Parking Pensions – you couldn’t make it up

Last night I attended an emergency Pensions Fund Committee. The meeting was called a short notice because the Council were not informed until the end of February that NSL were going to use a sub contractor to carry out some of the work. Originally the council were informed it was a company called Parseq (based in Doncaster) but a week later they were informed it had changed to RR Donnelley (who are based in Lansing). If members can remember the now infamous TUPE commitments, one of which was access to the council pensions for any members transferring. The purpose of the meeting was to agree to allow RR Donnelley to become a member of the Council scheme. BUT, the Committee (i.e. councillors) were not aware of one simple fact. IF, any council workers accept the offer of a job with RR Donnelley they will NOT be allowed into the Pension Scheme. Yes, that is correct. The Committee was asking toa allow a sib contractor into the scheme, knowing that if the staff transfer to the sub contractor they would not be allowed to remain in the scheme. If anyone can make then sense of that “answers on a Postcard” to contactus@barnetunison.org.uk

Confused? …It was obvious from the looks on the faces of councillors they were not aware of this and to be honest it is all completely mad to me. What then transpired was a discussion as to what the entitlements are for these workers at risk of redundancy as a result of the TUPE transfer out of the Council. Forty five minutes later and there was still no clarity as to the entitlement of the workers transferring. Legal and HR officers were asked to liaise with UNISON ASAP as I pointed out we are less than two weeks away from the TUPE transfer date.

UNISON view is that this transfer should be delayed until this matter is resolved.

Barnet Residents Protest Pop Up Library – this Saturday 21 April

Residents Protest Pop Up Library

View their short video here

Last Saturday I attended the Friern Protest pop up Library over 100 residents families and children turned up to run a temporary protest library. There was a Authro reading to children lots of people exchanging books music, freshly cooked tea and cakes and an energy and commitment to public services that was quite humbling.

To all UNISON members who feel they are being as scapegoats for the financial crisis, this sort of event is a MUST visit.

In my time where services are being cut or privatised I am asked “go tell the residents!” and “the residents must know!”

Well in Barnet the residents do know and what is more there is a growing number of residents who have had enough and are prepared to stand with staff and fight every cut and every privatisation.

Protest Pop Up Library

·         Saturday 21 April from 11 am to 1 pm

·         Saturday 28 April from 11am  to 1 pm

Come along to the UNISON stall, bring your friends and family

Message of support and solidarity from Scotland

John

My name is ******** and I am the treasurer of East Renfrewshire Branch. At one of our recent branch meetings one of our activists brought up the fact that you as a branch are currently fighting against all out privatisation and that he had a friend who worked in Barnet Council and that you guys were having a time of it right now.

We as branch wanted to send our support and thoughts to you, so that you know that your not alone in these fights and that your stance and strength are an inspiration to all branches.  In addition to our vocal support we would like to offer some sort of financial donation to assist with any sort of strike issues that you guys are currently facing, with this in mind could you please advise me where I should send the cheque too and also where I should send it.

ind Regards and stay strong

Treasurer

East Renfrewshire Branch

Confused? We are …..One Barnet Projects and Financial Evaluation process and Bonds…..

The Parking project has raised a serious concern about the transparency of the procurement process specifically in relation to financial evaluation procedure. UNISON had hoped that they would receive an explanation as to how the Council use this evaluation process. To date this has not been provided. There is a fundamental issue here about the purpose of the Evaluation process. In the absence of a response to our concerns the evaluation process is appears to be meaningless. As a long as an organisation provides a Bond it doesn’t matter what state their finances are in. We will be reporting more on this matter in due course.

“Thats another fine mess you got me into Stan!” – Parking TUPE transfer General Functions Committee Meeting

On Thursday evening UNISON submitted a report in response to the proposal to transfer our members to NSL. You can read our report here

Basically our report sought a delay to the decision to transfer because of our serious concerns about the financial evaluation of NSL which you can read here . UNISON had used NSL latest publicly available accounts and used the Councils own Financial Evaluation criteria. The results were alarming see Appendix C of our report here

Before I was allowed to address the committee I was informed that I couldn’t talk about the serious financial concerns raised in our report. I was only allowed to talk about staffing issues only.  I responded by saying our financial concerns were directly related to staffing issues. Our concerns about the financial evaluation did give cause for concern about the TUPE commitments and the future welfare of our members working on this contract. UNISON was simply seeking an explanation about the outcome of the financial evaluation carried out by the Council on the winning contractor.

Only the two Labour councillors and the Lib Dem Councillor asked any questions, which is quite worrying considering the issues and questions raised in our report which you can read here.

After responding to a number of questions one of the Conservative councillors made a request that the Councils section 151 officer respond to the email ( see Appendix A of UNISON report here) sent by UNISON on 15 March. This was accepted by all councillors. Furthermore it was agreed that the senior officer responsible for Parking respond in writing to all the questions raised by UNISON in our report. This was accepted by all councillors.

Finally a Labour Councillor made a recommendation to defer the decision to transfer the staff until the concerns raised by UNISON had been addressed and reported back to General Functions Committee.

Sadly, the party political battle lines were drawn. The two Labour councillors and the one Lib Dem councillor voted for this recommendation but they were over ruled by four Conservative councillors.

The Committee then voted on the original recommendation to transfer staff to NSL and RR Donnelly.

The vote went as follows

Cllr Scannel, Cllr Thomas, Cllr Rams, Cllr Prentice (all Conservative) voted to transfer staff to NSL

Cllr Farrier, Cllr Hutton (Labour) and Cllr J Cohen (Lib Dem) voted to oppose transfer to NSL.

1 160 161 162 163 164 224