If pay austerity is over MPs, it should end for other public sector workers too

Commenting on the confirmation last week that MPs are to receive a 10 per cent pay rise, Ravi Subramanian, UNISON West Midlands Regional Secretary said:

 

"Pay austerity might be over for MPs, but it goes on and on for everyone else in the public sector.

 

If pay restraint is at an end for politicians – who are public servants too – it should also be over for nurses, teaching assistants, hospital cleaners, council staff and other public sector workers.

 

The government felt able to ignore the advice of the NHS pay review body, but not, it would seem, the equivalent body for MPs.

 

Not content with holding pay down for public sector workers for another four years, the government is spitefully going ahead with new laws to make it almost impossible for public servants to go on strike and win pay rises in future.

 

No wonder so many staff in our hospitals, schools and local councils are beginning to think they'd be better off working elsewhere."

 

Graph of the week - the National Living Wage con

This week George Osborne revealed his Budget and made much pay of introducing a new so called National Living Wage, which will start at £7.20 an hour in April. 

Apart from this being lower than the actual real Living Wage (£7.85 outside London and £9.15 in London) set by The Living Wage Foundation, it only applies if you are over 25. 

But the con does not stop there. At the same time as the National Minimum Wage effectively being raised to £7.20 the government will be reducing Working Tax Credits so despite the wage rise, low paid workers will be worse off. The graph above shows this clearly (hat tip for the graph to UNISON Scottish Organiser, Dave Watson).
 

West Midlands Fire Service to become Living Wage Employer

Members at West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS) look set to be paid at least ‘The Living Wage’, if the move is approved by members of West Midlands Fire and Rescue Authority (WMFRA).

 

UNISON began negotiations with the brigade in late 2014 and a report is being presented at a meeting of the WMFRA on Monday 13 April recommending that the service adopt the living wage from 1 April 2015.

 

This will mean the wages of 62 WMFS staff will rise to the level of The Living Wage, which is currently £7.85 an hour outside of London.

 

Tony Rabaiotti, UNISON West Midlands Regional Manager said:

 

“This is a huge step forward for West Midlands Fire and Rescue service and they should be congratulated for taking this step.

 

Receiving living wage gives employees the chance to earn an amount of money that covers the basic cost of living.The move to implement the living wage clearly shows that they, along with many organisations both public and private, are beginning to see that the minimum wage is not enough for our members to live on. 

 

More employers across the West Midlands need to follow WMFS’s lead and ensure that hard working staff are paid properly for the work they do”

 

Vic Mallabar, WMFS’s UNISON Branch Secretary, added:

 

“We welcome this positive response to our requests for our lowest paid staff to be lifted up to the living wage threshold. We recognise the difficulties faced by West Midlands Fire Service, but are proud that the management and Fire Authority have supported our lowest paid staff. We congratulate the service on becoming a living wage employer.” 

Happy International Women's Day - but we could do better in the UK

Today is International Women's Day and you can find out more here. For the past nine years the World Economic Forum have produced a report with the Global Gender Gap (GGG) Index for countries all across the world.

The 2014 report is now available and it does not really make good reading for a rich and well developed nation like the UK, which is ranked 26 out 142 countries. The UK is unsurprisingly behind the Scandinavian countries which are known for their good gender equality, but the UK is also behind countries like  Nicaragua, Rwanda, Latvia, Burundi, Ecuador, Slovenia and Bulgaria. The full rankings can be found here.

The UK is ranked 48 out of 142 countries for wage equality.

The detailed gender equality analysis for the UK can be found here and is shows we still have a long way to go to get full gender equality.

Graph of the week - The Rise of Zero Hours Contracts

Zero hours contracts have been in the news a lot over the past few months, and the government have been claiming economic success with more people in employment. But is this telling the whole story?

We grabbed the data from the ONS website and knocked up a quick graph. In 2013 there was a big jump of over 300,000 additional people on zero hours contracts. So these people may be off the unemployment register, but they are not in decent, secure full-time employment.

Hardly the job creation miracle that some are claiming.

