Working Hours Negotiations Deadlocked

Talks on implementing the further agreed reduction in the working week to 35.5 hours are continuing, following the Council's refusal to abide by this agreement unless savings to fund this can be agreed upfront.

At the Branch AGM in March, members voted unanimously to ballot the workforce on taking industrial action, including strike action, should negotiations fail to deliver a resolution.

Armed with this mandate, UNISON Branch Secretary Tony Caffery has been involved in negotiations with the Council in an attempt to break the deadlock. Whilst talks are continuing, it is regrettable that no deal can be reported as yet. Members will receive more news very soon.

Branch Secretary Tony Caffery staid, "Whilst we are in talks with the Council there is still a chance that they will see sense and step back from a dispute with the trade unions on this issue. However, if they continue to refuse to abide by the agreements they reached with us only last year, we will be left with no alternative but to ballot members for industrial action."

Employers pretend their pay offer is ace...

As reported in the last issue, the Employers Side in the national pay negotiations offered possibly the most pathetic pay deal in a long history of miserly offers.

Unsurprisingly, it was rejected out of hand by the trade union side. The tall story that the Employers are now desperately trying to sell to Councillors and employees up and down the land is that this pay deal is not in fact a slap in the face but is a most generous offer!

Lets just see how generous it is: their three year deal offers less than inflation and a miserly 11p an hour increase for the lowest paid; the third year of the pay offer only paid to you if your Council has completed a pay and grading review; no extra money to tackle the huge gender pay gap through pay and grading reviews despite the fact that councils have a legal duty to deliver equal pay; no improvement to holidays and maternity leave unless as part of a review of conditions, and so on. If NHS staff are worth a 3.225% rise for three years plus a massive investment to achieve equal pay, then so are we. Like a fake fiver, the more you look at the Employers' offer, the poorer it looks.

As UNISON National Secretary Heather Wakefield, said, "After three joint secretaries' meetings, it's absolutely clear that the Employers are adopting a tough stance... They indicated that the earlier offer which included more strings than the philarmonic, is unlikely to be improved.

"The strings include withholding the third year of any pay deal if councils have not carried out equal pay reviews before then. Why should our members be penalised for employers' failures? The employers have a duty under the Equal Pay Act to carry out fhose reviews - we are not stopping them, indeed we are trying our best to get them to carry out their obligations. We even included it in the claim. But it needs funding - it cannot be found from existing budgets. In the wake of the 2002 dispute and the positive report from the Local Government Pay Commission, we would have expected the employers to recognise the link between fair treatment of the workforce and service improvement.

"I cannot see a way forward unless the employers rethink their penny-pinching approach. At this rate we cannot rule out industrial action over the summer."

Sick Housing Procedure

Members working in the Housing Department will be well aware of the new sickness procedure now in effect in their Department. This ill-conceived, coercive and frankly daft policy was not agreed nor negotiated with UNISON, has been criticised by staff at every level of the Department, and makes a mockery of the Council's Corporate Values, notably 'Valuing Our Employees.'

Moreover, it will not achieve its aim of reducing sickness levels. Instead it threatens to poison staff relations, increase pointless bureaucracy and intimidate genuinely ill employees into turning up to work regardless of whether they are fit to do their job. It is in everyone's interests to reduce sickness levels, but there's a right way - reduce employees' stress levels, improve Health and Safety provisions in the workplace, et al - and a wrong way. Jim Mackrell, Assistant Branch Secretary, is currently working hard to get senior Housing managers to reconsider their sick policy.

Vote NO to the BNP

Last year the BNP won 8 seats on Burnley Council and made gains in other areas of the North West and in West Yorkshire. This year the BNP are planning to stand a record 600 candidates nationally, and they may be standing around 20 in Manchester alone. Their leader, Nick Griffin, is also standing in the North West in the European elections.

The BNP have made great efforts in recent years to portray themselves as a legitimate mainstream political party. However, reports of French fascist leader Jean-Marie Le Pen's visit to Altrincham on Sunday and the disgraceful behaviour of racist thugs who gathered in Shambles Square to spoil St George's day for the majority show the real side of the BNP. Many of their members have criminal convictions for violent offences. To cite just two examples, one of their activists has a conviction for gang rape, another for sending razor blades to Jewish people through the post.

These are not the type of people we want to represent us and our community in the Council chamber or the European Parliament. Their policies threaten the City's economic growth, do nothing to improve public services and will turn communities against one another. Vote NO to the BNP in the Council and European elections in June.

We must not let the BNP gain any kind of power in our successful and cosmopolitan city of Manchester, or indeed anywhere else. UNISON is working with Searchlight, the anti-fascist organisation, to campaign against the BNP across the North West and there are a number of ways you can help:

• Come to Oldham on 6th May to distribute leaflets and newspapers. Your help would be crucial here as there is a very real chance that the BNP could win seats. Meet at the branch office at 12.30.
• A special edition of the Searchlight anti-racist newspaper has been prepared for Manchester. Copies are available from the Branch office and your assistance in distributing them amongst your friends, family and colleagues and within your local area would be greatly appreciated.
• A telephone canvassing bank is to be set up in the week beginning 3rd May. A couple of hours is all we ask of each volunteer.
• Look out for posters advertising the various anti-racist events at venues across Manchester. You can help the campaign by coming along, getting involved, listening to some music and having a drink!

If you need any further information, please contact the Branch Office.

News in Brief

• As most members will be aware, Mo Baines has left the Branch to take up a position as Advisor to the Manchester based Association for Public Service Excellence. Her successor, Tony Caffery, was elected unanimously to take up the position of Branch Secretary by the Branch Executive Committee in March, in full accordance with UNISON procedures and is now in post. More on the back page.

• Forty-eight hours before ordering troops into Iraq, the US President said, "There's no certainty in war but the certainty of sacrifice." For most of us, maybe, but not, however, if your name is 'Bush.' According to the BBC, former Congressman George H Bush of Texas, fresh from voting to send other men's sons to Vietnam, enlisted his own son in a very special unit, the 'champagne wing' of the Texas Air National Guard. There, pilot George 'Dubya' Bush was assigned the dangerous job of protecting Houston from Vietcong air attack.

• In a sick example of corporate spin, Yves Picaud, managing director of Vivendi - a multinational company which makes a fortune from the privatisation of water services in third world countries - declared, "Free water is not so good an idea." Why? Because, "If you don't pay for something, you don't appreciate it." The people of Kwazulu Natal in South Africa might disagree. When they could no longer afford water after privatisation - they drank from streams. The ensuing cholera outbreak killed more than 250 people, one of the worst outbreaks ever recorded.