Birmingham says "no to austerity"

Yesterday UNISON we were out and about in Birmingham city centre taking our anti-austerity campaign to Brummies.

Over 400 people signed our postcards lobbying their local MP for an end to austerity. And we also got 8 people who joined UNISON on the day.

Day by day more and more people are saying they've had enough of austerity.

Staffordshire County Council row over a £2bn conflict of interest

A row has erupted at Staffordshire County Council where a council officer involved in drawing up plans for the privatisation of school support services has quit his job to work for one of the companies bidding to win the contract.

The Staffordshire Sentinal today reported that Phil Cresswell, council's transformation delivery manager, was leading the plans to privatise school support services and staff – including cleaners, cooks and grounds staff – to a profit-making private firm. But in September Mr Cresswell quit the council to work as business development director at the local government wing of Carillion, who it has now been revealed are one of the bidders for the contract worth £2bn.

Staffordshire UNISON are running a high profile campaign called "The Knot Unties" against this privatisation and we will be making sure that this conflict of interest is brought to the attention of everyone in Staffordshire.

UNISON anti-austerity campaign hits Solihull

Today UNISON (West Midlands) took our anti austerity campaign to Solihull. Like the people of Cannock, the people of Solihull are keen to sign up our campaign to fight the government's failed austerity measures.

UPDATE: over 350 people signed our anti austerity postcards and we even had one person join UNISON.

Campaigning in Cannock Chase

Despite the rain, 10 regional office staff turned up in Cannock today to campaign for decent public service,s as a follow on from the 20 October Future That Works march in London.

The people of Cannock Chase are keen to sign our petition against Staffordshire County Council's proposed privatisation of education support services.

UPDATE: over 500 people signed up to our campaign!

Campaigning for a Future That Works in the West Midlands

After the huge success of the TUC Future that Works march in London on Saturday 20 October, UNISON (West Midlands) will be taking the campaign right into the West Midlands region.

On Monday 22 October we will be running a street stall all day in Cannock Chase town centre asking members of the public to sign up to our campaign for an alternative to the failed austerity measures. 

We hope that the local Tory MP Aidan Burley (he's the one who thought the Olympic opening ceremony was "multi-cultural crap") will get the message that the people of Cannock Chase want his government to change course.

On Tuesday 23 October, we will be in Solihull and we will put pressure on Lib Dem MP Lorely Burt to get Nick Clegg to revisit his view before the election, when he said ""we think that merrily slashing... is an act of economic masochism." Well, you were right about one thing Nick!

And finally, on Wednesday 24 October we will be bringing the campaign to the heart of the region in Birmingham City Centre.

Watch this space for updates on how we get on.

West Midlands UNISON hits London to ask for "A Future that Works"

Thousands of UNISON members from the West Midlands came to London on Saturday for the TUC march for A Future That Works.

Over 150,000 people took part in the rally and sent a strong message to the government that austerity is not working.

After marching through the centre of London people descended upon Hyde Park for the rally.

The rally was packed with marchers from trade unions, political parties, community groups and members of the public who wanted to stand up for public services and and alternative to the government's failed austerity measures.

UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis said: 

"This has been a tremendous day. A day when hundreds of thousands of us spoke with one voice in Belfast, Glasgow and London and told this vicious Tory government that we demand a different future than the one they have planned for us.

We demand a future that works . "Today is just the start of our campaign: health workers, council workers, education workers, police staff, workers in the voluntary and community sector and many more ... all standing up for public services.

I want to thank UNISON members from across the UK who took time out to speak out against austerity and to make these marches in London, Glasgow and Belfast such a success."

What next?

Watch this space for the follow up events that the West Midlands region are arranging.

Unemployment continues to rise in the West Midlands

Against the national figures, released today, which show a slight decrease in UK unemployment, there was no comfort for the West Midlands.  It recorded yet another increase.  Unemployment in the West Midlands has reached 8.8%, that is an additional 16,000 people made jobless.  

Ravi Subramanian, UNISON Regional Secretary said: 

“The West Midlands is one of six regions in the UK where unemployment is still increasing, so any talk of economic growth because of the very slight decrease in the UK average unemployment figures, would be very premature.   The Government need a long term plan, one of job creation to ease our economic woes.

The reality behind the numbers, 273,000 people now unemployed in the West Midlands, is yet more misery and suffering for thousands of families in our region and many others in the country, like Yorkshire and Humberside and our neighbours in the East Midlands. 

We are also experiencing another major issue, that of underemployment, there has been a substantial rise in part-time working as people are forced to take part-time jobs because they have no other choice, and we have record highs of young people either out of work or not in education or training – they are being are fast becoming the lost generation”.   

Unemployment and under-employment will remain the blight on our community and local economy without any real long-term plan for job creation."

The fight to save North Solihull Sports Centre crèche

For the last 10 years the North Solihull Sports Centre and the Tudor Grange Leisure Centre have had crèches for people using the facilities.  This was continued when the centres were given to private sector company, Parkwood Leisure to run.  The staff at the 2 crèches were employed by Parkwood but a grant was paid by Solihull MBC to support the service. 

In 2012 the £35,000 grant to Parkwood was offered up as part of the Council’s savings.  It was proposed to entirely close the crèche at Tudor Grange and to only have the crèche at North Solihull open 2 mornings a week.

Solihull UNISON branch has worked hard to stop the closure of the North Solihull facility.  So far the branch has:

• Presented a signature petition from crèche users to the leader of the Labour Group to present at full Council
• Written to the Cabinet Member putting the case for keeping the crèche open
• Met with the council officer responsible for the decision to close in order to understand his rationale and persuaded him see the affected staff to find out the truth and he discovered the information previously supplied to him about usage was inaccurate
• Met with Leanne Byrne, fire-fighter, mum and crèche user.  Leanne had got considerable publicity in the Solihull News and was going to address the full council meeting on 16th October.  UNISON supported Leanne by helping to draw up a questionnaire for completion by the crèche users.  They also agreed to support any demonstration outside the October Council Meeting. Leanne is herself an FBU officer in Handsworth and so is able to draw upon that union for support in her campaign

This is a great example of how a UNISON branch has organised around an issue and involved the community in its campaigning.

The fight still goes one and the branch will be holding a demonstration outside the Council Meeting on 16th October.