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What is happening in your workplace: Please read
If your employer is not listening to the government following the lock down announcement as a worker you do have some legal rights to protect your health and safety.
If you are a Barnet UNISON member please let us know immediately by emailing the branch at
Already some workers have walked out by using this legislation
Employment Rights Act 1996 Section 44 (Health and safety cases).
(1) An employee has the right not to be subjected to any detriment by any act, or any deliberate failure to act, by his employer done on the ground that—
(d) in circumstances of danger which the employee reasonably believed to be serious and imminent and which he could not reasonably have been expected to avert, he left (or proposed to leave) or (while the danger persisted) refused to return to his place of work or any dangerous part of his place of work, or
(e) in circumstances of danger which the employee reasonably believed to be serious and imminent, he took (or proposed to take) appropriate steps to protect himself or other persons from the danger.
Barnet UNISON statement:
Please let the branch know what is going on with your employer by sending an email to
contactus@barnetunison.org.uk
You can keep up to date with Barnet UNISON here on our
Website here https://www.barnetunison.me.uk/wp/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/BarnetUNISON/
Twitter https://twitter.com/barnet_unison
A Public Voice about Private Fears : Poem by Flower Samuels
There were no bombs or guns, but sirens of fear
The threat of death
The smell of despair
No smoke, but the air held panic.
Laws which previously held goodness crumbled.
It was smiles and kind words
That were the shields
It was the simple act of giving which kept the fear at bay.
Our concern for others was the armour
As people stood and heard the silence
Waiting for the footsteps of terror to come closer
Closing their doors and locking their hearts
Others were called to act
Kindness could penetrate walls
Bring life where there was darkness.
It could open up a universe of truth.
written by Flower Samuels Barnet UNISON member.
Who are the Key Workers who need to have child care provided by Schools?
See below
Key Workers:
· Health and social care – includes doctors, nurses, midwives, paramedics, social workers, care workers, and other frontline health and social care staff including volunteers; the support and specialist staff required to maintain the UK’s health and social care sector; those working as part of the health and social care supply chain, including producers and distributers of medicines and medical and personal protective equipment.
· Education and childcare – includes nursery and teaching staff, social workers and those specialist education professionals who must remain active during the COVID-19 response to deliver this approach.
· Key public services – includes those essential to the running of the justice system, religious staff, charities and workers delivering key frontline services, those responsible for the management of the deceased, and journalists and broadcasters who are providing public service broadcasting.
· Local and national government – only includes those administrative occupations essential to the effective delivery of the COVID-19 response or delivering essential public services such as the payment of benefits, including in government agencies and arms length bodies.
· Food and other necessary goods – includes those involved in food production, processing, distribution, sale and delivery as well as those essential to the provision of other key goods (for example hygienic and veterinary medicines).
· Public safety and national security – includes police and support staff, Ministry of Defence civilians, contractor and armed forces personnel (those critical to the delivery of key defence and national security outputs and essential to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic), fire and rescue service employees (including support staff), National Crime Agency staff, those maintaining border security, prison and probation staff and other national security roles, including those overseas.
· Transport – includes those who will keep the air, water, road and rail passenger and freight transport modes operating during the COVID-19 response, including those working on transport systems through which supply chains pass.
· Utilities, communication and financial services – includes staff needed for essential financial services provision (including but not limited to workers in banks, building societies and financial market infrastructure), the oil, gas, electricity and water sectors (including sewerage), information technology and data infrastructure sector and primary industry supplies to continue during the COVID-19 response, as well as key staff working in the civil nuclear, chemicals, telecommunications (including but not limited to network operations, field engineering, call centre staff, IT and data infrastructure, 999 and 111 critical services), postal services and delivery, payments providers and waste disposal sectors.
Barnet UNISON members if you have any questions please email the branch at contactus@barnetunison.org.uk
UNISON in relation to Coronavirus, all workplaces including schools.
Dear Member
I thought I would share the latest update from UNISON in relation to Coronavirus, all workplaces including schools.
“What is UNISON nationally is doing now?
