear as to the terms and consequences of the contract, and employers do not always understand their obligations.

The consultation document acknowledges that workers on zero hours contracts are unable to access financial products such as mortgages and credit because of income insecurity.

However, other serious problems such as inability to organise childcare, or difficulties with over- and under-payment of welfare benefits, are put down to “poor management practice” rather than the inevitable outcome of a onesided power relationship.

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SUICIDE KILLS AS MAN

Page 10 NIPSA NEWS

ALMOST as many people have died from suicide in Northern Ireland since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement as were killed during the entire Troubles.

That’s the disturbing key finding from an examination of 15 years of suicide data carried out by The Detail.

The signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 was a landmark moment in Northern Ireland’s history and followed decades of murder.

However, the political deal could not completely wipe out our troubled past and this – warns researchers – is still impacting on the mental health of people here today.

It has been estimated that around 3,600 people were killed in Northern Ireland’s bloody conflict between 1969 and 1997.

A less well known statistic is that almost as many people took their own lives in the 15 years which followed this.

The latest figures show that a total of 3,288 suicides were registered in Northern Ireland from the beginning of 1998 to the end of 2012.

Or to put it another way, deaths from suicide were almost double the number of people (1,825) who died in road traffic collisions during the same 15 year period.

Of those who died from suicide, 77% were men.

In the last 10 years the suicide rate per 100,000 of the population in Northern Ireland has increased from 10.8 in 2002 to 15.2 in 2012.

Today, The Detail also reports on new research by academics which they say adds further weight to evidence of the need for routine assessment of suicidal thoughts in high risk populations, such as those affected by the Northern Ireland conflict.

And the Department of Health tells us that Northern Ireland faces a difficult challenge to reduce suicide rates, particularly in light of the additional threat posed by the current economic downturn.

It adds that it is now more important than ever to work across all sectors to reduce the high incidence of suicide and self-harm in our local communities.

THE DATA

For this project The Detail examined data held by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) on suicide registration. The 2012 data is the most recent available and currently provisional.

All suspected suicides are referred to the coroner and take time to be investigated. This means that there can be a substantial period of time between a death occurring and it being registered.

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By Kathryn Torney

For example, of the 313 suicides registered in 2010, only 141 actually occurred in 2010 with the remainder taking place in earlier years.

Using these figures we created an interactive map to give a breakdown of the number of suicides registered in all council areas. See above.

The highest number of deaths registered between 1998 and 2012 was in Belfast where 718 people took their own lives over the 15 year period. The lowest number was in Moyle District Council area where 31 people died from suicide.

Using the suicide rate rather than the actual number of suicides allows comparisons to be made between different geographical areas taking account of different population sizes.

We used NISRA mid-year population estimates and also included a deprivation measure from the Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure 2010 for each district which shows how widespread high levels of deprivation are in each area.

Our analysis confirmed that the highest suicide rate over the last three years was in the most deprived council area (Belfast) and the lowest was in the least deprived area (Magherafelt).

The average annual suicide rate per 100,000 of the population based on the last three years’ data (201012) was 24 deaths in Belfast compared to seven in Magherafelt.

The 2008/11 Programme for Government set the target of an average annual death rate of 10.7 per 100,000 of population over the three year period 2010 to 2012.

Our analysis shows that the attempt to meet this government target failed. The average annual suicide registration rate per 100,000 of the population in Northern Ireland for 2010-12 was 16 deaths.

To access NISRA’s suicide data in full visit: http://www.nisra.gov.uk/demography/default.asp31.htm

THE IMPACT OF THE TROUBLES

Research by Professor Mike Tomlinson at Queen’s University Belfast

published in 2012 concluded that the conflict in Northern Ireland had a profound effect on our suicide rates.

He said that the steep increase in recent years may be accounted for by those who grew up in the 1970s during the worst years of the violence.

The Detail can reveal today that new research carried out by a team at the University of Ulster confirms that people in Northern Ireland who experienced a conflict-related traumatic event are even more likely than those who experienced other types of trauma to have suicidal thoughts and plans.

Professor Tomlinson said: “Recognition that recent suicide trends are a legacy of the conflict alters the perspectives that shape suicide prevention as well as the identification of at-risk individuals, groups and communities.

“Experience of conflict and its consequences, the cohorts, occupational groups and communities most involved in the conflict, are all absent from current prevention strategies.

“Acknowledging the relevance of the conflict would be a major step forward in suicide prevention.”

Professor Tomlinson’s research – entitled ‘War, peace and suicide : The case of Northern Ireland’ – examined 40 years of death registration data and found that the highest suicide rate was for men aged 3544.

LEARNING FROM DEATHS

The research team from the Bamford Centre for Mental Health and Well-Being at the University of Ulster has examined the link between conflict-related events and suicide attempts in Northern Ireland.

Their analysis of data from over 4,000 people – collected in 2008 for a World Mental Health Survey initiative – backs the suggestion that traumatic events associated with the Northern Ireland conflict are associated with suicidal thoughts and plans.

The results are due to be officially published later this year.

Professor Siobhan O’Neill is leading the research and spoke to The Detail about their study.

She said: “Suicidal ideation (thoughts) and behaviour are important public health issues, not least because they give us an insight into the factors associated with death by suicide.

“There are many causes of suicide and it is a complex issue. Mental disorders are an important risk factor with the majority of those who die by suicide having a mental disorder.

“However, most people with a mental disorder do not go on to die by suicide and many people who die by suicide have no recorded mental health disorder.

“It is therefore important that the associations between suicide and other factors, such as trauma, are examined.”

International studies of trauma and suicidal behaviour have already shown that traumatic events are associated with suicide. Certain traumatic event types related to sexual and interpersonal violence are associated with a higher risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviour than others.

“The Northern Ireland conflict offers an opportunity to examine the associations between trauma and suicidal behaviour,” Professor O’Neill said.

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Page 11 NIPSA NEWS

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helping us to learn more about those who have died by suicide.

“The information the database contains includes when the person had their last GP appointment and their history of service use.

“We hope that information held in the database will allow us to spot trends and to learn from deaths here. Ultimately, we hope that it will save lives in the future.”

THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH’S VIEW

“Questions have already been raised about the role of the conflict in explaining the increased rates of suicide in the years following the peace agreement in 1998.”

The World Mental Health Survey Initiative found high rates of mental disorders in Northern Ireland with the rates of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder here the highest of all the countries involved in the initiative.

The most frequently reported conflict-related event in Northern Ireland in the mental health survey was ‘civilian in a place of ongoing terror’ followed by ‘witnessed death or a serious injury’.

