Fremantle and the TUC one year on

I was honoured to attend a meeting of the Barnet UNISON Fremantle stewards industrial action committee this evening, where I was impressed once more with the determination of our low paid women members to fight to win back the conditions which have been stolen from them by their employers.

Senior regional officials of UNISON were there to express support and I would expect to hear more shortly about our campaign to restore lost conditions in a dispute which epitomises everything about our Union’s policy of opposition to privatisation and the need for an effective response.

This reminded me that – at last year’s TUC Congress – the Fremantle dispute got considerable helpful publicity. Which in turn reminded me that I have yet to blog about the Preliminary Agenda for the TUC, which has been online since Monday.

The agenda is the normal mixed bag, ranging from a call for regular foot health screening in schools from the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists (SCP) to a call for a series of one day general strikes against the anti-union laws from the Prison Officers Association (POA). Since we clearly do need to organise more strikes (involving standing on picket lines) and marches, the movement will no doubt have cause to call upon the SCP if we are to sustain our campaigns – and should anyone be imprisoned for our campaigning then the support of the POA will be a great comfort also.

The point that jumped out at me from this year’s agenda was the number of submissions on the crucial question of public sector pay. As I have reported before, one of UNISON’s motions is on public sector pay and the economy and calls for the TUC to co-ordinate public sector unions on pay and support unions taking industrial action. The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) make some fairly modest (though sound) demands of the General Council in terms of production of campaign materials and support for joint union activity. The National Union of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) make a fairly optimistic demand of the Government to engage in constructive dialogue with the General Council, which rather misses the point (a bit too much of the old “social partnership” approach there I fear!)

Some other unions go a fair bit further in trying to get to united action however. The National Union of Teachers (NUT) call for coordinated action and a major national demonstration in opposition to public sector pay limits. The University and College Union (UCU) call for a Conference for all public sector unions in October to agree a date for united strike action. The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) call upon the General Council to coordinate action, including a national demonstration before the end of the year, and the organisation of days of action including one major national day of action.

What will emerge from the process of compositing (known at Congress as “grouping”) remains to be seen. UNISON will rightly wish to assert our authority in those discussions as the largest public service union – and no doubt colleagues in other unions will already be looking at the very useful UNISON Conferences database in order to be clear about the policies democratically agreed by lay UNISON Conference delegates which should guide the position of UNISON officials participating in such discussions.

It is UNISON Conference policy to “continue a united campaign across the union and other public service unions to oppose the government's unjust and unjustifiable policy on public sector pay”.

So it would be in breach of the policy agreed by UNISON Conference if anyone representing UNISON sought to argue against a national demonstration on public sector pay, or against coordinated national strike action. Whether we need another Conference to set a date for unified strike action I am not sure. What we need is for a date to be set – perhaps UNISON will accept the responsibility to provide this leadership by setting a date for action by all our members who are in dispute over pay and inviting other TUC affiliates to join in?

Regional Local Government Executive Report

Today’s meeting of the UNISON Greater London Regional Local Government Executive witnessed a particularly lengthy debate around the Secretary’s report on industrial action in London local government.

Two visitors from the Barnet branch kicked off a positive discussion about support for the long running Fremantle dispute. The Committee agreed to congratulate the branch and the strikers on sustaining their dispute and to call for support for the rally at the House of Commons on 11 December and for Early Day Motion 276.

The Committee also discussed the disgraceful victimisation of Michael Gavan, Chair of Newham UNISON local government branch. It was reported that Michael’s claim for interim relief at the employment tribunal will be heard on Friday 14 November and that the Newham Branch Committee will this evening be considering whether to call for further strike action in advance of that hearing. The Committee gave its full support to UNISON’s campaign for Michael’s reinstatement and gave in principle support to any further requests for strike action which the branch may make.

The Committee also agreed to encourage a positive approach to identifying ways in which financial support can be given to victimised activists.

The Committee went on to debate the process whereby requests from branches for industrial action ballots are considered. This is clearly unsatisfactory and gives rise to avoidable delays and the Executive agreed to refer the question to the UNISON Greater London Regional Committee. Time will tell whether this will lead to any positive progress. Branches may need to consider how to put motions to National Delegate Conference to expedite industrial action requests.

The other main item of business which I should report in the time available concerns our pay claim for 2008. Branches should shortly receive a draft claim agreed by the UNISON National Joint Council (NJC) Committee on 28 November, this is for 6% and substantial progress to achieve UNISON’s (national) objective of a minimum hourly rate of £6.75 (obviously this would be higher in London). A separate claim for improvements in various service conditions would be submitted as part of the review of the Green Book which has been jointly agreed.

