Search Results for: capita

£20.5 million lost to frontline services and jobs!

Earlier this week I sat in on the General Functions Committee and heard in a response to a residents question that the Council had deliberately made a decision not to collect £20.5 million (source here question 12). Instead the Council have been making political decisions to freeze council tax and this week announced a 1% cut in Council Tax.

But what does a 1% cut in Council Tax mean for Barnet residents

A resident paying the highest rate council tax will see their bill reduced by £32 a year, or 61 pence a week,

A resident paying the lowest rate council tax will see their bill reduced by £9.44 a year or 18 pence a week.

Delivering a 1% cut in Council Tax means cuts to services; the biggest saving is the loss of 350 local jobs in the Capita contract. Think of all the services and jobs that have been lost over the past four years.

Above is a Bar Graph which shows the Council is shrinking due to the outsourcing.

In September this year the Council produced performance statistics here; on page 9 there is a staffing breakdown by service area. Members know our branch has been persistently asking the Council to produce accurate information about job vacancies. In our view it is critically important that all staff facing redundancy are provided with opportunities to secure another job within the Council and avoid being made redundant.  According to the figures provided by the Council there were 726.71 vacancies across the Council.

Next week the Budget report going to Cabinet Committee so, now we know the Council workforce has reduced to 2,200. What is shocking is that according to figures produced at Remuneration Committee last month almost a half of the Council workforce earns less that the London Living Wage (approx £8.80 and hour). In the Budget report it identifies 34 posts at risk of redundancy; however the bigger number of staff at risk of redundancy are former Council staff who transferred to Capita. UNISON is pleased to note that Capita & Council are putting in place a process for these staff to be able to apply for any vacant posts within the Council.

All Councils will be privatised by 2022

“More Austerity, Austerity Lite, more cuts, more outsourcing.”

If this is what the May 2014 local elections in London and the 2015 General Election will be fought on then it will mean deeper cuts for local councils.

In which case you don’t have to read Nostradamus to predict the ‘end of days’ for all Councils and you don’t have to look far to see who some might view as the ‘Four Horseman’ of the apocalypse , SERCO, G4S, CAPITA, BT

In Barnet our own Council, are pioneering the Commissioning Council also known as the ‘Disappearing Council’, this model moves away from delivering services and hands service delivery to the private sector.

There are some who will argue that the commissioning model does not mean privatisation adding there are a number of creative innovative ways to deliver services.

What they always fail to acknowledge is the sustainability of these alternatives. It is matter of record that Mutual’s, Cooperatives are simply not able to sustain the cuts to funding from Councils. We are already witnessing the third sector (often pedalled as the ‘soft alternative’ to outright privatisation) struggling to deliver services as the funding streams are cut.

In Barnet the real big contracts have been out tender and all four SERCO, G4S, CAPITA, BT expressed an interest in running our Council.

Capita eventually went on to win both big contracts.

So, back to the prediction whereby all Councils will be privatised by 2022.

If you believe all the rhetoric about the savings privatisation guarantee to deliver then it is hard to see how any council will be able to resist the pressure of handing over services to the private sector.

“Council may be forced to outsource additional services, warns leader”

(Barnet Press 3 October 2013)

“THE leader of Barnet Council says that the authority will continue to outsource and make funding cuts if the government continues to slash local authority budgets after the 2015 general election.” More here

On Tuesday 1 October  UNISON attended a meeting to discuss the One Barnet Programme. Some of our members may be aware that the programme was split into Wave One & Wave Two. The meeting formalised the closing of Wave One with the caveat that there would be a lessons learnt report produced with an opportunity for the trade unions to contribute. We were informed that Wave Two has already started which includes CCTV service, Registars Services, Mortuary Service all of which will no doubt be outsourced at some point in time.

The latest big project for Wave Two is the Education Service or what used be known as the Local Education Authority (LEA). This service has had some pretty vicious cuts in the past but has now been lumped together with all the services that have remained in Education in readiness for the One Barnet treatment.

I reported back to the meeting that staff already believe it is simply a matter of time before they are outsourced. Many workers in our Education service are already aware that Capita won the contract to deliver LEA services on behalf of Staffordshire County Council late last year. More recently Capita won another big contract in Swindon to deliver the following services: administrative support and reception-based duties on behalf of the Children’s Integrated Service Localities teams, which includes education welfare, youth engagement, health visiting support, targeted mental health services and educational psychology.