Professor O’Neill concluded: “Individuals who have experienced any traumatic event have a significantly elevated risk of having seriously considered and planned suicide.

“People who had a conflict-related traumatic event were even more likely than those who have experienced other types of traumas to have suicidal ideation and plans.

“These findings add further weight to the evidence for the routine assessment of suicidal ideation in high risk populations, such as those who have been affected by the conflict and those with mental disorders.

“Those who have suffered as a consequence of the conflict should therefore not only be monitored and provided with evidence based treatments for the mental disorders, but also for suicidal thoughts, plans and behaviours.”

The UU research indicates that having experienced a conflict related trauma carries an additional risk of suicidal behaviour, even when adjusted for the effects of mental disorder.

The university researchers are currently testing the theory that those with a conflict related traumatic experience are more likely to die following their first suicide attempt.

The University of Ulster team has also created the first suicide database for Northern Ireland.

This was compiled by working carefully and sensitively through anonymised coded data from coroners’ files on suicides registered in Northern Ireland.

The database covers a seven year period from 2005 to 2011 and it is hoped that funding will be available to maintain it into the future.

Professor O’Neill said: “This database is an important resource and is

We requested a comment from Health Minister Edwin Poots on Northern Ireland’s high suicide rate and whether the Protect Life suicide prevention strategy focuses in any way on those who experienced the worst of Northern Ireland’s violence.

A response was issued by a department spokesperson.

She said that reduction in the Northern Ireland suicide rate continues to be a major priority for the department.

And she continued: “Over £7m is allocated annually to suicide prevention in Northern Ireland. This is more per head of population than any other UK country.

“Suicide is a very complex societal issue and the reasons for the relatively high rate of suicide in Northern Ireland are not known.

“However, it is clear that poverty, recession, deprivation, the legacy of the conflict, exposure to violence, and higher levels of mental health needs are all influencing factors.

“There is a strong link between mental ill health and suicide. However it is concerning that many people who go on to take their own lives are not accessing statutory mental health services, with less than a third in contact with services in the preceding year.

“This highlights the need to ensure that services are accessible and responsive when people require them and the key role that the non-statutory sector can play.”

The spokeswoman said that Northern Ireland faces a difficult challenge to reduce suicide rates, particularly in light of the additional threat posed by the current economic downturn.

“It is therefore more important than ever that we continue to work together across all sectors to reduce the high incidence of suicide and self-harm in our local communities.

“Emerging evidence indicates that Northern Ireland has high levels of, often untreated, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of the Troubles.

“Protect Life services are open to all and many of the clients who have used Protect Life suicide prevention services to date have been affected by the conflict.”

In relation to the focus of suicide prevention activities on any particular age group, she said that the department is aware that the highest risk group for suicide is men aged from 25 to 54 who live in deprived areas.

“The emphasis on younger age groups has largely been in the media,” the department spokesperson claimed.

“All deaths are tragic, however, where the death involves a young person this appears to attract more attention.

“Suicide prevention and mental health promotion interventions are available to people of all ages.”

HELPLINE DETAILS

n Lifeline is the Northern Ireland crisis response helpline service for people who are experiencing distress or despair. It can be contacted confidentially on 0808 808 8000 or click: http://www.lifelinehelpline.info/ n The Samaritans can be contacted by telephone on 08457 90 90 90 or email jo@samaritans.org n The Public Health Agency’s mental health promotion website is at: http://mindingyourhead.info/ Further articles on the legacy can be found at: http://www.thedetail.tv/legacy

Shankill Rd pays homage to its anti-fascist heroes Page 12 NIPSA NEWS

THE story of seven men from the Shankill who travelled to Spain to battle the tide of fascism sweeping Europe in the 1930s was celebrated at the start of February.

The seven were part of the Republican movement who fought General Francisco Franco's rebel forces in the Spanish Civil War. Four of the men were killed in action in Spain.

Earlier this month, a plaque was unveiled in their honour at Shankill Road Library. It is part of an ongoing attempt to highlight the contribution of around 320 Irish people who were part of the anti-fascist struggle.

The war, which raged from 1936 to 1939, saw Spain become a battleground for fascists and socialists from many countries, including Ireland.

Around 80 of the 320 Irish volunteers fighting for the Republicans against Franco were from Northern Ireland – 21 of them never returned.

Although Franco succeeded in overthrowing the Republican government, going on to rule Spain for the next 36 years, their heroic fight against fascism is slowly being marked in memorials and plaques across Ireland.

Ciaran Crossey chairs the International Brigade Commemoration Committee, which campaigns to recognise Ireland's civil war contribution.

Mr Crossey explained that concerns about a return to conflict sparked an international reaction against Spain's drift to fascism in the 1930s.

"By the late 1920s or early 1930s a whole series of right wing or fascist governments came to power across Europe," he said.

"There were a lot of people in the mid-1930s who felt it was dangerous and we were drifting towards another war.

"In Spain there was a left-of-cen-

News

Freddie and Tommy McGrath unveil the plaque to honour the seven men from the Shankill Road who volunteered to fight against Franco, including their uncle Harry (pictured below), who died fighting fascists in Spain. The brothers are pictured with Head Librarian, Mark Knowles.

Picture: Kevin Cooper

tre government elected in February 1936, but a combination of big business and the military launched a coup, effectively led by Franco.

"There was an international reaction to try and stop the drift. People went to fight against Franco thinking we could stop this, but we didn't, and the result was that we ended up

in World War Two." Another 720 Irish nationals went to fight for Franco's forces under the command of Eoin O'Duffy, a leader during the Irish War of Independence who later led the Blueshirts movement.

"O'Duffy's crowd weren't really

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part of the story," added Mr Crossey.

"They were only there about five months and then they had to leave.

They only fought once."

Instead, the IBCC is trying to recognise the others who tried to stop Franco.

Although they ultimately failed, Mr Crossey said it should not diminish their efforts.

"The Spanish Civil War ended on April 1, 1939 – five months later World War Two started," he added.

"These people saw what was coming.

"The real failure would have been to sit back and do nothing."

Shankill Road Library has hosted meetings on the Spanish Civil War in the past, one of which drew the direct link between the Nazi bombing of Guernica, a town in Spain, with the Belfast blitz which devastated large parts of the Shankill.

Two nephews of one of the men killed in Spain unveiled the bronze plaque.

Freddie and Tommy McGrath are two Shankill residents and nephews of Harry McGrath, who was killed by the fascists in one of the war's final battles.

Other members of the McGrath family flew in from Britain for the event.

Another special guest who made the trip to Belfast was Nancy Wallach, whose father Hy was a member of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Spain.

