Employer wants to Slash Wages by 35% to 57% (repeat 35%-57%!)

This is incredible.  This is not a wind up or a joke. In the current "Cuts" crisis some small voluntary sector employers have clearly lost the plot. Ekaya Housing Association are planning to cut their 44 workers pay by between 35% to 57%!  Check out this UNISON Housing Association Branch press release (double click to bring up details). 

"Housing Association Cuts Workers Pay by up
to 60%

Management at Ekaya Housing Association in South London are proposing large scale salary cuts, in some cases by almost 60%, in addition to the introduction of a longer working week and compulsory redundancies.

The salary cuts range from 35% to 57.49% and all staff will be asked to work a further 2.5 hours every week. These cuts will disproportionately hit women from black and other ethnic minority backgrounds working for the association. Ekaya provide invaluable services to teenage mothers, victims of domestic violence and other vulnerable members of society.

However unions fear that the cuts could lead to the closure of services and are concerned about the impact that this will have on the wider community.

Despite the legal obligation for collective consultation Ekaya has not discussed its proposals with staff representatives. It is also felt that the limited consultation that has taken place is not meaningful as information provided by Ekaya management has been insufficient for staff to fully understand what the plans entail. UNISON are calling upon Ekaya Housing Association to halt the process until the proposals can be properly assessed and consulted upon. In the current economic climate the union feels that Ekaya has a social responsibility to ensure that any necessary cuts are well considered and fairly implemented.

Housing Association Branch Secretary John Gray “Why are Ekaya treating their staff so badly? Why are they ignoring the law of the land regarding employment rights? Why are they slashing their workers pay and sacking people without properly considering the alternatives?”

UNISON is arranging a lobby of members local MPs, Assembly members and Councillors to press their case. Details to follow."  

Further details Jason Deacy Communications Officer, UNISON Housing Association Branch

83 Crouch End Hill, London, N8 8DD

info@unisonhablondon.org

http://www.unisonhablondon.org/

020 8340 7918

31 January 2011

Please send messages of support for Ekaya members to the branch.

UPDATE: Check out UNISON national press release here

UNISON Health workers reject divisive 2 year pay freeze

This is the official UNISON press release "Members of UNISON’s Health Service Group Executive have today rejected a two-year freeze on pay increments, on top of the pay freeze imposed by the Government.

NHS Employers had offered a no compulsory redundancy agreement in return for the freeze. Members rejected the deal because there was no guarantee that all employers would abide by it. It would not be binding, but left to individual Trusts to decide whether or not to offer the guarantee.

Mike Jackson, Senior National Officer for Health said: “The Service Group Executive said today that they could not support a further pay freeze for nurses, paramedics and other low paid, mainly women workers. “The funding gap in the NHS is so great that members were sceptical that Trusts would abide by a no compulsory redundancy agreement for two years.  “Additionally they felt that the offer was divisive because it excluded high level clinicians, such as matrons, senior occupational therapists and midwife supervisors.”

While these pearls of wisdom to his members are from London Ambulance UNISON branch secretary Eric Roberts (left in picture with broad smile next to UNISON London regional conveyor Gloria Hanson on G20 March 2009)

"Dear all,

Just to keep you in the picture concerning the proposal from NHS Employers and to inform you of my contribution on behalf of the Branch and the Union next week.

On Monday I am attending an extraordinary National Ambulance Sector meeting and straight after that I am attending an extraordinary Health Service Group Executive meeting 

There is one agenda item. That is to agree or not to agree that the Union should enter into negotiations (tentative or otherwise) with the NHS Employers to accept an AfC incremental freeze (on top of the planned pay freeze) in return for an agreement concerning compulsory redundancies within the NHS.

That is the core of the agreement although there is also mention of a freeze in employee pension contributions and other fringe add on’s. This part has yet to be finalised. 

Although most people were not happy, most accepted the simple understanding that the pay freeze may well save jobs, and on that basis bit their tongues.  What is being asked this time is totally different.

These are important meetings that will decide how the Union deals with the Coalition regarding Health. This is a big decision on a lot of levels.  I intend to vote no. I will speak against the Union entering this type of agreement. I will vote no and speak against at both meetings.

I believe that it is obscene that health workers are being blackmailed and held to ransom by this Government and that we are being asked to take the responsibility for the NHS finances, while at the same time being to blame if any jobs go.

I realize of course that any way I vote has consequences. If I vote for it then our members will not only have a pay freeze but will also not have their contractual right of an incremental pay spine rise.

