Inside
Victory for anti-Nazis Stopping the Nazi 'National Front' in March
10 10 Reasons Reasons to to Axe Axe the the Hated Hated Tax Tax
Sports Sports & & Social Social 2013 2013
City and County of Swansea
Review What's happening with Job Evaluation and Terms & Conditions? It is important to reiterate that the pay model has been imposed and will not be changed unless there is wholesale opposition to the model by all trade union members via a ballot. Our legal advice also confirms that the pay model conforms with equality legislation. Joint unions have requested 12 months protection for those members losing less than 10% of their salary, 18 months for those losing between 10% and 19.99% and 2 years for those losing 20% or more. On a separate note since the previous newsletter joint trade unions have been discussing outstanding terms and conditions items such as shift allowances and call out. Progress is being made and when we have a final outcome we will inform you.. We have also failed to reach agreement on the following policies: flexitime, redeployment, appeals, voluntary and flexible retirement, severe weather.
Contract changes? UNISON alone has raised some serious concerns about contractual issues which would have serious affected all members. Again progress is being made and an update will appear in the next newsletter. The Authority claims that 18% of staff will lose money because of single status. This is probably correct in terms of the pay model. However when you add in the losses incurred as a result of proposed changes to terms and conditions we believe the final percentage losses to all staff will total at least 40%. This takes into account mileage rate reduction, loss of retainer, reduction of hours, reduction in overtime rates to name but a few.
Delays to JE? Finally it has come to our attention that some people are of the opinion that Unison is delaying implementation of job evaluation. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have quite rightly raised serious contractual issues recently, which were falsely tied to JE, but hopefully we are close to agreement on those. The main reason for the delay is the difficult issue of equal pay.
UNISON nursery nurses in Swansea schools held a protest outside County Hall recently over the loss of thousands of pounds from their pay following JE. Under the new conditions around 170 nursery nurses and classroom assistants will face swingeing pay cuts and reduced hours of work. The low-paid workers could lose between ÂŁ3,000 and ÂŁ4,000 from their yearly salary.
Public Service Not Private Profit
The Authority has to decide how to treat the 800 equal pay claimants who rejected the equal pay offer in 2007. Also the Authority has to consider any potential equal pay claims from new starters since 2007 plus those who have submitted claims post March 2010. Quite rightly, given the serious financial times we are experiencing, the Authority is taking time to decide the best way forward on this issue therefore this is more likely to have caused delay rather than ourselves. UNISON will continue to negotiate to move towards the level of pay our members deserve, and will resist further changes to terms and conditions which will make our members lives harder.
April 2013
Case Study: the impact of the hated tax The Evening Post recently reported on the case of Megan Wheatland from Bonymaen. Megan is a recent widow and lives in a three-bedroomed house with her 13-year-old daughter Deanndra, and is waiting to see if the bedroom tax will affect her. She told the Evening Post she was surviving on £40 a fortnight after meeting household bills. "I'm on bereaved parent's allowance so it hasn't happened to me yet, but we are already struggling. I am in the house with jumpers and a coat on, my daughter has given up most of her outof-school activities, like drama and the Girl Guides because I can't afford the subs or the petrol to get her there." Megan is getting by, she says, thanks to support from her brother and friends. "They have been angels, but I worry how I will able to pay them back." The 53-year old suffers from arthritis, and while she is looking for work she says her illness makes it tough, and fear for the future is an added burden. "I don't sleep, and the other night, if my daughter wasn't asleep in the next room I wouldn't have been here the next morning. They are hitting the poorest in society, when the Government should be working from the top down." "The council put me in a three-bedroom house, and even if there was somewhere smaller to move to I couldn't afford the removal firm. I've been here more than nine years. My memories of my husband are here because he died here." ''They make you feel you are entitled to a roof over your head, but not to a home."
the bedroom tax
10 Reasons
to Axe the Tax The bedroom tax came into force in April and is likely to affect over 3,600 households in Swansea. These are households in social housing which, under government criteria, are considered to be ‘under-occupied’. From April these households will have to find an average £9-10 a week if they have a single ‘spare’ room, £16-17 a week if they have more than one. The extra for the bedroom tax will cut into their weekly budget for food and other essentials.
For council workers in Housing Benefits this means additional stress implementing a hated tax, facing tenants victims to it and possibly children. But the pressure will be on councils to ref being party to potential evictions. Unison to do so. Review explains why you should oppose it and They are already retreating what you can do.
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1 It snatches from the poorest
Iain Duncan Smith has been forced to make embarrassing concessions. Some foster carers wi exempted along with some of those serving in armed forces—if they meet strict conditions. It sho we can force them back. But around 99 percen those who would have been hit by the tax still will b so we need to keep fighting.
