Union-Unison RSS feed for the Union-Unison tag
found 10 stories.
Comment
Roger McKenzie 17 Feb 11
I am sure that I have mentioned several times before that I was born and bred in Walsall. This bond with Walsall, the Black Country and the region as a whole is really important to me.
Wherever I have worked and whatever I have done I have always done everything that I can to defend our region against those from outside that seek to belittle or run us down. I have also taken every available opportunity to work for and to sing the praises of our region.
We are a region that has led the way in innovation. Not only were we the cradle of the industrial revolution our region also gave birth to a system of local government in Birmingham that was later to be copied across the World. We have also, over the years, been one of the powerhouses of the labour and trade union movement…
News
Express & Star 23 Nov 10
Letters have been sent out to more than 1,300 workers at Walsall Council asking them to take voluntary redundancy.
A total of 427 jobs will be axed at the council over the next three years as part of hard-hitting plans to save £65 million. Council chiefs say 187 of these will be posts that are already vacant, leaving 240 posts still facing the chop…
News
Chris Henwood B'ham Mail 18 Nov 10
Around 60 members of the Unite and Unison unions were outside Walsall Council House on Wednesday night to show opposition to public sector job cuts that could be about to hit the borough.
They greeted members of Walsall’s ruling cabinet as they headed into a meeting where they were looking at proposals for next year’s budget.
The cuts could see the axe fall on around 350 posts in Walsall, borough council leader Mike Bird has said. Of these posts around 165 were already vacant, he explained…
Comment
Roger McKenzie 12 Jul 10
Far from liberating the region’s NHS, the white paper proposals will tie it up in knots for years to come – they are a recipe for disaster, more privatisation and less stability.
NHS staff in the region will feel badly let down by plans to undermine national pay bargaining. In the unseemly race to do this, the Government wants employers to lead negotiations on new contracts resulting in a two-tier workforce within Trusts and anomalies across the NHS.
If the NHS is to be more efficient it needs to have stability…
Comment
Roger McKenzie 15 May 10
Only a new politics will do!
So here we are days after a General Election and saddled with the seemingly most unholy of coalitions. I say seemingly because those of us who know anything about the Lib Dems in local government will know that there is absolutly nothing progressive about them and they belong squarly in the Tory camp.
While it’s far too early to say how things will pan out what we do know is that power is extremely seductive for the Lib Dems who will give up almost everything for a taste of power…
News
BBC News 27 Apr 10
About 5,000 female council staff have won their case for equal pay at an employment tribunal. The women, who include cleaners, cooks and care assistants, were all employed by Birmingham City Council. Unions said the women may be owed £30m in back-pay because bonuses were paid only to male counterparts. Solicitors said the pay-out could be up to £600m.
The Unison union said it was a “major” victory. The council said the ruling related to its old bonus structure…
Business news
Express & Star 16 Feb 10
More than 100,000 council employees in the West Midlands will have their pay frozen this year in order to minimise job losses. Some councils in the region set aside enough to offer a one per cent rise from April but the Local Government Association (LGA) said there should not be any pay increases. This angered trade unions GMB, Unison and Unite…
News
Adam Lumley The YamYam 28 Jan 10
After 13 years of discussion, delay and disagreement, Walsall Council’s long awaited single status pay review may finally be revealed on Friday. But council workers, having been already warned that there will be “winners and losers”, will have to wait another three months to learn what their new salaries will be.
The Single Status Agreement was formulated as long ago as 1997 when local government employers and the three main town hall trade unions negotiated a pay structure that was intended to end discriminatory and unfair differences in salaries, particularly involving low-paid and women workers.
Over the next 10 years, councils up and down the country did little to implement the agreement, wishing to avoid the high financial cost of increasing woman’s pay to the same rate as a man doing the same job. But according to a council report, between 2004 and 2006, Walsall paid 2,500 legal settlements against equal pay claims at an undisclosed cost. New figures reveal that an additional 800 staff have taken the council to equal wage employment tribunals.
Originally seen as way of addressing pay inequality, the Single Status Agreement is now being used by councils to protect themselves from equal pay claims by undertaking a national job evaluation scheme. This process involves assessing a job against such criteria as knowledge and skills, effort and demands, responsibilities and environmental demands. The job is then given a score and then a new grade and salary is imposed. Unions fear that this will lead to jobs being down graded. Walsall Unison branch secretary, Carol Sewell said: “It has been ticking along for some time, but we are meeting them next Friday. We will finally find out what scores they have decided on for each post and then we will get down to the nitty-gritty.
“As a union, our position has always been that there should be no losers among our members. That has not changed.”
But cabinet member for finance and personnel, Councillor Chris Towe, has revealed that the new grades and pay scales for over 5,000 staff will not be announced for at least three months. “The fact is that until we have a pay model which links the scores to levels of pay, it is impossible to say what individuals’ new pay and grades will be.”
Almost a year ago, a meeting of the Corporate Scrutiny and Performance panel was told that officers hoped to present the proposal “early in the summer.” The same meeting heard that senior council officers were exempt from the job evaluation process as “the national scheme is not usually appropriate for senior officers as it does not distinguish accurately between senior grades”. The Chief Executive of Walsall Council, Paul Sheehan, who is reportedly taking home between £190,000 and £199,000 per year, is therefore not part of the job evaluation process. It is not know how many of the 300 council managers who earn over £50,000 per year are also exempt.
The report to the scrutiny committee concludes “that some industrial relations difficulties will be encountered once consultations on new pay structures begin.”
Walsall Council awaits a decision on former highways officer Carl Teesdale at an employment tribunal over wrongful dismissal. If successful in his claim, Mr Teesdale could receive a pay-out similar to the £650,000 awarded to Peter Francis, another Walsall council officer who was unfairly dismissed.
Comment
Heather Wakefield The Other Taxpayers' Alliance 27 Jan 10
More than 1.5 million workers employed by councils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland face a pay cut from April 1, after the Local Government Employers informed Unison and the other unions at a meeting last Wednesday that there would be no pay offer this year. Everyone from the cleaner to the chief executive will suffer – though clearly not equally…
Comment
Roger McKenzie 25 Nov 09
The West Midlands economy, more than any other part of the UK, is faced with a degree of economic downturn that may rival the Great Depression of the 1930s. For public services this has far reaching implications: rising unemployment and business failure means reduced taxes and increased government debt at a time when the demand for services is increasing…