Inside
Universal Credit: a drive to poverty
SUTR Conference: Tories cause austerity, not migrants
Employment Tribunals: Unison wins for all workers
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City and County of Swansea
Review #SaveOurServices
UNISON condemns the Tory Pay-Freeze One in ten council workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are paid below the living wage, according to an analysis from UNISON released in November. UNISON is calling on the government to fund councils so they can become living wage employers. If it did, it would lift more than 60,000 cleaners, library assistants, residential and home care workers and other local authority staff out of poverty. The new rate for the UK is £8.75 per hour, and for London it is £10.20 per hour. The bottom hourly rate in local government is £7.78. UNISON head of local government Heather Wakefield said: “Poverty pay should have no place in local government. It is shocking that so many public service workers, who are providing valuable services to communities up and down the country, are paid so little. Over three-quarters of local government workers are women. Low pay is contributing to the growing gender pay gap. The Chancellor must come up with the cash in the Budget to fund a decent, above inflation, pay rise for all public service workers.” However we need far more than just words of opposition to the devastating impact of the pay freeze of continued cuts, imposed by local
Hundreds of Welsh Unison members demonstrated against cuts and the pay freeze in Barry this month. Watch this video of our #SaveOurServices rally and march and interviews here: https://quik.gopro.com/v/hIDbfmF0Fj/ councils both Tory, Labour and Plaid. 100’s of Unison members marched in North and South Wales this month against the pay-cap and austerity. Up to 2,000 people marched against the public sector pay cap in Edinburgh last month. The very high results for the recent postal workers CWU strike ballot and the civil servants PCS consultative
ballot show there is a mood to fight austerity. Every day the Tories remain in office is another day of cuts. Two cabinet ministers have now resigned from their posts in the space of a week in November. Disgracefully both remain as MPs. The government is in an even deeper crisis and a real fight over pay could push them over the cliff.
Are you a victim of Sexual Harassment? From the exposure of Harvey Weinstock to the ongoing crisis engulfing Parliament, the issue of violence against women at work and sexual harassment has hit the headlines. The exposure of the abuse faced by women in all it's forms is a welcome development, especially as it is clear many woman will no longer suffer in silence. This is a wide-spread issue facing very many woman in all types of workplaces. If you have faced sexual harassment we urge you to consider speaking to your union rep in confidence to discuss what you can do. Further information is available here: https://www.unison.org.uk/news/article/2017/02/sexual-harassment-is-rife-at-work/
Public Service Not Private Profit
November 2017
UNISON legal victory sees employment tribunal fees scrapped The Supreme Court – the UK’s highest court – has unanimously ruled in July that the government was acting unlawfully and unconstitutionally when it introduced employment tribunal fees four years ago. From 26th July, anyone who has been treated illegally or unfairly at work will no longer have to pay to take their employers to court – as a direct result of UNISON’s legal challenge. Refund The government will also have to refund more than £27m to the thousands of people charged for taking claims to tribunals since July 2013, when fees were introduced by then Lord Chancellor Chris Grayling. Anyone in England, Scotland and Wales wanting to pursue a case against their employer has had to find as much as £1,200. This has been a huge expense for many low-paid employees, says UNISON. Reacting to the decision, UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis said: “The government is not above the law. But when ministers introduced fees they were disregarding laws many centuries old, and showing little concern for employees seeking justice following illegal treatment at work. “The government has been acting unlawfully, and has been proved wrong – not just on simple economics, but on constitutional law and basic fairness too. Victory “It’s a major victory for employees everywhere. UNISON took the case on behalf of anyone who’s ever been wronged at work, or who might be in future. Unscrupulous employers no longer have the upper hand. “These unfair fees have let lawbreaking bosses off the hook these past four years, and left badly treated staff with no choice but to put up or shut up. “We’ll never know how many people missed out because they couldn’t afford the expense of fees. But at last this tax on justice has been lifted.” Assistant general secretary Bronwyn McKenna added: “The Supreme Court correctly criticised the government’s failure when it set the fees to consider the public benefits flowing from the
