Category: London Living Wage
Bringing Services Home – Barnet UNISON campaign
Barnet UNISON is proud to announce that we are promoting UNISON Bringing Services Home campaign.
As a branch we have had more than our share of outsourcing. The easy Council experiment was a spectacular failure. It cost more money (yes, we told them it would!) and it did not lead to better services.
In May 2022, Barnet Labour Party won the election with a massive majority and one of their priorities was “Review of contracted out services, in the context of the new administration’s aspiration to bring privatised services back in-house.”
Last year Barnet Labour Party brought back one of the big contracts with Capita and other services on the other Capita contract have been coming back in-house.
The Council is going through a period of healing from the badly advised outsourcing ideology which dominated our Council for over a decade.
Today Barnet UNISON has written to all senior council officers responsible for outsourced contracts seeking a meeting to discuss how and when they are going to review the outsourced service.
Barnet UNISON also want to deal with the Ethnicity Pay Gap which the outsourcing easy Council ideology promoted by always securing the outsourcing option for services which are largely provided by Black workers e.g.
- NSL: Parking Services
- ISS: Catering Services
- Your Choice Barnet: Social Care services
- Norse: Cleaning services
- Blue 9: Security Services.
All the above services were outsourced under the Tories.
Barnet UNISON positively supports the statement of UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea said:
“Black workers make a vital contribution to the health and care sector but are all too often at the bottom of the pay scale as care workers, porters, healthcare assistants and catering staff. They frequently face shocking discrimination, threatening their health, job security and life chances.”
This why Barnet UNISON is determined to work with the Labour Administration to bring back these services into the Council thus enabling real life meaningful changes for a workforce that is often invisible and often low paid and without occupational sick pay.
End.
London Living Wage Week: Barnet UNISON message to employers is “Pay Up Now!”
London Living Wage Week: Barnet UNISON message to employers is:
“Pay Up Now!”
This week is London Living Wage for more details of the campaign please go to https://www.livingwage.org.uk/living-wage-week
As soon as Barnet UNISON heard the new rate had changed from £11.95 to £13.15 an hour we contacted the Leader of Barnet Council, Chief Executive of Barnet Council and Chief Executive of The Barnet Group to ask what they are doing to ensure that all contractors adopt the new pay rate.
Last week we heard that the Chief Executive of The Barnet Group has sent a message to staff stating:
“We have made a commitment to pay the London living wage if we can afford to, to comply with the Living Wage Foundation accreditation it needs to be implemented by 1st May 2024.”
We already know from a survey of our members that pay is the one biggest issues. We are in the worst Cost Of Living Crisis in 76 years, things are not getting better, they are getting worse.
Barnet UNISON will shortly be conducting a mass consultation pay ballot with our members which will ask two questions.
1. Do you think you should wait until 1 May 2024, or should you be given the new pay rate now?
2. If you want the pay now and management refuse to pay, are you prepared to take strike action? Yes or No?
The choice of what we do next will be from our members. We are a branch that does support its members as we saw last year with the Barnet Ten strikes and now, we have social workers on strike about pay.
Whatever happens, you the members will decide what we do next.
We will be organising meetings in workplaces and a big online meeting to discuss this issue.
If you want to book a meeting on pay or would like more information about the mass consultation pay ballot email us at contactus@barnetunison.org.uk