Nancy is an archivist with Abraham Lincoln Battalion Archives in the United States and she said it was an honour to be at the Shankill Library to share the experiences and keep the memory of those who fought fascism from Belfast alive.

Source: Belfast Telegraph An abridged version of a lecture by Connal Parr at this ceremony on ‘Radical Protestants’ will appear in the March edition NIPSA NEWS.

SHANKILL RD SPANISH CIVIL WAR ROLL OF HONOUR

WILLIAM BEATTIE, Belfast. Killed in action: July 25, 1937 Originally from Wilton Street, William Beattie arrived in Spain in December 1936, serving with the XIV International Brigade. He rejoined his unit after being wounded and died at Brunete.

BILL HENRY, Belfast. Killed in action: February 27, 1937 Bill Henry arrived in Spain on December 22, 1936. He was made acting commander of the No.1 Company, Lincoln Battalion, and was killed at Jarama. He lived at Bradford Street, Old Lodge Road.

JAMES ISAAC HILLEN, Belfast James Isaac Hillen arrived in Spain in December 1936, and served with several units. Wounded at Las Rozas and again at Brunete, he was repatriated on August, 1937. He lived at Tobergill Street.

WILLIAM P LAUGHLIN, Belfast. Killed in action: July 7, 1937 William P Laughlin, a married man from Conway Street, Shankill Road, was with the British Battalion at Lopera in December 1936 and fought in other battles before being killed in action in July 1937

at Villanueva de la Canada.

JOSEPH LOWRY, Belfast Joseph Lowry lived at Hanover Street before moving to London. He arrived in Spain on December 10, 1936 and served with the British Brigade before he was repatriated in September 1937 after being wounded.

HENRY/HARRY McGRATH, Belfast. Killed in action: Sept 23, 1938 Henry McGrath, from Tobergill Street, arrived in Spain on December 10, 1936 and served with the British Battalion. He also briefly served on board a destroyer before returning to his battalion by April 1937.

He was killed in action at Sierra Cabals in September 1938.

ANDREW MOLYNEAUX, Belfast Born in Silvio Street, the 31-year-old travelled to Spain from Canada on July 15, 1937 with the Canadian volunteers. He was wounded in October 1937 at Fuentes de Ebro and returned to Canada in 1938.

Squaring the circle for workers

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REMEMBER when you were a kid and you were asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The answer would usually have been a fairly noble career option: fireman, footballer, doctor or, for a girl, a secretary, nurse, or teacher.

Now, gender progress aside, because today anyone can and does perform those functions, the answer is likely to be more complicated.

A young person moving into the world of work will more than likely see a very different path ahead of them than that which their parents would have known.

The workplace in many instances was the glue that held society together, a place to earn a reasonable wage that might enable workers to provide for their families and plan a future.

It provided the space for social interaction, a place where unions could organise and living standards might steadily improve. It was a place where ordinary people could gain dignity from their daily endeavours.

Today it is different. Many workplaces are places where all of the values of human progress and dignity are disappearing and are being replaced by a new norm of vulnerability, precarious employment and in-work poverty for our children.

The notion that you might leave education behind, enter the labour force and work at the same job for the rest of your working years leaving with a pension and a secure retirement is now a fading folk memory.

Most people will have numerous jobs in which the ability to work, relax and develop as a human will be become increasingly difficult.

Page 13 NIPSA NEWS

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By Mel Corry Trademark

Where and when did it begin to change?

In the 1970s the post-war consensus between Capital, Labour and the State began to break down.

The Social Democratic Compromise, as some called it, in which workers could expect a decent job and standard of living in return for labour discipline and high productivity began to crumble.

It began to crumble by design of people such as Milton Friedman who led the way in influencing the development of Reagonomics, Thatcherism and what has become known throughout the world as NeoLiberalism. This new economic philosophy has at its very core the maximising of profit for shareholders through the breaking of union power and the wholesale privatisation of state assets thereby providing new income streams for private owners This new economic philosophy was accompanied by a new approach to managing work emanating from the Harvard School of Business, Workforce flexibility was a term used to convince many workers and indeed many in the trade

American employee at work after World War Two – but the consensus between bosses and unions broke down within a few decades...

Picture: Kheel Center, Cornell University (CC-BY 2.0)

union movement that in order to compete with production methods in developing countries that we had to change.

It started in the manufacturing sectors of heavy engineering, and the textiles industry which hadn’t changed since the 1950s.

The new breed of Human Resources managers fresh out of university with their MBA (A masters in Advanced Capitalism?) in Business Administration replaced the traditional production manager who would normally have been a person who had worked their way up through the organisation and knew the people they were managing.

These new HR managers were taught the Unitarist idea that the workplace relationship was one of employer and individual employee and that union organisers were, at best, a block on individual freedom and, at worst, deviants, agitators and troublemakers It didn’t take long for the re-organisation of work patterns to move across employment sectors.

It is now common for workers in administrative roles, civil service, call centres and the retail sector to enjoy at best, fixed and short-term contracts, no liabilities for sick pay or holidays, no pensions, micromanagement of all work functions and at its very zenith the zerohour contract, the notion that you

‘When you don’t have enough money to pay for food or energy costs and save for the future, the least priority is union subscriptions’

can be called into work and sent home from work at any time and at the employer’s discretion. Inwork poverty and vulnerability has become a way of life for many who because of this system can barely earn subsistence wages and have to take on a second or third job to provide the very basic necessary’s of life.

When you don’t earn enough money to pay for food, energy costs and save for the future, the least priority is your union subscription.

It has become increasingly difficult for unions to make progress in this constantly evolving environment.

That is why the original question would find a greater variation of answers today than it would have 40 years ago.

Now only those who can afford a third level education and not have to worry about paying off a student loan the size of a mortgage have the privilege of announcing what they want to do with their lives.

Our children look to the future and a six-month contract with the possibility of rolling extensions becomes an attractive option.

That option does not provide for the possibility of job security and a stable home and family life with an equal distribution of dignified work, enough time off for recreation and the ability to develop progressively as a society.

The challenge for the trade union movement is to reverse the trend of the graphic (left) and make the small circle available to the maximum number of workers.

Mel Corry is a project worker with Trademark. This article first appeared in Mandate’s Shopfloor newspaper

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

Page 14 NIPSA NEWS

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We ignore the envir Special focus on the Republic of Ireland Around the branches

ENVIRONMENTAL change has attracted growing concern over recent decades. The recent recession in most European states has diverted attention, temporarily to problems of debt, low-growth and under-utilisation of resources such as labour.

Yet, the natural environment plays a huge role in shaping the lives and choices of humanity. It is beyond doubt that changes in the environment have been the result of human behaviour and choice. In this century climate change and the quality of our environment will be the central problem demanding a global response.