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enforcement of legal rights enacted by Parliament. “The effective enforcement of these rights is fundamental to parliamentary democracy and integral to the development of UK law. UNISON’s case has helped clarify the law and gives certainty to citizens and businesses in their everyday lives. Fees Employment tribunal fees were introduced on 29 July 2013 and started at around £160 for a type A claim, such as wage claims, breach of contract, and £250 for a type B claim, covering issues such as unfair dismissal, race and sex discrimination. There was also a further hearing fee of £230 for Type A and £950 for Type B claims. Appeals at the employment appeal tribunal attracted an additional £400 lodging and £1,200 hearing fee. The seven Supreme Court judges ridiculed the government’s misunderstanding of “elementary economics, and plain common sense”, when it claimed higher fees would mean increased demand. Justice The judges also said fees were set so high, it “has had a deterrent effect upon discrimination claims, among others”, and also put off more genuine cases, than the so-called vexatious claims the government claimed fees were meant to deter. The Supreme Court stressed that the administration of justice is not merely a public service, where courts and tribunals are only of value to the “users” who appear before them and who obtain a remedy. It said access to justice is of value to society as a whole, especially where cases establish legal rules and principles of general importance. The Court said UNISON’s evidence showed the fall in claims when fees came in was “so sharp, so substantial and so sustained” that they could not reasonably be afforded by those on low to middle incomes. It also held that fees particularly deterred the kind of ‘low-value’ claims generally brought by the most vulnerable worker
The horrific consequences of th over 80,000 people who are in w Although Universal Credit (UC) has been ‘live’ in Swansea since July, 2015, the impact has, so far, been limited because the claimant group has been limited. However, UC goes ‘full-service’ in Swansea on 13th December, 2017, as part of the national rollout and from that point, a myriad of claimants will be affected; more often than not, the effects of UC on people’s lives will be entirely negative, if not outright disastrous. As the government has ignored the growing call to pause and reflect on a cruel and punitive system, the only option is to try and ensure that as many people as possible are aware of the potential effects of UC roll-out. When considering the ‘policy intentions’ behind UC in light of some of the principal features of the benefit, the real intention – to punish those who fall into the Social Security system – becomes all too apparent. ‘Simplification of the Social Security system’ For at least the first ten years of UC, there have been/ are/ will be three systems existing alongside one another. The government and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) continually state that UC will simplify everything from claiming to administering the Social Security system, without ever acknowledging that UC is replacing just six of fifty two benefits. In addition, UC will have to continue to work in conjunction with some benefits (benefits paid on the basis of national insurance contributions, for the main part), and already reports are flooding in of DWP misadvice and ignorance. Claimants are being told that contribution based benefits no longer exist, that they can only
More than 400,000 more children are set to fall into poverty in the next four years if the Government pursues its planned tax and benefit reforms. So says the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) who forecast that under current plans for changes to benefits, including the rollout of universal credit, absolute child poverty is set to increase from 27 per cent to 31 per cent by 2021.
Discredit
he Tories roll-out of Universal Credit has hit the headlines recently. The changes affect work and many of our friends and family. A UNISON member explains the changes: claim in certain ways, that they aren’t entitled, for example, and that’s only at the point of claim before the administration process begins. All the problems with the notion of simplification are simply compounded by the legislation, which is incredibly unwieldy and complicated (several sets of regulations, all amended several times, with different parts being enacted at different times). There is already evidence that the DWP is having difficulty using its own legal framework and there isn’t any doubt in the minds of advisers that this can only contribute to already unacceptable rates of error in decision making. Simplification? ‘Increased work incentives and mirroring the world of work’ This is a perverse claim given the swathes of cuts that have already been made to UC for workers. Work allowances (the amount claimants can earn before UC is withdrawn) have been at least halved for most groups of workers and removed entirely for others since 2016; up to May, 2017, 55% - 60% of adults in poverty live in a working household (a 27% increase over the past decade). Coupled with cuts to help with housing costs, a complete lack of will to do anything about the out-of-control costs of private-rented housing, rules which treat both workers and self-employed people as if they have earnings they have never had, and a system that cannot deal with any claimant who is not paid on a monthly basis, UC does nothing at all to ‘incentivise’ work (a patronising and mendacious term in itself) or to help those who are employed.