Branches will have a short period to consult upon the offer and may wish to consider whether a flat rate claim would not be better than a percentage. A flat rate increase of £1,400 would pretty much achieve the uprating of the minimum hourly rate whilst distributing the benefits to all lower paid workers not just the lowest paid.

Whatever claim we settle upon the good news is that the intention is to lodge the claim in January with a view to taking a decision on the employers’ offer after 31 March. So we need to be preparing for strike action now.

Finally, congratulations to Croydon UNISON and their Branch Secretary Malcolm Cambell for securing an agreement on the pay and grading review (and to David Eggmore, Chair of the Executive for getting us through most of our Agenda this morning!)

Fighting for UNISON members at the UNISON NEC

Being a member of the National Executive Council (NEC) of UNISON is a sometimes strange and surreal experience. Members would – I suppose – imagine that the body charged with running the Union between our Annual National Delegate Conferences would meet frequently and pay attention to the detail of what our Union does.

In fact the NEC does neither of these things.

We meet infrequently and as much detailed work as there is to be done is delegated to Committees. The most important such bodies consist of meetings of those already elected to Chair – or selected by - other Committees, hence generally (but not always) they consist entirely of those already predisposed to agree with what has been decided by those in charge.

Those in charge are the key officials and not the leading members of the NEC (although sufficient interpersonal skills are deployed that I imagine that some leading members of the NEC do in fact believe that they are leading the Union). There are leading lay activists who keep straight left and who are genuinely influential but I am not always sure they remember where they came from or where they belong…

I shall look forward to reporting back from next Wednesday’s meeting of the UNISON NEC at which I will be seeking official support for the rally which will be taking place at the House of Commons on Tuesday 11 December in support of UNISON activists who are fighting privatisation and its consequences. I hope we will seize this opportunity to unite the trade union movement with our real allies in Parliament in order to promote the interests of our members.

Our Union could be even better than it is if we could galvanise real unity in action between our very experienced and capable national officials and our equally experienced and dedicated lay activists. To do this we need to unite against a common enemy and forget about squabbling.

Unison has no enemies to our left politically. Sometimes some of our key people forget this. The enemies of our members are those who push forward privatisation and who want to hold down our pay.

I hope to be able to give a positive report in five days time and that we will unite with our friends and allies to promote the interests of our members.

Time to fight over privatisation and pay

Having now recovered from the excitement of the Greater London Employers’ Forum I am looking forward to Monday’s meeting of the Regional Local Government Executive (you knew I was a sad anorak but you didn’t know how sad!)

I hope that the Executive will have an opportunity to discuss the disputes with Fremantle and the London Borough of Newham. In both cases UNISON needs to step up our campaigning against the consequences of privatisation. We should obviously be supporting and encouraging our members to take industrial action, but equally we need to discuss how to step up our political campaigning.

We should make better use of the influence we believe we have with Government – and we should support initiatives which are taken to focus support for these important campaigns. In particular we need more MPs signing up to EDM 276!

At the Regional Local Government Executive we will also be discussing Single Status and the pay and grading reviews which are taking place across London (and the country). Full marks to the Croydon branch for reaching an agreement – as there is a meeting of the National Executive Council next Wednesday I shall have the opportunity to raise any issues which London local government branches may have (so please get in touch if you need to).

Also on Monday’s agenda is the 2008 pay claim. We need early agreement on a claim around which we can mobilise our members for the inevitability of national strike action (unless we want to live within Gordon Brown’s 2% pay norm and see our living standards decline further!) We ought to be lodging our claim early in the New Year and giving the employers a deadline in March to respond (we know that they have been consulting their constituents for some time so there is no reason why they should not).

If we don’t have a satisfactory offer by mid March (and realistically we know we won’t) then we should be planning for strike action around the settlement date in April – not months later.

Fremantle dispute march and rally

It was great yesterday to be able to attend the march and rally in support of the Fremantle dispute.

The shop stewards who have been leading the dispute, together with their dedicated Branch Secretary John Burgess and hard working Regional Official, Eddy Coulson (now unfortunately unwell) more than deserved the wide ranging support that was expressed.

I was pleased to see my good friend and fellow NEC member, Kate Ahrens, addressing the rally, as well as my old friend and comrade Geoff Martin – not to mention the excellent range of speakers from across London who were there to show our support.

The dedication, commitment and sound strategy shown by the strikers and their UNISON branch are a firm basis on which an important victory could now be won.

Not the Regional Committee report...

I haven’t yet had a chance to blog here a full report from Tuesday’s meeting of the Greater London UNISON Regional Committee (negotiations about the film rights are still underway…)

I only have few moments to blog right now but before I move next business for the time being…

I will take this opportunity to mention that the Regional Committee gave its wholehearted support to the Fremantle dispute and to the demonstration being organised for Saturday 10 November.