The bedroom tax hits people in council or social housing who claim housing benefit—more than 650,000 households. They will lose 14 percent of the benefit if they are deemed to have one spare room, and 25 percent for two or more. Households affected will lose an average of It deepens the housing crisis £14 a week and many will lose much more—well over £1,000 a year. Some tenants will be forced out of their There are more than twice as many rooms in Britain homes. there are people. Welfare minister Lord Freud three spare bedrooms in London plus a whole sp The rooms aren’t ‘spare’ eight-bedroom mansion. The bedroom tax will p David Cameron has four bedrooms in Downing Street more people out of council housing and make it ea and another ten in Chequers—all at our expense. But he for councils to sell the homes off. This will shift e begrudges poor families every bit of space.Some people more housing stock to private landlords—and will lose money for having tiny box rooms. Children will be chaos of the market. expected to share with siblings regardless of gender until It will make landlords richer they are 12, and siblings of the same sex until they are 16. If their parents are separated, children will have to sleep The government claims the bedroom tax will raise £ on the couch when staying with one parent. million. That’s less than the £607 million than bailed bank RBS gave its top bankers in bonuses this y There’s nowhere to move to The real winners will be private landlords. M Some 4,700 tenants will be hit by the bedroom tax in Hull. tenants forced into smaller homes on higher, priv But there are only 73 smaller council homes in the town. rents—and be forced to claim more in benefits a Tory and Labour governments have spent three decades result. This will go straight to the landlords.R getting rid of council housing and not building more. Now controls used to keep landlords in check until Marg they are punishing tenants for having nowhere to go.
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4 It hits disabled people hard
There are things the Council and othe
•They could simply classify properties as 1-b •
There are disabled adults in more than two thirds of the This would exempt Swansea tenants from the They could publicly that they will not evict t households that will be hit by the bedroom tax and disabled children in more. Disabled people are more would spare tenants the stress of worrying a likely to need their own room and to need benefits. They could lose homes that are specially adapted to suit their Get involved in the fightback—go to bene conditions. The government has put in place just £30 Swansea Neath Port Talbot Against Bedroo million to help disabled claimants adapt—a tiny fraction of https://www.facebook.com/groups/48542 the money it is taking away from them. Under pressure, Swansea Anti-Cuts Campaign welfare minister Iain Duncan Smith has “clarified” that https://www.facebook.com/groups/14196 councils can make exceptions for some disabled
Swansea says no to the Nazi National Front Four-hundred people came together in March under the banner of Swansea United Against Fascism (UAF), to show the National Front (NF) that their racist and fascist filth were not welcome here. The NF had called a ‘white-pride’ march in the city a couple of weeks earlier. Swansea UAF organised a brilliant broadbased counter-demonstration in response at short notice. To loud cheers Peter Hain MP told the assembled demonstrators that “fascism has no place in Swansea, no place in Wales and no place in our society”. Amarjite Singh, President of the Wales Trades Union Congress and from the postal-workers CWU union, declared that the trade union movement had a proud record of fighting against racism and fascism. He was followed during the afternoon by speakers from many trade unions, including the general union Unite, the local government workers’ union UNISON, the railway workers’ RMT, the teachers’ NUT, the postal workers’ UCW and the civil servants’ PCS. LGBT Swansea also joined the crowd and called on all those oppressed by society to unite in opposition to racism and fascism.
fuse Thatcher abolished them in 1988. We should fight to get them back.
8 It’s part of a wider attack
two ll be the ows nt of be—
The Tories plan to slash council tax benefits from April and replace Disability Living Allowance with the stingier Personal Independence Payment. Hundreds of thousands of claimants will be “re-assessed” by money-grabbing firm, Atos. Most working age benefits are frozen below inflation. The Tories’ Universal Credit will cap benefits and mean hundreds of families won’t be able to afford to live in London. Children have already been pulled out of schools in London and sent to the north of England. Beating the bedroom tax can n as help to thwart the Tories’ benefits blitz. has pare Councils could block the tax push asier Some housing associations have reclassified even bedrooms as box-rooms so they won’t be classed as the “spare”. Dundee council has voted to say it won’t evict anyone who can’t pay the bedroom tax. Councils and landlords will be expected to evict poor tenants from their homes when they fall behind on rent. But they can be put under pressure to say no. £500 d out Workers can stop evictions year. Many In Spain unions of locksmiths and firefighters voted to vate refuse to evict people who can’t pay mortgages. The as a firefighters’ slogan is, “We rescue people, not banks”. Rent This is the kind of movement we have to build against garet the bedroom tax and benefits cap.