The problem of climate change, energy supply and energy cost continue to pose a huge challenge to societies across the globe. For the Republic of Ireland the challenge is twofold: n Anticipating and preparing for changes in energy supply and cost in the future including unforeseen or sudden disruptions to supply or cost of imported energy; and n Modifying human behaviour and public policy as part of a global and local ethic to, literally, save the planet and leave a better world for future generations.

Changes in attitude, behaviour and public policy is a long-term and complex project. However, because it is long-term and complex does not argue for postponing the task. It remains vital and urgent. Climate change and the associated issues raised constitute, it is argued, the greatest single challenge for societies in the 21st Century.

This needs to be reflected in political economy and in public policy across the globe. Waiting for international agreement is not an option. An overriding priority must be to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the coming 15 years. New targets need to be set for the period to 2030 and policy monitored and evaluated regularly.

The weight of scientific evidence strongly indicates that a long-term and profound shift has occurred in global temperatures and this is likely to

Tom Healy NERI (Nevin Economic Research Institute)

be related, among other possible factors, to an acceleration in the burning of fossil fuels since the onset of the industrial revolution. It is estimated that, today, 30% of CO2 gases in the atmosphere is related to human behaviour. The decade ending 2010 was the hottest on record.

The prospects for international agreement and corresponding action to significantly limit and reduce CO2 emissions within the next 10 years appear to be negligible – this in spite of the growing evidence that such emissions will lead to an irreversible and disastrous rise in temperatures with consequences for global balance and societies near and far. There is a moral imperative on all countries to cooperate in this matter as well as given a lead through example in addressing the underlying causes – which are political and moral as much as technological and financial in nature. While a totally decarbonised economy may not be feasible, more rapid progress in the right direction is needed and much greater priority needs to be accorded to this goal.

The recession-related modest fall in total net greenhouse gas emissions in the Republic of Ireland from a peak of 125 of 1990 levels in 2005 to a level of 106 in 2011 is welcome. This leaves the Republic marginally below the 2012 Kyoto target of 113. However, further progress is needed especially as some of this fall was clearly related to the sudden disruption in economic activity in 2008. Progress, in the case of the Republic of Ireland, has been very slow compared to the EU28 average which was 83% of 1990 levels in 2011. The UK level was 75% in 2011. Levels of energy intensity as measured by gross inland consumption of energy divided by GDP (at constant 2000 prices) fell in the years

up to 2007 but have increased a little since then.

On the positive side levels are lowest among all EU Member States. Levels of acid rain precursor emissions, here, has been trending downwards since 2000 to reach a level just slightly above the Gothenburg Protocol target emissions level in 2010.

Gradual progress has been made in a number of areas of environmental policy as noted by the Central Statistics Office (2012): ‘The percentage of waste recovered in Ireland rose to 38% in 2010, from just under a quarter in 2003, and

Cheerleaders THE last few years have been tough for Ireland. The primary reason is the austerity strategy implemented by the Government with the backing of European authorities.

Many Irish people know or feel this is the wrong way to go about addressing our problems, but this contrarian attitude has not been reflected in our national media, as confirmed by a systematic study I conducted at University College Dublin.

The Irish mass media are somewhat unique in Europe in that there are no left-of-

By Julien Mercille

centre news outlets in this country –—they are all centre-right or right.

Britain has The Guardian, for example, and in France there’s the Monde Diplomatique, but the Irish media landscape lacks diversity.

The result is that since the beginning of the crisis, most of what we read and see supports government policy.

In fact, it started even before the crisis. During the housing bubble the media

looked the other way.

In the few times when talk of a “bubble” appeared in the press or on TV, it was often to reassure us that there was indeed no bubble, and that, at worst, there would be a “soft landing”.

RTÉ’s Prime Time screened more than 700 shows between 2000 and 2007 but only 1% of those dealt with the property bubble (the study is available by email at jmercille@gmail.com).

When the time came to deal with financial institutions, the infamous 2008

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Page 15 NIPSA NEWS

News

onment at our peril

53% of waste was landfilled.’ While the rate of waste recovery is not far from the EU average there is scope for significant further improvement given rates in excess of 50% in some EU States in 2010.

Eurostat measures energy dependency as net energy imports divided by the sum of gross energy consumption. The figure for the Republic of Ireland was 89% in 2011 compared to 54% on average for the EU27. Only the islands of Cyprus and Malta together with the Duchy of Luxembourg had higher rates than that of the

Republic of Ireland. Given the exceptionally high dependence by the Republic of Ireland on fossil fuel imports it is clear that changes need to happen to patterns of consumption, production and energy use and importation.

A sudden shock to the global economy arising from a hike in energy costs could have a disproportionate and destabilising effect on Irish economic conditions. While there is the possibility that energy supplies may not necessarily be as constrained as feared some years ago due to the possible development of new sources

through oil and gas finds off the Irish coast or through the development of new technologies and sources in other countries, the high dependence on imports of oil and gas is not desirable.

While the development of nuclear power or shale extraction (fracking) have been cited by some as necessary alternative sources of energy in Ireland the case for this has not been convincingly established given the environmental and other risks associated with such developments. Investment in renewable sources of energy is justifiable from the standpoint of diversifying energy sources in a way that reduces our exposure to external shocks as well as ensuring a more ecologically friendly form of energy consumption.

However, the costs of investment in renewable energy are considerable and depending on the form used may have undesirable impacts for some communities (such as, for example, the establishment of inland wind turbines). However, some forms of alternative renewable energy production still in their infancy and future technological change may open up safer, quicker, more stable and lower cost options. Investment in renewable energy is, therefore, an important component of a medium-term strategy and not a panacea.

A number of urgent policy initiatives that are within the grasp of Irish and European policy makers are needed: n Investment in renewable sources of energy to reduce fossil fuel dependency gradually over time; n Shift of taxes towards ‘bads’ carbon-based production and consumption with a built-in basic income provision for all members of society; n Reduce energy consumption through better insulation of buildings and provision of public transport alternatives to car-based travel; n Imposition of much stricter emissions standards on production, domestic appliances and cars.

for Irish austerity

bank guarantee – very generous measures toward bankers when compared with measures taken by other EU countries – was cheered on in the media.

Some even asserted that Irish financial ingenuity would become a model for other countries to emulate. After that, when NAMA was established, a good part of the media thought it was a good strategy, even though establishing such a “bad bank” is in fact one of the most regressive tactics available.

The best policy would have been to establish a “good

bank”, as a few lone commentators recommended, but glancing at the media, you would never learn or even know about it in any detail since they remained in a minority.