Reduced poverty (both in and out of work)’ Perhaps the oddest statement that could be made about UC is that it is a system that reduces poverty. It is difficult to see how anybody could believe that a benefit with the following cuts actually built into its structure is based around reducing poverty: a waiting time of at least six weeks for a first payment; seven waiting days with no entitlement at all (seven days of rent and childcare that will never be clawed back); a Benefit Cap which affects workers for the first time; a Bedroom Tax that continues to cause misery; the freezing of benefit rates for four years since 2016; removal of payment of the work related activity element for those too sick to work; huge cuts to additional amounts for disabled claimants; cuts to elements for children; removal of housing costs support for those under 22; no entitlement at all for most European nationals who are looking for work. This is to name but a few. Lone parents, young people, people with disabilities or sickness, unemployed people – all are worse off on UC than within the current system. ‘Reduced levels of fraud and error’ Given the level of political and media vitriol that has drip-fed the striver/ shirker dichotomy (and, indeed, myth) for so many years, you could be forgiven for showing surprise at learning that the fraud and error rate made up 1.9% of Social Security expenditure in 2015/16 (accounting for some £3.3 billion). It is not a well-known fact that this figure includes claimant and DWP error as well as fraud. What is less surprising, given the ongoing stigmatising of Social
Security claimants, is that in the same year, the tax gap in the UK stood at £36 billion (or 6.5%). Whilst ignoring the tax gap, the government and the DWP tries to argue that fraud and error rates will reduce because everything under UC will be done online, and HMRC and DWP will work more closely together. It is, however, far more likely that the figure will decrease because of an overall rolling back of claimants’ rights. All overpayments of UC are recoverable even when the DWP causes the overpayment and the claimant couldn’t know they were being overpaid. Many decisions within UC have no appeal rights and so the claimant is at the mercy of DWP discretion (rarely unfettered). These points merely scratch the surface of the problems claimants face within the UC system. Anybody who has a change of circumstances after 13th December, which would mean a new benefit claim, will be moved over to UC without any ‘transitional protection’, so their income will immediately fall to UC levels rather than remaining at their current benefit levels. This means that we will begin to see the misery caused by UC take effect almost immediately. It is not enough to ask the government to pause and reconsider roll-out of UC, we must demand that a system likely to cause misery and destitution is stopped altogether.
https://www.turn2us.org.uk/Benefit-guides/ Universal-Credit/What-is-Universal-Credit http://revenuebenefits.org.uk/universalcredit/guidance/who-can-claim-universalcredit/
Building a mass-movement against racism A call to build a mass movement against racism went out from the Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) conference in central London in October attended by Swansea Unison members. It came in the context of Donald Trump and Theresa May ramping up racism against migrants and Muslims —and the threat of the renewed threat of the far right across Europe. Kevin Courtney, NEU education union joint general secretary, said, “It’s everyone’s obligation to be part of the movement—we can end racism.” The conference brought together activists from across Britain who've been organising against racism. EU nationals rights As well as hearing from Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott & other leading figures, over 1300 people heard first hand accounts of the horrific, avoidable disaster at Grenfell and its aftermath, those who have born the brunt of the rise in Islamophobic hate crime, and EU nationals whose rights are being threatened by the British government.
YOUR UNION
The need to combat the global rise of racism & the far right was addressed, with leading anti-fascists from Germany, Austria and Greece reporting and author David Neiwert analysing the new far-right mobilisations in the US emboldened by Trump’s Islamophobia and racism.
The powerful message from the conference was that when we bring all these struggles together and fight as one, we can be effective in resisting racism in our workplaces and our communities.
Migrant workers, refugees and Muslims are constantly being scapegoated by politicians and the right wing press.
We are repeatedly told that Further reports of the migrants and refugees are to conference can be found here: blame for undermining wages and overstretching http://bit.ly/2zf5O1Y public services when in reality austerity is to blame. SUTR Trade Union
Conference - 10th Feb
class communities must stand united together. But the Tories, much of the media, UKIP and the far right have all set out to divide us. The trade unions are the bedrock of the anti-racist movement. We want to build on the great work that the trade unions are doing. Come to the conference and join in the debate about how we give confidence to antiracists in every workplace.
Black and Asian people face The Tories are trying to use discrimination in employment EU nationals as bargaining and the everyday reality of A link to the conference is chips in Brexit negotiations. institutional racism. Working here: http://bit.ly/2AdEA9S
Contact us:
Unison Office, Rm 153-G, The Guildhall, Swansea 01792 635271
unison@swansea.gov.uk Branch Secretary: Chris Cooze
Unison has many 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) or Contact for your department below or go to your workplace steward. Alternatively please contact the branch office. SENIOR STEWARD SOCIAL SERVICES ALISON DAVIES 01792 636351 / 07941757853 SIMON JONES 637559/ 07858411470 DAVID WHITE 635180/ 07870465697 SENIOR STEWARD REGENERATION (OUTDOOR LEISURE) JOHN LLEWELLYN 07920560208
www.ccsunison.org.uk
SENIOR STEWARDS ENVIRONMENT IAN ALEXANDER 07584505793 MARK OTTEN 07789485009 EDUCATION CONTACT JOHN AUSTIN 07796275039
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.