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er social housing landlords can do:
bedroom. This has been done by other social-landlords. e bedroom tax and spare them a huge cut to their income tenants for not being able to pay the bedroom tax. This about losing their homes.
efitjustice.wordpress.com om Tax 26158178178/
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Leading members of the Labour Party and Plaid Cymru spoke too. David Phillips (pictured above), Leader of Swansea Council, explained how Council officers had done all they could to prevent the fascist NF from marching through Swansea’s streets: "We have made the Council's position clear. Fascists are not welcome here. We refused permission for them to be on council land and they are only here because of legal threats against the Council" He later announced that Swansea Council would be seeking legal grounds for refusing any future fascist attempt to demonstrate in the City. The efforts to stop them marching had been largely successful. The 60-odd NF supporters, mostly from England, had been escorted by the police, by bus, to an obscure spot in a pen behind the Museum. For 45 minutes they were forced to listen to 400 anti-fascists chanting “there are many, many more of us that you”. This was a far cry from the NF’s declared aim of a 'white pride' march through the streets of the city. A heartening sight was the large number of young people from Swansea who joined the demo, including a good number of black and Asian people. This was a reflection of the work that the National Union of Students had put into organising support for the UAF demo. But it wasn’t just students. Many of Swansea’s young citizens, black and white, turned out to show their disgust for fascism. After less than an hour the National Front supporters were bussed back to the railway station by the police, to the drumming of the local samba band and chants of “Swansea streets are our streets.” In a victory speech when the NF had gone Marianne Owens, Vice President of PCS Wales said, "South Wales has a proud tradition of fighting fascism from stopping Mosely in the 30's and volunteers fighting Franco in Spain through to the present day. In the last three years we have seen off the EDL twice and now the Nazi NF. We are upholding the tradition."
The NF in South Wales in 2013: Nazism and violence are open
It is with great sadness that we learned of the death of two of our Swansea Unison Branch colleagues. Heather Barry was a Branch Steward who worked in Rosecross Residential Home. Peter Bockarie was a socialworker and a contact for our black and ethnic minority members. From our perspective we would like to pass on our condolences to Heather’s and Peter’s families and acknowledge the help and support they provided to Unison members as well as to fellow Unison colleagues within the Branch.
Sports & Social2013
In Memory
Disneyland Paris (FULLY BOOKED) - May 26th – 29th 2013 Prices from £140pp Stratford Upon Avon - June 22nd Prices from £4.00 Oxford Day Trip - August 17th Prices from £4.00 Ffos Las: Real Ale Festival - September 15th Prices from £12.00 London Day Trip - November 16th Prices from £9.00 Children’s Christmas Party*** - December 7th (tbc) Price £4.00 (tbc) Bath Christmas Market - December 14th Prices from £5.00
***Please note that you must be a Unison member for your child to be eligible to attend the Christmas Party. Any of the above trips can also be paid for by instalments
YOUR UNION
@SwanseaUNISON27 A new Twitter page for UNISON Young Members working for City & County of Swansea has been set up. If any Young Members would like to get involved in the branch please contact Benjamin Johns (Tel: 07598 251181)
Booking forms are available on the Sports & Social website (www.suss.me.uk). If anyone would like further information with regards to any of the trips/events listed or about how to join Sports & Social, please contact Stuart Page at stuart.page@swansea.gov.uk or on 07854 974130.
Use your vote in the NEC elections! The elections for the NEC of Unison start on Monday 22 April and run until Friday 24 May. These elections are important as Unison is the biggest public sector union in Britain. They give us a chance to vote for the leadership we feel is best suited to stand up for members in the future. In the context of real pay cut being cut by 20 percent since 2008; jobs axed leaving fewer people with ever greater workloads; public services being destroyed and the NHS under threat of ever greater privatisation these elections come at an important time. All members are encouraged to vote to influence the course of our union in the future.
Contact us:
Unison Office The Guildhall Swansea SA1 4PE 01792 635271
unison@swansea.gov.uk
Branch Secretary: Mike Davies / Asst. Secretary: Ian Alexander Unison has over 100 trained union reps throughout the council, schools and FE colleges. We will advise, support and represent you collectively and individually on issues from sickness, disciplinaries to legal matters inside and outside the workplace. If you need advice or representation please contact the Senior Steward(s) for your department below or go to your workplace steward. Alternatively please contact the branch office. Social Services Alison O'Kane - 07856 641234 Alison Davies - 07941 757853 Martin Chapman - 01792 635271 Education Pat Lopez - 07557 560097 Mark Otten - 07789 485009 Eve Morse - 07532 232873 (after 3.30 pm) Chris Bell - 07967 551025
Sports & Social website: www.suss.me.uk
Regeneration/Housing John Llewellyn - 07557 560093 Roger Owen - 07847 942458 Gower College Ron Job - 07963 454041 Resources Gareth Parry - 07813 534627 Housing Sallyanne Taylor - 07825 401711
www.unison.co.uk
This newsletter is produced by the City and County of Swansea Unison Branch. Any letters, comments or suggestions for articles should be posted to the branch address or emailed to Unison@swansea.gov.uk. Correspondence is not guaranteed to be published and contents may not necessarily reflect Unison policy.