When the EU-IMF bailout became a reality, the media was somewhat apprehensive about the loss of sovereignty this would involve for Irish elites.

But still, when it did come to pass, it was endorsed by many as a lesser evil – or even as a good thing – because the IMF would be able to drive “reforms” that would

otherwise face too much popular opposition for our politicians to handle.

On austerity, the same pattern emerges. I looked at nearly 1,000 editorials and opinion pieces in Ireland’s five leading newspapers (Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, Sunday Business Post and Sunday Times) between 2008 and 2013.

I found that only 11% of articles opposed austerity and that 58% supported it (32% didn’t voice a clear opinion).

Another problem is that the large majority of those who

write in the media come from elite institutions that favour the status quo.

For example, based on the above study, excluding journalists, 29% of the authors of opinion articles in the press are by mainstream economists, 28% work in the financial or corporate sector, and 20% are affiliated to the main political parties, which have all supported austerity.

This means that the overwhelming majority of writers (77%) come from elite political or economic institutions.

Conversely, academics (excluding mainstream econ-

omists) formed only 9% of writers, members of progressive organisations 7%, and trade union representatives only 3%.

Conservative writers are therefore in a clear majority in the national discussion on the economy. This explains, in good part, the lack of diversity in the Irish media.

Julien Mercille is the author of the forthcoming book The Political Economy and Media Coverage of the European Economic Crisis: The Case of Ireland (Routledge, 2014).

Follow him on twitter @JulienMercille

The perfect time to up the ante on the NHS Page 16 NIPSA NEWS

EVERYBODY but the government seems to accept that on its present course the NHS is living on borrowed time, with a budget frozen since 2010 while pressures on the system continue to rise.

Finance officers are gloomier than ever, and half the NHS trusts are in financial problems, along with a number of foundation trusts and clinical commissioning groups.

Many that are not yet reporting a deficit have hidden it or not yet done the sums.

It’s starting to hit performance.

Without more money things can only get worse.

The Nuffield Trust figures are among the clearest in setting out the scale of the gap that is looming between NHS resources and demands.

They point to a further £28 billion gap between 2015 and 2021 if the current spending plans are left unchanged.

And even assuming the most ambitious and far-fetched plans to make savings and one-off disposals of assets all pay off, this still leaves a thumping £12bn gap over that same period which even the most hard-nosed management consultants have not been able to resolve.

Even to get this far assumes unprecedented increases in productivity — from a workforce whose wages have been frozen and falling rapidly against inflation for the past four years, and is already in most areas shouldering increased workload as a result of previous job losses.

Trying to force more work onto a stressed and demoralised front-line workforce ignores all of the lessons the Francis report on the Mid

News

By JOHN LISTER

Staffordshire hospitals scandal, which a year ago called for increased staffing levels, more support to nursing and other professional staff and a focus on quality rather than cash savings.

Indeed the figures show that under the pressure of the Francis recommendations, and fearing the intervention of the Care Quality Commission and hostile headlines in the Daily Mail, many trust bosses have since boosted numbers of hospital nursing staff — but at a price.

At the same time numbers of community nurses have fallen and budgets of mental health services, which are regarded as outside of the Francis spotlight, have been suffering a heavier squeeze to funnel more resources to the acute hospitals. Mental health is suffering as a result.

This pattern of change makes a nonsense of the proclaimed government wish to shift more services out of hospitals and into “the community,” and the fanfares of publicity for yet another new, largely empty government statement, launched by Nick Clegg, declaring the “priority” of “closing the gap” and securing changes in mental health.

Even in hospitals, the dynamic is driving many desperate trust bosses towards more Mid Staffordshire-style disasters as they look for ways to save money by whittling down the numbers of more highly skilled — but expensive — staff they employ, leaving less experienced staff in charge while pushing up caseloads and scaling back on all forms of “back-office” and other

support staff.

The misguided belief that substantial savings can be made by redirecting A&E services to GPs or relocating hospital care in “community settings” is still driving a relentless process of “reconfiguration” of hospital care — despite the complete absence of evidence that the alternatives are viable or likely to save any money at all.

To drive this forward faster, Jeremy Hunt is still battling to get draconian powers to close or reorganise hospitals at will, without public consultation, anywhere within cutting distance of a “failing hospital,” through Parliament as Clause 118 of the Care Bill.

If passed it would offer a fasttrack to the implementation of bad decisions — but also institutionalise the implementation of policies regardless of public opposition and without troubling to make any attempt to secure any public consensus.

All this might give the impression that the changes are being driven by a financial imperative, the consequence of the public-sector deficit, after those profligate years of Labour spending on the NHS and public services.

But the reality is that many of the changes in the NHS forced through

by Cameron’s hard-right coalition government not only save no money but saddle the NHS with more bureaucracy, waste and inefficiency.

The tentacles of competition law, introduced to the NHS by the Health and Social Care Act on a much wider and more virulent scale, are now preventing hospitals from collaborating to improve services or merging to save money.

Instead they are pulling services

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apart and forcing local clinical commissioning groups to put ever more services out to tender — wasting valuable management time and money that is being diverted from patient care to employ lawyers and management consultants.

The very creation of clinical commissioning groups as local bodies, nominally controlled by GPs but with no obligation to work with their neighbouring groups or take any wider view of the NHS, indicates the aim of fragmenting the service.

Existing local NHS services are being broken up by clinical commissioning groups and offered up to profiteering private companies.

In Cambridgeshire and Peterborough the main NHS provider of community health services has now been forced to sign up with a consortium led by the rebadged remnants of UnitedHealth, the failed British offshoot of the giant US health insurer, to bid for the £800 million contract to deliver an “integrated pathway” of care for older people.

All of the five remaining bidders involve major private corporations looking to cream profits out of the budget for these services.

Almost three-quarters of the services put out to tender by the NHS since the Act came into force have gone to the private sector.

Whoever wins in Cambridgeshire, the contracting process is likely to leave chaos in its wake as services are wrenched apart and bundled together in the new, confusing “pathway” that spans community services, mental health and hospital care.

Since any profits can only be made from historically underfunded services by screwing more effort from the existing workforce, down-

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banding and diluting the skill mix of front-line staff, the only ones to gain — at the expense of poorer, less accountable care for patients — will be the private sector.

This is not about saving money, it’s about ideology. It’s about privatising services in a way that allows the private sector to pick off the bits it sees as potentially profitable, while reducing the rest to a minimum safety net of skid-row services.

Cambridgeshire health bosses know this is unpopular, which is why they have gone to great lengths to conceal what they are doing, keeping all the key documents under wraps. Secrecy is a feature of all of these contracting exercises.

