www.swyp-unison.org.uk
UNISONnews South West Yorkshire Partnership Health Branch
inside
February 2018
South West Yorkshire Partnership Health
• Annual General Meeting: Thursday 15th March • Wholly owned subsidiary companies • Education Focus UNISON / Open University
Annual General Meeting Thursday 15th March Have your say about how your union branch is run. As a UNISON member you are part of a local branch – in your case South West Yorkshire Partnership Health. All UNISON branches are run democratically – everyone gets to have a say about what the union is doing at a local level. The key date in all this is the Annual General Meeting or AGM. Branch Officers report back on the past year (including how we spend your money) and the election of new Branch Officers is confirmed. This year’s AGM will be on Thursday 15th March between 6.30 and 8pm at the Elizabethan Gallery in Wakefield (between the Bus Station and the Trinity Walk Shopping Centre). Everyone who attends the AGM will be welcome to join us for a free meal afterwards at a local restaurant. This year we will also have a guest speaker, Jim Bell, talking briefly about the work of the UNISON Gambia Project, directly supporting schools and hospitals there. The project was the UNISON Presidential charity in 2016 and started out with a donation from our branch. A formal invitation to the AGM with details of how to stand for Officer positions, as a Steward, etc., is on the back page of this newsletter.
courses open to all members – details of a range of free courses and union support for education • UNISON day trip to Whitby: Sunday 27th May
• Did you know our Barnsley office has moved? • Retirement of longstanding activist Phil Stewart
Wholly owned subsidiaries – what’s the fuss about? The setting up of Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) or Wholly Owned Subsidiary companies is being considered by a number of NHS Trusts across Yorkshire at the moment. We need to stress that the main employer in our branch (SWYPFT) has not done this so far, but companies like these are a long term threat to everyone who works in any kind of support role in the NHS. These companies are owned by NHS Trusts but their staff are not NHS employees – staff do not have to be on Agenda for Change Terms and Conditions and (unless they are existing NHS staff forced to transfer in) they cannot be part of the NHS Pension scheme. The original scheme was devised by management consultants working with the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Trust in Gateshead and partly sold as reducing some tax bills for the Trust. The only one so far in Yorkshire is at Barnsley Hospital where some Estates
staff were TUPE transferred from the NHS into the new company ‘Barnsley Facility Services’ last year. Since then about 10 NHS Trusts in Yorkshire have started looking at doing the same thing, all on a larger scale than in Barnsley. The Airedale, Bradford, Calderdale & Huddersfield and Mid Yorkshire Trusts seem to be the front line at present. If these schemes go ahead not just Estates & Facilities staff such as porters, domestics and catering could be affected but also Admin support – procurement, finance and even HR. We could even see Trusts setting up separate companies for separate contracts that are regularly tendered – for example to run IAPT services. UNISON is running a regional campaign to oppose these companies in the affected Trusts, including balloting members there about taking Industrial Action. No doubt we will stand by our sisters and brothers if it comes to strike action – these schemes are a threat to all of us.
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