The Committee also heard that Regional officials had helpfully provided some guidance on the administration of hardship payments to the Barnet branch. This guidance took the form of a report received by the National Executive Council (NEC) Finance and Resource Management (FRM) Committee in 2004.

I have been in touch with the Chair of that Committee to suggest that it would be a good idea to look at updating and reissuing this guidance as national industrial action over pay is in prospect. If any UNISON branches want an electronic copy of the 2004 report please get in touch.

Fremantle strikes on 20 September

Congratulations to Barnet UNISON for this excellent pictorial report of the visit of Fremantle activists to the TUC. The Fremantle dispute is very much still on – and back on the Labourstart website, as the Internet Service Provider has found the campaign not to be defamatory.

Good luck to the strikers for their next day of strike action on 20 September.

I thought I would share my correspondence with Fremantle Chief Executive, Carole Sawyer, to whom I wrote on 6 September as follows;

“Your conduct in cutting the pay of your workers, sacking Andrew Rogers and seeking to silence your critics is disgraceful.You are clearly not a fit person to be involved in the provision of vital public services to vulnerable people and I very much hope that you will have the decency to consider your position.”

She replied the following day;

“Thank you for your e-mail. Your concerns relate to misinformation and deliberately misleading information on the Labourstart and Unison web pages.

Specifically
Pay has not been cut – salaries have been frozen for up to 3 years at April 2007 levels
No changes have been made to the pensions – staff continue to be members of the Local Government Pension Scheme and we continue to make employer contributions as set by the actuary (currently over 20%)
The working week for ex LBB staff is unchanged at 36 hours full time equivalent
Occupational sick pay entitlement changed from April 2007 and is now up to 3 months at full pay

The necessary changes are to ensure that the future costs of the services can be met from the resources available. This protects both vulnerable service users and staff by ensuring the continuation of services. The Fremantle Trust is a registered charity (not a private company as alleged by Labourstart).

These are not easy decisions and we spent over a year consulting with staff and unions before any changes were made. Fremantle continues to offer an industry leading pay and benefits package – including enhanced payments for weekend, night and bank holiday working, generous occupational sick pay, protected pensions and pay rates well ahead of the industry norms.

With respect to Mr Rogers he was dismissed for gross misconduct after an extensive investigation and after the panel had spent 5 hours reviewing all the evidence (including that of Mr Rogers and his representative). There is an appeal process which I encourage Mr Rogers to follow – I am not prepared to comment further at this stage as I do not wish to jeopardise this process.”

I sent a further response having checked with Barnet UNISON, as follows;

I am indebted to you for your response but regret that its contents suggest that you have a limited grasp of employee relations issues.

You say that you have not cut the pay of your employees. However a pay freeze is a pay cut in real terms. Also you have reduced enhancements upon which low paid staff working unsocial hours rely for their overall earnings and have reduced annual leave, thereby requiring staff to work more time for no more money (further reducing the hourly rate). Quite how you consider that the allegation of a pay cut is "deliberately misleading" is beyond me.

You say that no changes have been made to pensions. This is at best disingenuous since the changes which you have made will impact upon the pensionable earnings of employees in their last year of service to the future detriment of their pension. If you do not understand this then I strongly recommend that you consider attending some training on the operation of final salary pension schemes.

You say that the working week is unchanged (whereas I believe you originally intended to increase it). However because of the reductions which you have made in enhancements staff are having to work longer hours in order to maintain their earnings, to the detriment of their family and personal lives and to work life balance.

You are pleased to state that occupational sick pay is "now" up to three months at full pay. The standard for local government workers is up to six months at full pay followed by six months at half pay.

It really is neither here nor there that you are a "registered charity" nor that you may be paying above the (appallingly low) "industry norms". You are part of a process whereby services which used to be directly provided by local authorities, and whose staff enjoyed the terms and conditions negotiated for local government workers are now provided by staff whose terms and conditions are less favourable.

You are part of the process of driving down the costs of public service provision at the expense of often low paid workers. I appreciate that you may find this shameful.”

I finished by inviting her to reconsider the statements which she had made, but have heard nothing further for more than a week. If I get a further response I will amend this post to include it.

Support Fremantle workers online

Check out the news from Barnet UNISON!

The online campaign to support Fremantle workers has moved here.

It is very important to back the workers in this dispute against attacks on pay and conditions – particularly because the employer has tried to stop online campaigning by Labourstart. Fremantle didn't enjoy receiving over 8,000 emails.

I received a reply from the Chief Executive seeking to rebut UNISON's criticisms of her organisation. I replied pointing out why she was wrong and inviting her to reconsider. I'll give her a couple of days to reply and then publish the correspondence here.

Following the disgraceful sacking of UNISON Activist Andrew Rogers I hope that we can give a high profile to this important dispute at the TUC this week.