They show us the kind of NHS the Tories want — transformed from a public service into a cash cow for the expansion of privatesector cherry-pickers, and from relatively open bodies meeting in public and publishing their papers to the furtive, secretive bodies we have today.

The very reason there is an unprecedented and tightening cash squeeze on the NHS is because the government is cynically exploiting the financial situation to drive home its agenda to slash back the welfare state.

But before we all shrug in despair and give up, remember — the government is still not winning the argument.

Most people are opposed to privatisation of health services. Local campaigns are springing up to resist.

Clause 118 is an admission of abject failure to win any public support for reconfiguration of hospitals.

Many of the high-profile hospital

News

closure plans are stalled.

Lewisham Hospital campaigners, with a powerful popular base of support, have successfully defeated Hunt twice in the courts.

In west London, the plans to axe Charing Cross and Ealing hospitals failed to convince the Independent Reconfiguration Panel that there were any viable plans to replace them — and health bosses were told to think again.

In south-west London plans to axe St Helier and Epsom Hospitals in the teeth of opposition have been derailed — by a Tory minister and senior Lib Dems organising ballots of GPs to discredit their clinical commissioning groups.

In north central London the Whittington Hospital lives on another year after again repelling plans to hack it back.

And even where the plans for reconfiguration are still intact, the countdown to the next election is beginning to become a factor.

Don’t be surprised to see fewer confrontations this year than last, as coalition MPs jockey to keep their seats by defending local hospitals.

The real question is whether campaigners can press Labour to take advantage and turn the screw even further, by promising to put more money into the NHS as well as rolling back the Act. Let’s make Ed Balls cut the subsidies to billionaires and bankers we can’t afford to keep — and step up the fight for funds for an NHS we can’t afford to live without.

John Lister is director of Health Emergency.

HEALTH NEWS

Page 17 NIPSA NEWS

Health service facing £30bn shortfall, yet no action taken

SEVERAL recent reports have made two basic facts about the NHS impossible to ignore.

One is that on current spending plans, the NHS will run out of money within the next 5 to 6 years.

The other is that the Health and Social Care Act 2012 has created a dysfunctional set of structures which mask the government's failure to offer a credible response.

The Nuffield Trust has shown that because of population growth, ageing and cost increases, by 2020-21 the NHS will require some £30bn (25%) more than it is getting now just to maintain services at their present level – yet the government plans to keep NHS spending constant. Either services will be severely reduced or quality will deteriorate drastically or, more likely, both.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies' latest analysis goes even further: it now thinks that keeping NHS spending constant is likely to mean some other government departments facing spending cuts of up to 20%. But that is not going to happen. So unless budget plans are scrapped, NHS spending will have to be cut: services would then not just contract, they would disappear and quality would collapse. As Roy Lilley, an commentator, puts it in his widely read blog for NHS managers, it would mean the "extinction" of state-funded healthcare for all.

Yet the government has so far not proposed a credible policy response. Jeremy Hunt is momentarily protected by the legal fiction that he is no longer responsible for "providing" the NHS. Indeed, just before Christmas, in an extraordinary move, the chairs of both NHS England and the Care Quality Commission publicly criticised him for "meddling".

As a result, there is a policy vacuum, which the private health lobby is eagerly seeking to fill with renewed calls for charging and "topups"; in reality, these would do little to close the funding gap, but would mean the end of free and equal care for all. In the meantime, it seems that in official circles it is left

to everyone except Hunt to suggest solutions: more "efficiency savings" (Sir David Nicholson); rationalisation, with fewer hospitals offering specialist care (Sir Malcom Grant); more specialist GPs and intermediate care provision (NHS England's Dr Martin McShane); more self-care (NHS clinical commissioners); more telemedicine (the joint governmentindustry 3millionlives project).

But even taken together, these unproven and sometimes implausible ideas don't match the scale of the funding gap; and meanwhile the "reformed" NHS is bogged down in contradictions that make even good ideas unlikely to work. The Commons health committee favours "reconfiguration" (closing many hospitals and shifting resources to non-hospital and social care) but thinks it can't happen efficiently without decisions made in Westminster and implemented from Whitehall. But in England, key decisions on reconfiguration are being left to 130 cash-starved local councils and 211 clinical commissioning groups which were not designed to implement radical changes and lack the capacity to do so.

As for rationalisation, when two hospitals in Bournemouth and Poole proposed last year a merger to rationalise their services, the Competition Commission prohibited it; and plans to move the world-famous Papworth hospital to the biomedical campus at Cambridge are being blocked by the Treasury, which wants it to shore up Peterborough hospital's PFI-stricken finances by moving there instead. By these standards, government policy on flood prevention is a model of rationality.

Yet the government will eventually be held responsible for what happens to our healthcare. Flooding affecting many thousands of people has finally produced an irresistible demand for a policy response. A major crisis in health care will affect everyone in the country except the very rich. Is it acceptable for the secretary of state for health to have a sign on his desk saying, "the buck stops somewhere else"?

The battle to save the NHS continues this year, with the campaign against clause 118 of the Care Bill. Campaigners say the clause will make it possible for Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to legally drive through hospital closures without proper consultation.

It was added to an otherwise unrelated Bill following last year’s successful campaign against the closure of A&E and maternity services at London’s Lewisham Hospital which Hunt was unable to overturn through the courts.

Clause 118 is being opposed by the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign, by like-minded groups and

individuals and by unions.

The second reading of the Bill on 16 December saw the “interim” handing in at the Department of Health of a petition already signed by over 140,000 people. Consideration through the committee stage should help keep it in the public eye.

If the clause passes unions warn it would leave every hospital open to reorganisation with barely any consultation with the people affected.

Staff shortages and the threat of more closures won’t make it any easier to implement seven-day availability for routine NHS services as the government wants.

Battle to save NHS continues against hospital closures clause

Time to flip corruption myth map European and world affairs

Page 18 NIPSA NEWS

TRANSPARENCY International recently published their latest annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), laid out in an eye-catching map of the world with the least corrupt nations coded in happy yellow and the most corrupt nations smeared in stigmatising red.

The CPI defines corruption as “the misuse of public power for private benefit,” and draws its data from 12 different institutions including the World Bank, Freedom House, and the World Economic Forum.

When I first saw this map I was struck by the fact that most of the yellow areas happen to be rich Western countries, including the US and the UK, whereas red covers almost the entirety of the global South, with countries like South Sudan, Afghanistan, and Somalia daubed especially dark.

This geographical division fits squarely with mainstream views, which see corruption as the scourge of the developing world (cue cliché images of dictators in Africa and bribery in India).