We are seeking to work with national government, local government and education employers to draw up additional guidance. We have raised a range of issues with them including:
- Which workers we believe should be defined as essential staff and have access to education facilities;
- Closures and full pay – the need for reassurance around full pay for all staff including contractors (catering, cleaning etc), agency staff and sessional workers;
- Health and safety – need for risk assessments, protective equipment, schools fully stocked with all necessary cleaning products and testing;
- Postponement of redundancies/restructures/TUPE transfers/ disciplinary hearings etc during this period;
- Joint working with unions and employers locally and nationally to help schools and pupils and staff through crisis with employers and unions recognising the need for flexibility. Asking for volunteers first when employers are seeking to re-deploy staff;”
More details here.
https://www.unison.org.uk/at-work/education-services/key-issues/covid-19-closures/
I have submitted the above to Barnet Council and requested that I need a response which I can share to all of our members.
Please note:
If you have any questions please email
contactus@barnetunison.org.uk
Coronavirus Update “underlying medical conditions”. 17 March 2020
“I have been told that I have an underlying medical condition and I must leave work and self-isolate for 12 weeks.”
“What do they mean by self-isolation?”
- Those who are vulnerable* should stay off work for 12 weeks (not in self isolation but to avoid risk of infection)
- Self-isolation means staying indoors and not even shopping for food or essentials. Further details are here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-stay-at-home-guidance
- All unnecessary social contact and travel should be avoided by everyone, including pubs, restaurants, theatres etc.
“What do they mean by underlying conditions?”
- aged 70 or older (regardless of medical conditions)
- under 70 with an underlying health condition listed below (i.e. anyone instructed to get a flu jab as an adult each year on medical grounds):
- chronic (long-term) respiratory diseases, such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), emphysema or bronchitis
- chronic heart disease, such as heart failure
- chronic kidney disease
- chronic liver disease, such as hepatitis
- chronic neurological conditions, such as Parkinson’s disease, motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis (MS), a learning disability or cerebral palsy
- diabetes
- problems with your spleen – for example, sickle cell disease or if you have had your spleen removed
- a weakened immune system as the result of conditions such as HIV and AIDS, or medicines such as steroid tablets or chemotherapy
- being seriously overweight (a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or above)
- those who are pregnant
Some clinical conditions put people at even higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19. If you are in this category, next week the NHS in England will directly contact you with advice the more stringent measures you should take in order to keep yourself and others safe. For now, you should rigorously follow the social distancing advice in full, outlined below.
People falling into this group are those who may be at particular risk due to complex health problems such as:
- people who have received an organ transplant and remain on ongoing immunosuppression medication
- people with cancer who are undergoing active chemotherapy or radiotherapy
- people with cancers of the blood or bone marrow such as leukaemia who are at any stage of treatment
- people with severe chest conditions such as cystic fibrosis or severe asthma (requiring hospital admissions or courses of steroid tablets)
- people with severe diseases of body systems, such as severe kidney disease (dialysis)
Barnet UNISON advice:
If you have any of the above conditions please contact your employer. Barnet Council have confirmed that all of their staff and agency workers who are at risk and will need to self-isolate will receive full pay. If you have any problems please contact the Barnet UNISON office at
contactus@barnetunison.org.uk
Term Time Pay Drop-in meetings
Barnet UNISON is hosting drop-in sessions for our members working in schools which have Term Time Pay issues.
Drop-in sessions will take place on
- Monday 17th February 11- 3pm
- Tuesday 18th 11 -3pm
- Thursday 20th February from 11- 3
Drop-in sessions are held at the Barnet UNISON office, Barnet House, 1255 High Road, Whetstone, London N20 0EJ
Members please note you will need the following information.
Your monthly take home pay figures, payroll number which is on your pay slip, your membership number.
End.
Save our Catering workers
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.
It’s Your Wages. This is what we are doing.
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.
- The way your employer calculates YOUR Pay needs to be changed in order that you are paid correctly.
- 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.
- 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.
Merry Christmas? Not a chance! Redundancies on the horizon
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.