Category: News

Non UNISON news

Save our Catering workers

Austerity, Local, News, Solidarity, UNISON Campaign

We the undersigned, wish to add our support for Barnet UNISON’s request to the Barnet Council Chief Executive to bring the ISS Catering workers based in the Atrium in North London Business Park (NLBP) back in-house in order they can run a Council owned staff café in the new £55 million Colindale Office.

 

Sign petition here http://chng.it/gNCjP62Q

 

***** Please note there is currently no staff cafe facility in the new Colindale office building.

 

Background:

On 1 April 2016 Barnet Council outsourced their Catering Service to Cambridge Education who are a subsidiary of global giant Mott MacDonald.

Barnet UNISON reached an agreement with Barnet Council that ensured the contract included a provision that no staff could be employed on less than the London Living Wage (LLW).

Cambridge Education sub-contracted the Catering service to another global giant ISS who employed all the Catering workers.

However, Barnet UNISON and the Atrium Catering workers were unaware that the contract between ISS and Cambridge Education did not include the provision of a staff café in the soon to be built £55 million Council Office in Colindale.

In December 2019 Barnet Council informed Barnet UNISON that they had failed to secure an alternative provider to deliver a staff café in Colindale office.

On Monday 27 January 2020 ISS began redundancy one to one meetings for their staff working in the staff canteen in NLBP.

On 1 April 2020 the LLW changes from £10.55 (for a 36 hour week the annual salary would be £19,979) to £10.75 an hour.

*** In the likely event that our proposal is not implemented and the redundancies are carried out, Barnet UNISON is calling on all council staff to try and visit the staff canteen in NLBP on Friday 27 March 2020 between 12 and 1.30 pm for a Solidarity and Thank you meal with our ISS catering workers.

 

17 Level 3 TAs face the sack in one Barnet School

Austerity, Local, News, Schools, Solidarity, UNISON Campaign

I was not looking forward to this consultation meeting. The look of devastation on the faces of mainly low paid female workers was for all to see.

Each worker spoke with passion about the work they do and what they felt was betrayal for all the hard work they have put into the school for years.

I was able to sit and listen to them tell me about what they do. It was clear they cared deeply about the children they support. They expressed disbelief that the restructure proposals will even work.

I left the meeting not deflated but recharged with energy to try to do as much as I can for them.

This is my second redundancy meeting in a week and it’s hitting low paid workers again.

If this week is an indicator of life for workers under Boris Johnson then we should all be worried

More later….

 

It’s Your Wages. This is what we are doing.

Austerity, Local, National, News, Schools, Solidarity, UNISON Campaign

On Wednesday 15th January 2020 UNISON lodged collective grievances against 52 Barnet Schools to ensure we protect claims on behalf of all of over 500 UNISON members working in those schools.

Three things that need to be done for YOU.

  1. The way your employer calculates YOUR Pay needs to be changed in order that you are paid correctly.
  2. You have been underpaid for years. These are your wages that you have worked for and it is your right that your employer should pay you correctly.
  3. If you are in the Pension Scheme your Pension is wrong and you need to be compensated.

IMPORTANT ADVICE:

Barnet UNISON has an organiser called Nadia who will be contacting you to set up a meeting to explain what happens next.

If you want to speak to Nadia please contact the branch on 0208 359 2088 or email contactus@barnetunison.org.uk

Term Time Pay Update Meeting

On Tuesday 25 February 2020 5.15 pm, Barnet House, 1255 High Road, Whetstone N20 0EJ after the Barnet UNISON Annual General Meeting there will be an update for all of our members on the claim.

Please come along.

Poverty Pay For Barnet Care Workers set to continue…………

Austerity, Barnet Group, Barnet Homes, Local, News, Solidarity, UNISON Campaign

Monday 6th January 2020 should have brought good news for ex Fremantle care workers now employed by The Barnet Group (TBG).

Barnet UNISON had expected to hear that care workers would be moved onto the London Living Wage at Policy and Resources Committee on Monday 6th January 2020

https://barnet.moderngov.co.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=692&MId=10084

Instead the decision was kicked into the long grass.

This decision has ensured care workers remain on poverty pay.

TUPE information from Fremantle in May/ June 2019 revealed that just under 300 staff were TUPE transferred.

Of these, according to the figures given for the job titles and the rates of pay quoted for those job titles, some two thirds were listed as being paid below the London Living Wage.

Care work is a physically demanding role as well as an emotionally demanding role.