A Christmas Message for Jeremy Hunt

Health members are sending a message to Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt MP :

‘All they want for Christmas is the Pay Review Body recommended pay rise’

Members have spent the past week signing Christmas cards to deliver to Mr Hunt asking him to do what’s right and award all NHS Staff the Pay Review Body recommended pay rise of just 1%.

So today they are sending over 3000 cards to the Houses of Parliament to make their voices heard.

Franco Buonaguro , UNISON West Midlands Regional Head of Health said:

“The message is simple, pay NHS staff what the Pay Review Body recommended. Health workers care for patients and their families every day of the year often when they are at their most vulnerable or distressed. The NHS depends on the goodwill and commitment of the workforce and this is now at breaking point.

We have spent the past week visiting staff in hospitals and talking to members of the public and there is a clear consistent message from both, NHS staff deserve better.

While many will be sitting down on Christmas day and enjoying some well earned time off with their families, many NHS staff will be at work, leaving their families to celebrate without them. Not only that, they will be there when things go wrong, ready to drive ambulances and run Accident and Emergency departments when emergencies arise.

For NHS staff there is no sign of a fair pay deal, so what choice do they have, they care, they continue to work on increasingly lower pay and often doing extra unpaid hours.”

Police Staff vote Yes to Strike Over Pay

UNISON’s members working for police forces in England and Wales have voted yes to industrial action over pay.

UNISON members in the police service work in jobs such as 999 call takers, police community support officers, scene of crime officers, fingerprint experts, financial investigators, detention officers, crime reduction officers, crime analysts, enquiry desk officers, trainers, criminal justice clerks, a wide range of vital operational and organisational support roles.

The result of the ballot is as follows:

Are you prepared to take part in a strike?
YES: 59.6%
NO: 40.4% 

Are you prepared to take part in action short of strike action? 
YES: 79.4%
NO: 20.6 %

Charlie Sarell, Regional Organiser for Police Staff said:

"These results send a clear message that after two years of pay freeze and last year's below inflation pay rise, police staff have had enough. And that they are now ready to take industrial action over pay.

"We are calling on the police employers to return to the negotiating table to improve the current pay offer."The union’s Police Sector Committee will now meet to consider the ballot results and discuss next steps."

Public Service Workers paying the Price of Austerity

Commenting on the Chancellor's Autumn Statement,  Ravi Subramanian, UNISON West Midlands Regional Secretary said:

"It is sickening that Osborne is once again expecting public service workers to work more for less and pay the price of his failed plan to revive the economy. Austerity has not worked and despite this the Government is going ahead with more cuts which will inevitably mean more pay freezes.

There is nothing in his statement that will support workers and the lowest-paid.Nothing to help the million of public sector workers who have seen the value of their pay fall by at least 10% since this coalition came to power.

Workers are paying the price of austerity while the rich and privileged share the benefits. The Government has nothing but contempt for the hardworking people in this country. The truth is four years of austerity has caused untold damage to the economy, to the public services families rely on and to the daily lives of millions of people. 

An increasing number of full time public sector workers have to borrow money every months and rely on second jobs to survive.And the rise of precarious jobs is hardly something to be proud of. More people work part-time because they can't find full-time jobs, more people are on precarious zero-hour contracts.

The recovery the Government has been boasting about is still not being felt by workers. A recovery that only benefits the few privileged in this country is no good for the economy and for workers. The economy is not safe and nor are workers whose jobs are increasingly insecure.

The hardest-hit are communities and the most vulnerable, This was the Government's last chance to reverse the cuts. They will now pay the price at the next election.

Huge Mobilisation and Growing Public Support for NHS Strikers

Health workers on strike yesterday received tremendous support during their four-hour stoppage. Tens of thousands walked out in protest at the Government’s decision to deny a paltry 1% pay rise to all NHS staff.

There were picket lines at every acute hospital, ambulance station and across many community health services in the West Midlands and while on strike workers provided life and limb cover and cared for anyone in need of emergency treatment.

Franco Buonaguro, UNISON West Midlands Regional Head of Health said:

“While the anger is spreading, so is the public support for NHS workers’ fight for fair pay.  NHS workers don’t go on strike lightly but they do so carefully and safely. Patient safety is paramount and this is why workers stopped for just four hours. All we’re asking for is fair pay, and the public understand that.