But is this storyline accurate?

Many international development organisations hold that persistent poverty in the global South is caused largely by corruption among local public officials. In 2003 these concerns led to the United Nations Convention against Corruption, which asserts that, while corruption exists in all countries, this “evil phenomenon” is “most destructive” in the global South, where it is a “key element in economic underperformance and a major obstacle to poverty alleviation and development”.

There’s only one problem with this theory: it’s just not true.

Corruption, superpower style

According to the World Bank, corruption in the form of bribery and theft by government officials, the main target of the UN Convention, costs developing countries between $20 billion and $40 billion each year. That’s a lot of money. But it’s an extremely small proportion — only about 3% — of the total illicit flows that leak out of public coffers. Tax avoidance, on the other hand, accounts for more than $900 billion each year, money that multinational corporations steal from developing countries through practices such as trade mispricing.

This enormous outflow of wealth is facilitated by a shadowy financial system that includes tax havens, paper companies, anonymous ac-

News

By Jason Hickel

counts, and fake foundations, with the City of London at the very heart of it. Over 30% of global foreign direct investment is booked through tax havens, which now collectively hide one sixth of the world’s total private wealth.

This is a massive — indeed, fundamental — cause of poverty in the developing world, yet it does not register in the mainstream definition of corruption, is absent from the UN Convention, and rarely if ever appears on the agenda of international development organisations.

With the City of London at the centre of the global tax haven web, how does the UK end up with a clean CPI? The question is all the more baffling given that the city is immune from many of the nation’s democratic laws and free of all parliamentary oversight. As a result of this special status, the city has maintained a number of quaint plutocratic traditions. Take its electoral process, for instance: more than 70% of the votes cast during council elections are cast not by residents, but by corporations — mostly banks and financial firms. And the bigger the corporation, the more votes they get, with the largest firms getting 79 votes each. This takes US-style corporate personhood to another level.

To be fair, this kind of corruption is not entirely out of place in a country where a feudalistic royal family owns 120 000 hectares of the nation’s land and sucks up about £40 million of public funds each year. Then there’s the parliament, where the House of Lords is filled not by election but by appointment, with 92 seats inherited by aristocratic families, 26 set aside for the leaders of the country’s largest religious sect, and dozens of others divvied up for sale to multi-millionaires.

Corruption in the US is only slightly less blatant. Whereas Congressional seats are not yet available for outright purchase, the recent Citizens United vs FEC ruling allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns to ensure that their preferred candidates get elected, a practice justified under the Orwellian banner of “free speech”.

The poverty factor

The UN Convention is correct to say that poverty in developing countries is caused by corruption. But the corruption we ought to be

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most concerned about has its root in the countries that are coloured yellow on the CPI map, not red.

The tax haven system is not the only culprit.

We know that the global financial crisis of 2008 was precipitated by systemic corruption among public officials in the US who were intimately tied to the interests of Wall Street firms. In addition to shifting trillions of dollars from public coffers into private pockets through bailouts, the crisis wiped out a huge chunk of the global economy and had a devastating effect on developing countries when demand for exports dried up, causing massive waves of unemployment.

A similar story can be told about the Libor scandal in the UK, when major London banks colluded to rig interest rates so as to suck about $100 billion of free money from people even well beyond Britain’s shores. How could either of these scandals be defined as anything but the misuse of public power for private benefit?

The global reach of this kind of corruption makes petty bribery and theft in the developing world seem parochial by comparison.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. If we really want to understand how corruption drives poverty in developing countries, we need to start by looking at the institutions that control the global economy, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the policies that these institutions foisted on the global South, following the Washington Consensus, caused per capita income growth rates to collapse by almost 50%. Economist Robert Pollin has estimated that during this period developing countries lost about $480 billion a year in potential GDP. It would be difficult to overstate the human devastation that these numbers represent. Yet Western corporations have benefitted tremendously from this process, gaining access to new markets, cheaper labour and raw materials, and fresh avenues for capital flight.

These international institutions masquerade as mechanisms for public governance, but they are deeply anti-democratic; this is why they can get away with imposing policies that so directly violate public interest. Voting power in the IMF and World Bank is apportioned so that developing countries — the vast majority of the world’s population — together hold less than 50% of the vote, while the United States Treasury wields de facto veto power. The leaders of these institutions are not elected, but appointed by the US

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and Europe, with not a few military bosses and Wall Street executives among them.

Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank, has publicly denounced these institutions as among the least transparent he has ever encountered. They also suffer from a shocking lack of accountability, as they enjoy special “sovereign immunity” status that protects them against public lawsuit when their policies fail, regardless of how much harm they cause.

Shifting the blame

If these patterns of governance were true of any given nation in the global South, the West would cry corruption. Yet such corruption is normalised in the command centres of the global economy, perpetuating poverty in the developing world while Transparency International directs our attention elsewhere.

Even if we do decide to focus on localised corruption in developing countries, we have to accept that it does not exist in a geopolitical vacuum. Many of history’s most famous dictators — like Augusto Pinochet, Mobutu Sese Seko, and Hosni Mubarak — were supported by a steady flow of Western aid. Today, not a few of the world’s most corrupt regimes have been installed or bolstered by the US, among them Afghanistan, South Sudan, and allegedly the warlords of Somalia — three of the darkest states on the CPI map.

This raises an interesting question: which is more corrupt, the petty dictatorship or the superpower that installs it? Unfortunately, the UN Convention conveniently ignores these dynamics, and the CPI map leads us to believe, incorrectly, that each country’s corruption is neatly bounded by national borders.

Corruption is a major driver of poverty, to be sure. But if we are to be serious about tackling this problem, the CPI map will not be much help. The biggest cause of poverty in developing countries is not localised bribery and theft, but the corruption that is endemic to the global governance system, the tax-haven network, and the banking sectors of New York and London.

It’s time to flip the corruption myth on its head and start demanding transparency where it counts.

Dr Jason Hickel lectures at the London School of Economics and serves as an adviser to /The Rules

European and world affairs

We are left to rot as elite coin it in News

SOON after the global financial crisis erupted in 2008, I warned that unless the right policies were adopted, Japanese-style malaise – slow growth and near-stagnant incomes for years to come – could set in.

While leaders on both sides of the Atlantic claimed that they had learned the lessons of Japan, they promptly proceeded to repeat some of the same mistakes. Now, even a key former United States official, the economist Larry Summers, is warning of secular stagnation.