There are at least 201 Care workers on poverty pay

Yet according to the TUPE transfer information

161 members of staff are aged 55 years and over.

40 are aged 66 years and over.

Notes for Editors:

TBG is 100% owned by Barnet Council.

Barnet Council does not employ any staff paid less than the London Living Wage.

Merry Christmas? Not a chance! Redundancies on the horizon

Austerity, Local, News, Solidarity, UNISON Campaign

The last big outsourcing took place in April 2016.

Education and Catering Services were outsourced to Mott MacDonald who transferred the services to Cambridge Education. Cambridge Education sub-contracted Catering Services to global giant ISS.

At the time of the award of the contract it was very clear that the Council was moving all of its staff, who would need a café based inside, to the new £50 plus million building in Colindale.

What happened next is yet another example of how you lose all control by outsourcing.

For some reason Barnet Council said it did not want the same service it had in the Atrium and wanted to hand it over to a franchise……Costa Coffee. ISS was to sort out the franchise and run a Costa Coffee inside the new Colindale office.

Who or why this was agreed we don’t know – it’s important to note there are loads of Costa Coffee shops around Colindale.

All our members were told by ISS that they would receive Costa Coffee training in readiness for the move to Colindale in June 2019.

That’s right, June 2019.

Then it all went quiet, staff started moving and the ‘white elephant’ – the lack of a café – became more apparent as the building started to fill up.

‘It would all be ready after the summer.’

No, it wasn’t, and the news was worse.

ISS was not going to provide a service.

Barnet UNISON said “let’s run an in-house service”. 

We were ignored.

Barnet Council went out to find a contractor to run a café in the Colindale office.

Bad news for our members

Barnet Council has failed to secure a contractor to run a café in Colindale office. We have been told that the Council is going back out to see if it can secure a contractor but time is running out. The Atrium service will close March 2020. This will give very little time to find another employer and then TUPE transfer staff to the new employer.

Yesterday Barnet UNISON had the unpleasant task of speaking to all of our members in the Atrium café in North London Business Park (also known as the staff canteen) to alert them to the very real risk of redundancy due to this news.

Outsourcing v In-House

Outsourcing has failed our low paid members and it has failed the staff who work in Colindale. The importance of a staff canteen is that it provides a space away from your desk to de-stress and meet up with work colleagues. It’s a space that helps promote mental health and wellbeing.

Barnet UNISON has formally written to Cambridge Education to hold ISS to the contract and ask them to provide a café service in NLBP.

What we do know is that if Catering had remained in-house there would already be a café in Colindale, just as it was ready when all the staff finally moved to North London Business Park.

Solidarity for our UNISON Atrium members.

More on this later in 2020.

End.

 

 

 

Big shout out for UNISON for supporting Term Time Paid members in Barnet

Austerity, Local, National, News, Pensions, UNISON Campaign

“Since we were first alerted to the problem of underpayments for some of our lowest paid members I have been impressed by the support and advice from UNISON colleagues in UNISON HQ.

What started with one academy is now impacting on over 50 Barnet schools and also a number of private contractors such as ISS, Capita and Cambridge Education.

Over the next few months we have a massive task to reach all of our members in order that our Legal Team can submit claims on their behalf.

We are campaigning for each school to:

  • Adopt Barnet Council Term Time Pay calculator
  • Back dating of pay lost through the underpayment of their wages.
  • Payment towards any loss to our members Pensions due to underpayment of their wages.

(John Burgess, Branch Secretary, Barnet UNISON.)

Historic underpayments across schools and private contractors in Barnet

Austerity, Barnet Group, Local, National, News, Pensions, UNISON Campaign

Barnet UNISON has written to 67 Barnet Schools, Capita, ISS, Cambridge Education and The Barnet Group in regards potential underpayments to staff who are on Term Time Pay (TTP) contracts.

Whilst the majority of staff on TTP contracts are based in schools there are workers who were outsourced to other contractors also on the same contracts.

What is this about?

It is about the calculation used to ensure that part-time workers are not being discriminated in relation to their pay.

UNISON believes that this contract term is unfair and inherently discriminatory. We believe that this contract term results term time only workers receiving less than their pro-rata leave entitlement compared to their full time equivalent (FTE) colleagues.

UNISON believes that this contract treats part time workers less favourably than full time staff and is therefore discriminatory. We also believe that the approach is potentially discriminatory on sex grounds as the workers affected are overwhelmingly female.