The growing public support for health workers is overwhelming. They understand health workers are being reasonable. We are not talking big money or bonuses here, it’s simply the money that the Independent NHS Pay Review Body said they should have.

NHS services were affected in every major hospital and ambulance station.” 

He went on to say:

“It is irresponsible of the Government to not even try to resolve this dispute. Their behaviour is in danger of putting patients and the public at risk.

NHS workers will now take part in action short of strike action between Tuesday 25 November and Sunday 30 November, with members working to rule.”

West Midlands Regional Secertary calls on MP to retract regional pay comments

West Midlands UNISON Regional Secretary, Ravi Subramanian has called on Tory MP Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) to retract comments he made in the House of Commons, which wholly misrepresented the union’s position on government plans to introduce regional pay into the public sector.

Questioning Labour MP Rachel Reeves, Burley used a sentence from a UNISON report to suggest that the union is in favour of introducing regional pay. But Mr Burley failed to mention the crucial sentences which follow, which qualify the statement. His cynical, selective editing presented UNISON as being in favour of government plans to introduce regional pay, when the opposite is true – as is fully explained in the report.

Ravi Subramanian, said:

“Parliamentary privilege is not an excuse to peddle half-truths and lies, and Aidan Burley MP’s disingenuous comments in the House of Commons must be retracted. UNISON is firmly against plans to introduce regional pay in the public sector. The entire thrust of the report he quotes sets out why the Government's policy is flawed and does not reflect practice in the private sector. The sentence he lifted is taken totally out of context and is very misleading.

“Public sector workers – including those in Aidan Burley’s constituency – know that the plans for regional pay are not about increasing fairness, but about cutting pay plain and simple. The plans would not only lead to staff shortages, but would spark an upsurge in expensive bureaucracy, and take money out of hard-pressed local economies, just when they need it most. They must be dropped.”

This is what Burley said in Parliament:

"I am glad that the hon. Lady read my quotation in The Daily Telegraph this morning. As she has read out a couple of quotations, perhaps I may read one back to her:

“location-based pay systems offer increased flexibility and a systematic approach to addressing recruitment and retention issues at a local level.”

That is from UNISON’s policy paper “Location-based pay differentiation”, which was published in September 2011. Does she agree with UNISON"

Later on he says:

"I noted that she did not reply to the quote in my intervention, so I will repeat it to her now. UNISON has said in its location-based pay differentiation paper of September 2011 that said “location-based pay systems offer increased flexibility and a systematic approach to addressing recruitment and retention issues at a local level.”

Government Members agree with UNISON in that analysis, and I shall be interested to hear whether any Labour Members, many of whom will doubtless be taking donations from UNISON to their constituency Labour parties, also do.

The Government are right to look at more local, market-facing pay and to end the anomaly of national pay bargaining —"

The full extract from page 4 of the report is below, with the part he quoted highlighted. The sentence which immediately follows makes it very clear “location based” does not mean “local pay” and that there are different models of “location based pay” which includes models exactly like those currently used in the public sector. The report says:

“In organisations with a national reach, it can be difficult to set a single pay rate for each job that is sufficient to recruit and retain staff for all of the company’s locations and location based pay systems offer increased flexibility and a systematic approach to addressing recruitment and retention issues at a local level. A common misconception is that such companies use a wide variety of different pay rates for every location, when in reality there are three broad approaches to varying pay by location:

- national pay scales with additions in London and the South East (and in some cases high-pressure areas known as ‘hot spots’)

- zonal pay systems with locations categories into a zones, each with its own pay rates

- complex local systems, which allow for more local variation and include devolution of pay setting to local level in parts of the public sector.”

In the very next paragraph, on the same page it says:

“Most large, multi-site, organisations have national pay structures with additions for London and the South East, even those with zonal pay systems tend to broadly mirror the traditional hierarchy of London, the South East and the rest of the country. These approaches are easier to manage and avoid the potential problems associated with having a large variety of rates.”

The full report can be downloaded here.