The basic point that I raised a half-decade ago was that, in a fundamental sense, the US economy was sick even before the crisis: it was only an asset-price bubble, created through lax regulation and low interest rates, that had made the economy seem robust. Beneath the surface, numerous problems were festering: growing inequality; an unmet need for structural reform (moving from a manufacturing-based economy to services and adapting to changing global comparative advantages); persistent global imbalances; and a financial system more attuned to speculating than to making investments that would create jobs, increase productivity, and redeploy surpluses to maximize social returns.

Policymakers’ response to the crisis failed to address these issues; worse, it exacerbated some of them and created new ones – and not just in the US. The result has been increased indebtedness in many countries, as the collapse of GDP undermined government revenues.

Moreover, underinvestment in both the public and private sector has created a generation of young people who have spent years idle and increasingly alienated at a point in their lives when they should have been honing their skills and increasing their productivity.

On both sides of the Atlantic, GDP is likely to grow considerably faster this year than in 2013.

But, before leaders who embraced austerity policies open the champagne and toast themselves, they should examine where we are and consider the near-irreparable damage that these policies have caused.

Austerity policies

Every downturn eventually comes to an end.

The mark of a good policy is that it succeeds in making the downturn shallower and shorter than it otherwise would have been. The mark of the austerity policies that many governments embraced is that they made the downturn far deeper and longer than was necessary, with long-lasting consequences.

Real (inflation-adjusted) GDP per capita is lower in most of the North Atlantic than it was in 2007; in Greece, the economy has shrunk by an estimated 23%. Germany, the top-performing European country, has recorded miserly 0.7% average annual growth over the last six years.

The US economy is still roughly 15% smaller than it would have been had growth continued even on the moderate pre-crisis trajectory.

But even these numbers do not tell the full

Page 19 NIPSA NEWS

By Joseph Stiglitz

story of how bad things are, because GDP is not a good measure of success. Far more relevant is what is happening to household incomes. Median real income in the US is below its level in 1989, a quarter-century ago; median income for full-time male workers is lower now than it was more than 40 years ago.

Some, like the economist Robert Gordon, have suggested that we should adjust to a new reality in which long-term productivity growth will be significantly below what it has been over the past century. Given economists’ miserable record – reflected in the run-up to the crisis – for even three-year predictions, no one should have much confidence in a crystal ball that forecasts decades into the future. But this much seems clear: unless government policies change, we are in for a long period of disappointment.

Markets are not self-correcting. The underlying fundamental problems that I outlined earlier could get worse – and many are. Inequality leads to weak demand; widening inequality weakens demand even more; and, in most countries, including the US, the crisis has only worsened inequality.

The trade surpluses of northern Europe have increased, even as China’s have moderated.

Most important, markets have never been very good at achieving structural transformations quickly on their own; the transition from agriculture to manufacturing, for example, was anything but smooth; on the contrary, it was accompanied by significant social dislocation and the Great Depression.

This time is no different, but in some ways it could be worse: the sectors that should be growing, reflecting the needs and desires of citizens, are services like education and health, which traditionally have been publicly financed, and for good reason. But, rather than government facilitating the transition, austerity is inhibiting it.

Malaise is better than a recession, and a recession is better than a depression. But the difficulties that we are facing now are not the result of the inexorable laws of economics, to which we simply must adjust, as we would to a natural disaster, like an earthquake or tsunami.

They are not even a kind of penance that we have to pay for past sins – though, to be sure, the neoliberal policies that have prevailed for the past three decades have much to do with our current predicament.

Instead, our current difficulties are the result of flawed policies. There are alternatives. But we will not find them in the self-satisfied complacency of the elites, whose incomes and stock portfolios are once again soaring. Only some people, it seems, must adjust to a permanently lower standard of living. Unfortunately, those people happen to be most people. © Project Syndicate

European and world affairs

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FREE THE 21 THE International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) deplores the denial of bail once again for the 21 Cambodian garment workers who remain in prison.

An appeal was immediately filed with the Supreme Court. In the meantime, however, the investigative judge will set a trial date, which could be weeks but perhaps months from now. Some of the jailed workers recently started a hunger strike to protest their detention.

“Trade unions around the world have sent a clear message to the government that these workers must be released.

“We are deeply disappointed that the government continues to detain these workers for their participation in the strikes and protests that took place in January this year. We remain particu-

larly concerned for Vorn Pao, the president of IDEA, who remains in jail despite serious health concerns. We fully expect the government to release the workers and drop the charges,” explained Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the ITUC. The ITUC undertook a highlevel mission to Cambodia in January to call for the release of the jailed workers, for an independent investigation into the killing and wounding of workers in January, for all parties to respect freedom of association, and for the government to increase the minimum wage from the unsustainable $100 per month as soon as possible. The ITUC, together with IndustriALL and UNI, and with international and Cambodian NGOs, will continue to work to until these goals are reached.

Congress in collective bargaining complaint to Euro Human Rights court

THE Irish Congress of Trade Unions has made a formal complaint to the European Court of Human Rights on the state’s failure to uphold an effective right to collective bargaining, in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The complaint was lodged in the name of Congress and the Technical, Engineering & Electrical Union (TEEU) and was prepared by John Hendy QC. In a January 30 lecture in Dublin, Mr Hendy detailed "major flaws" in the 2013 Supreme Court ruling in McGowan, which resulted in

“tens of thousands of workers being denied the effective right to collective bargaining, which is an essential element of Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.” “The 2013 ruling struck down an important collective bargaining mechanism which had been in force for over 70 years. Its effect has been devastating for the Irish workers concerned, it is bad for the Irish economy and it has placed Ireland in breach of international law.

Furthermore the judgment contains a number of major flaws,” Mr Hendy said.

NIPSA Developing World Fund – could you become a regular donor?

News

MORE than £560,000 has been donated to self-help projects around the world since the NIPSA Developing World Fund was set up in June 1993, it has been revealed.

Assistant Secretary Geraldine Alexander told NIPSA News that this support and “show of solidarity” for “many extremely poor and vulnerable people” was only possible through the big-hearted contributions made by donors each month through Give As You Earn and covenants.

She said: “To date we have 250 donors who contribute regularly to the fund. Just think how much more we could do if more members agreed to contribute to this charitable fund.

“We are asking for help in encouraging as many members as

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possible in their branches to become regular donors.”

Ms Alexander added: “Throughout the world millions of profoundly poor people are struggling for basic subsistence.

At NIPSA we believe that global poverty is a moral challenge on the same scale as the dreadful working conditions and economic exploitation that moved the pioneer trade unionists to action 200 or so years ago.

“We are delighted that some members share this view – we hope others will follow by making a regular donation.”

Check out some of the projects supported at: www.nipsa.org.uk/NIPSA-in-action/global-solidarity/developingworld-fund