UNISON is seeking a recalculation of the pay and leave of these staff and a payment of back pay of any historical underpayment from their date of appointment.

We would also seek a recalculation of any pension entitlement under the LGPS resulting from any underpayment or understatement of pensionable service.

This is a massive issue for our members and we are continuing to keep all of our members briefed as to their rights at work.

If you are on a Term Time Pay contract and worried if you are being correctly paid please contact the branch on 0208 359 2088 or email contactus@barnetunison.org.uk

 

 

 

Pay our Bin workers the proper rate of Pay over the Christmas and New Year

Austerity, Local, News, UNISON Campaign

Barnet Bin workers are some of the lowest paid staff in the Council, therefore at this time of the year UNISON had hoped that the Council would want to recognise them for the vital work they do under what have been very challenging circumstances over the last 12 months.

Unfortunately the Council have misjudged the mood of the workforce.

After a year of trying to make sense of the bin collection debacle and now facing further disruption because our two year old depot is sliding down the hill workers are being told they are to be treated differently to other higher paid council workers.

The latest management offer to workers is in relation to work over two weekends over Christmas and New Year, it falls far short of what they should be paid.

All UNISON is asking for is for the staff to be treated the same as many other council workers who work weekends.

The Council has agreed many local agreements that have seen other Council workers receive time and half for working on a Saturday and double time for working on a Sunday.

Sadly, management is refusing to pay the Street Scene workforce at the same rate as other Council workers.

UNISON believes this is discriminatory against manual workers and sends a message that the Council does not care about the lowest paid workforce.

This is why UNISON is meeting with the workforce on Wednesday 4 December 2019.

 

 

Don’t blame the Barnet bin workers: You couldn’t make it up.

Austerity, Health and Safety, Local, News, Solidarity, UNISON Campaign

This time last year we were in the fourth week of the Bin Collection changes. Barnet UNISON bin workers already knew that the changes would not work. But it had been made very clear that the views of the workforce were not seen as important to the successful delivery of the service.

How wrong was that?

By Christmas 2018 the collection was in chaos as this is one of the busiest times of the year for Bin collections.

UNISON suggested a way out but we were ignored.

In 2019 bin workers were scratching their heads wondering where all the money was coming from to pay the ever growing army of agency workers. A service that started at 6 am and finished by 2pm was now running up until 11 pm at night.

But every time UNISON asked about the rounds we were told it’s just “teething problems” and “things will soon be sorted.”

In 2019, at various Council Committees, councillors started to try to get a grip of what was going on as the agency spend continued to climb and fall then climb again. Sitting in the stalls listening to officers and councillors was something to behold, hardly anything discussed seemed to reflect what our bin worker members were telling UNISON.

After years of representing workers in Barnet Council UNISON is used to being ignored but in the case of the bin service it was still astounding that no one seemed to be able to sort out what was all so apparent to the bin workers.

Then we had the “sliding depot” or the “crack” as it was called in the depot. UNISON watched in bewilderment as the crack got longer, wider and deeper. The road was so bad the vehicles had to drive really really slowly just in case they tipped over.

Obviously someone in the summer managed to convince the Council that there was a serious Health and Safety risk and that the idea of part of the depot sliding down on to Oakleigh Road South was suddenly unpalatable.

Missed opportunity.

Here was an opportunity for the Council to put things right for Barnet residents. The depot is severely constrained by having half of it cordoned off for major building works that were bound to impact on the bin collection service.

“Here was an opportunity for Bin Collection change 2.0”

UNISON bin workers would say “Tear up the crazy area collection proposals” and organise meetings with the bin worker drivers who know the borough streets intimately to help sort out bin collection routes that will work.

UNISON seized on this opportunity to help; after all there was new management in after the departure of two senior managers. We hoped for a change. We said we would help get drivers to help sort the mess out.

What happened?

More of the same. The recent changes to the bin collection service that have moved some rounds to a Saturday took place without consultation with drivers. Early feedback from our members is that things are not going as well as hoped and still the spend on agency continues.

Last week UNISON heard that staff were being pulled for not completing rounds.

Barnet UNISON has made it clear to the Council that they will countenance no blame on our members for being unable to make something that is fundamentally flawed work well for residents.

You couldn’t make this up but it is true.

With all the changes of managers and a depot that is falling apart our amazingly loyal bin workers on whom we all rely, still come into to do a difficult dirty job on low pay.

Don’t blame them for the changes – those decisions were made by others.

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