So, the news headline will not be a shock to anyone working for the Council. The Commissioning model does not tolerate in house service delivery. It doesn’t matter whether the service is high performing, low cost, value for money, the ‘die has been cast’ and outsourcing is the ‘only game in town’.

It is only right to point out Streetscene services have remained in-house. This weekend sees the return of the Recycling services from May Gurney. However a straw poll of members working down the deport would reveal that no one believes that this services will be still in-house once Mill Hill Depot is sold by December 2016

UNISON does not support ideological adherence to One Barnet outsourcing and will continue to support our members and public services in Barnet.

Yesterday a group of residents organised a funeral march, they made several stops across the borough and gave the following eulogy.

“We are gathered here today to bid farewell to Barnet Public Services.

It is sad, of course, to lose a single service, but to lose the majority of this family is truly tragic. Perhaps you did not know all of them, but all of us were acquainted with some of them. They were there to serve us and they provided jobs for some of us. The purpose of these services – like the motivation of those who provided them – was purely to do the job well. They were not perfect, any more than any of us are, but these services were answerable to US, the public. We could reach them directly and press our case when necessary. There were personal connections and there was continuity. They were part of our community.

They were ours, we valued them and we fought hard to save them. They would have lived but for the key to their survival – the date of the decision of their execution – being hidden from view and the executioners’ misleading statements about it when asked.

Now those services as we knew them are gone.

The public – is private,

the motivation and purpose are profit – not service,

and our community rightly grieves.

As we mourn our loss, we extend our sympathies to those who have the added hardship of being forced to move or who have lost their job. As we watch our public services being buried far from their home, we worry how call-centre workers with no connection to, knowledge of, or interest in us and our community will respond to our needs.

We worry especially about what will happen to us and to our loved ones as the first priority of even more vital services – becomes profit, for we have seen how this has harmed some and endangers more people in the privatised care regimes under Fremantle and Your Choice Barnet. Fighting for the right to be consulted about the care of those we hold dear, we are told by such organisations that they don’t have to listen to us, because they are private companies. So how will we ensure that our environment, our buildings, the goods sold in our shops, our highways, our estates and our personal data are safe in the hands of Capita, an enormous organization with a far-from-perfect record of delivering on its promises in the public service sector?

By their actions, the executioners – and you know who they are ­– have dealt a body blow to local democracy. And although we have lost the initial battle, there is much to fight for.

As we bid farewell to public services, let us rededicate ourselves to that fight and to restoring that democracy: To holding the council and Capita to account for every drop in standards, every failure to deliver services, and every penny not accounted for.

Do NOT rest in peace, Capita and Barnet Council:

WE ARE WATCHING YOU!”

“Why are the government attacking the workers and their union?

In the last month there has been a concerted negative campaign to target workers and their trade unions. By that I refer to the stories in the press questioning the role of the trade unions and the link to the Labour Party. The Coalition Government attacks are directed on funding of the Labour Party and now it seems future funding of political parties may now be funded by the tax payer?

What is of interest are the private donations by multinationals who are clearly wanting something in return.

It was interesting to read that over £100 billion of public sector contracts have already been handed to the big private sector contractors such as G4S, IBM. Serco, Balfour Beatty, BT, and Capita

It is not until you read the list of MPs with financial interests and links to the NHS see here that you can see whay the NHS is already under threat of mass privatisation

Where are attacks?

1. Employment Tribunals

Earlier this week news broke that workers would have to pay if they wanted to take their employer to an employment tribunal.

Workers can expect to pay between £160 to £250 simply to make a claim and a further hearing fee starting at £230 to £950.

This is clearly designed to stop access to justice for workers who have been unfairly dismissed or discriminated against.

However if a worker belongs to a Trade Union this fee will be covered case if UNISON takes up the case for the member

The Good News is that UNISON has won the right to have a JR hearing over tribunal fees read here

2. Attack on Trade Unions and their members

I refer of course to the “Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill 2013-14”

The above Bill is a direct attack on Trade Unions and our members working across the public and private sectors. It ignores the growing public concern that rich and powerful individuals and corporations hold over policy making and politicians

3. Privatised workers lose rights to National Pay Awards.

When workers have previously been transferred to the private sector, the link to future the national Pay Awards has been quashed in the European courts see here

4. Attacking collection of Trade Union subscriptions

This dispute concerns the collection of trade union subscriptions by the employer on behalf of the trade union. This is a practice all good employers carry out for a fee paid by the trade union. Reading this report it seems that this petty attack has all the trademarks of anti trade union ideology.