Unions to challenge Darling as council workers strike over pay
June 27, 2008 12:00 am frontpage, newsby René Lavanchy
THE Government’s public sector pay policy came under new pressure from unions this week, as council workers in Unison voted to go on strike while the GMB said it wanted to renegotiate wages for National Health Service staff.
If both pay settlements are rejected, over two million public sector staff will seek improved pay offers in a challenge to Chancellor Alistair Darling who last week called for “continued restraint on pay” to curb the accelerating rate of inflation. The PCS civil service union will also hold a strike ballot this autumn.
Around 600,000 local government employees in England will stage a two-day strike on 16 July after Unison members rejected a 2.45 per cent pay rise.
And a GMB official told Tribune that their members wanted to reopen “right now” an NHS pay deal negotiated only last week.
Both unions insist that their members need better pay deals to combat the rising cost of food, fuel and energy, and reject the idea that inflation is caused by public sector pay.
Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said: “They are fed up and angry that they are expected to accept pay cut after pay cut, while bread and butter prices go through the roof.” Unison says that about 250,000 of its local government members earn less than £6.50 an hour.
Brian Baldwin, chair of the Local Government Association employers’ negotiating team, said: “If the pay settlement is set any higher, then councils will be forced into making unpalatable choices between cutting front line services and laying off staff.”
But Lucille Thirlby, Unison’s senior national officer for local government, told Tribune: “They’ve made £4 billion worth of efficiency savings. We recognise that there’s been a low settlement [from Whitehall] but there’s money around for local authorities to pay for a reasonable pay increase.”
Last week, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said that the rate of inflation, which was predicted to reach 3.5 per cent according to
the Government’s preferred measure, will now probably hit 4 per cent before the end of the year.
The NHS pay deal, which covers 1.3 million workers and is the highest public sector pay agreement this year, offers a 2.75 rise followed by lower rises in succeeding years.
It includes a clause allowing negotiations to reopen if inflation increases quicker than expected.
Asked if they would call for talks, the GMB’s Sharon Holder said: “Absolutely. This was never going to be a long term deal and it was going to be a significant pay cut for our members.”
“The mood among our members is quite clear. They want to reopen this deal right now. We’re gathering evidence… but the evidence is it’s a pay cut for NHS staff.”
michael barratt :
Date: June 27, 2008 @ 10:17 am
Back to the Workhouse
The major political parties, including Labour vie with each other for the vote of ‘middle’ England resulting in struggling families on low incomes being effectively left without representation and politically powerless. As a consequence, Labour government policies have seemingly awarded employers and ‘middle’ England with all the advantages of Globalisation and immigration, and bestowed all the disadvantages on the disenfranchised.
There was a time not so long ago when employers were obliged to pay a minimum adult wage that might just support a worker and their small family. Over recent decades wages paid by employers to unskilled workers have shrunk to being barely sufficient to support an 18 year old living at home with their parent(s). Since the 1970’s there has been a growing disparity between skilled and unskilled wage rates both in the US and the UK. According to the Irish Financial New (15th April 2008) wages for unskilled US workers have dropped in real terms 20% since the 1970’s.
So it has come to pass, the responsibility to pay a barely living wage to unskilled UK workers with families has largely been transferred from employers to the general taxpayer. With the family tax credits and the council housing benefits system topping up inadequate wages paid by employers to a level at or below that of poverty and thereby in effect subsidising employers’ business expenses.
One Labour cabinet minister accurately remarked over a decade ago that life on unemployment benefits was not intended to be an easy option, yet work for those on low incomes can be an even harder option. Low paid workers are frequently employed on temporary contracts with varying and often unsocial hours of work. Few holiday or sickness entitlements result in affected workers experiencing a bureaucratic nightmare of continual adjustments and recalculations of their family tax credits, housing benefit and council tax entitlements with a frequent self perception of losing out. Whereas jobseeker allowance claimants are paid 24/7 with no rent (until recently) or council tax payments worries. Low paid workers are required to seek and accept work within catchments’ that may extend 10-12 miles from their home resulting in the need for some to purchase season bus passes costing in excess of £100.00 a month, there are also the additional expenses of work clothes, tools and meals away from home to consider. With little or no monetary benefits between working and not working, those in receipt of jobseeker allowances etc. have the advantage of their children receiving free school meals, representing a saving for a family of three children in excess of £20.00 per week, plus school uniform and outing allowances. Job seeker claimants are entitled to enrol without payment in many courses at colleges and other institutions of further education and enjoy free entry to many local authority leisure centres and gyms. Aside from financial considerations many of those on low incomes, care for young children and/or disproportionately having illness or disabilities within their family, making going out to poorly paid work frequently an unattractive option in relation to staying at home.
The problem has therefore arisen for Government, how might those with little financial incentive or social advantage in doing so, be encouraged to seek employment?
Perhaps this Labour government will loose the last remnants on its’ integrity and follow the US model by limiting welfare payments to a few months. Caroline Flint and her Government colleagues have travelled well down the US route by promoting ‘flexible’ work practices that undermined the job security and working conditions of low income earners and they are now attempting to extend that insecurity into the home by the linking of social housing provision and security of tenure with work.
The process of undermining the security of tenure of low-income earners living in social housing began some time ago when Government ceased building new council housing in favour of housing association projects and with frequent duplicity encouraged council tenants to transfer from local authority to housing association ownership. The rights and security of tenure of housing association tenants are without question inferior to those enjoyed by council tenants. The rights of council tenants are protected by legislation. Whereas the rights of housing association tenants are primarily protected by the laws of contract and remedies must usually be sought through the courts. As Bernard Shaw observed the English law courts are open to all, like the entrance of the Ritz hotel. Furthermore, housing association landlords enjoy and exercise a number of mandatory rights of eviction that are not available to local authorities.
In the escalation of this trend of the emasculation of tenants’ rights, the Labour Government Minister for Housing Caroline Flint and her colleagues are currently proposing ‘back to the workhouse’ policies whereby council and housing association tenants who do not find work face losing their homes. As Shelter chief executive Adam Sampson observed:
“What is being proposed would destroy families and communities and add to the thousands who are already homeless”.
This unfair proposal would, for example; replace council tenants rights to security of tenure with knife-edge insecurity, especially for those tenants with lower skills who are frequently employed in insecure work and/or on temporary contracts.
In spite of the criticisms, Ms Flint’s proposals are as might be expected well supported by conservatives, such as the former Tory Prime Minister, Ian Duncan Smith who in an address to the Chartered Institute of Housing’s June 2008 conference questioned whether handing out secure tenancies was the best use of social housing stock. Encouraged by such support, Ms Flint and her colleagues persist with their apparent intention of ensuring the socially disadvantaged and low paid are subjected to same insecurity in the home as they currently experience in the workplace, presumably with the objective of ensuring a plentiful supply of cheap and compliant low skilled labour.
Robert :
Date: July 2, 2008 @ 5:29 pm
never mind German work camps are good at getting rid of cripples gypseys and the rest.
Being disabled I expect no better from New labour