If I vote against then the spectre of compulsory redundancies will be laid at our door with the accusation of being selfish and not caring. I believe in Partnership but this is not partnership. This is a gun held cynically to the Union’s head.

My guess is that the Ambulance Sector as a body will vote no. It is a fact of course that ambulance services will not be as cut as many other health organisations and that may well influence a lot of the vote.  The SGE is another matter. Many members there will be facing huge job losses back at their trusts and will have a huge struggle with their conscience.

I do not know how the vote will go at that meeting.  Dave Prentis has said that ‘Our time has come’!

Unison is big enough to stand on it’s own two feet (or it’s 1.5 million x 2 feet!). The financial crisis is not the fault of health workers. Of course there is always a chance that more information will be made available and the deal being sought is not what we think.

I do not also know what the other health unions will decide.  I know that you trust me to make the right decision.  I will update you all at the Branch Committee meeting.

Best wishes  

Eric

Letter to David Cameron

"In proposing a reply to one’s opponents, in the best Oxbridge tradition, it is traditional to start by finding at least one flattering thing to say of them. This letter is in more of a Roman tradition. I come not to praise Caesar but to bury him.

Was the tone struck at the start supposed to be Churchillian?

“We can build a country defined not by what we can consume but by what we can contribute. A country, a society where we can say I am not alone. I will play my part. I will work with others to give Britain a brand new start.”

Winston was rallying the country to stand up to the Nazi hordes when he asked us to fight them on the beaches, a somewhat more noble enterprise than your government is attempting. You are asking us to bow down to the greed of the financial sector and the bankers who have cost this country dearly, to self-flagellate while you pull the great achievements of Britain down about us. You are defending the indefensible, declaring war on the working people of this country.

Of course the reference may have been intended to be more to JFK, asking not what the country can do for you but what you can do for your country. But you sir are no John Kennedy, more the boy who cries wolf trying to scare us into believing the unbelievable.

Like your Chancellor before you, you are content to lie to the British people, spouting the same old right wing ideology dressed up as urgency and necessity and accepting the praise of the IMF, a discredited body who failed to see the financial storm coming even as the tornado blew in. Your economic policy turns the clock back to the disreputable Tory policies of the 1920’s. Another Great Depression anyone?

But then, when my family were standing in dole queues then, yours and Osborne’s were probably dining at the Ritz. Then, as now, as the song goes, it’s the rich what get the pleasure and the poor the bloody blame.
“Reduced spending,” you say will be difficult, “but lets remember a lot of businesses have had to make savings in recent years”.

But can you answer an honest question? How many businesses have remained solvent while cutting wages, cutting investment and selling off the plant and machinery? But that is what you propose to do to the British economy, isn’t it?

You cannot be serious in asking us to trust your government with the NHS when the White Paper that your party has just produced will dismantle its infrastructure and sell off the component parts to the highest bidder, producing a health care system akin to an American model where treatment depends not on your illness but on the ability to pay, thus ensuring the highest profit for privatised providers?

Please don’t ask me and the rest of the working people of this country to believe you when you talk about poverty. For the Tory Party, poverty is another country, one you have never visited and have no intention of travelling to. I doubt that Mrs C counts out the leckie money, the rent and the council tax from her meagre minimum wage, to see if she has enough left to feed the kids that week. Spare us the crocodile tears.

“Fairness isn’t just about getting help from the state”? Your quote. You said it. What about the help given to the tax dodgers and non doms who fail to pay their way? Why is the state helping them dodge paying their fair share?

You talk of “more freedom for local councils to keep more of the money when they attract business to the area”. At the same time you deprive local government of funds necessary to keep services running. We remember the great cities of this country in the 1980 are when you tried the same tactics. When Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester were starved of necessary investment and they became urban wastelands from which businesses fled. We don’t look forward to time turning back.

We know what you mean when you say, "No more top down, bureaucrat driven public services”. Strip out the adjectives and there is the truth: - No more public services. Strip out the professionals, as you said of the police service and leave law and order to the special constables, the Keystone cops, or the hobby Bobbies. And since we don’t have enough university places or apprenticeships for our young people, let’s ship them to the colonies, sorry offer them “international service". Thunderbirds are go!

I’m afraid your roots as a PR man are showing. Your performance as an international statesman is as convincing as Roger Moore’s in 007. There is no integrity, only bluster and sounds bites hiding the use of political power as a means of ensuring that post war social democracy is dismantled, and that we return a life that is solitary, poor, nasty brutal and short.

So I won’t be heeding you plea “to pull together”. In my world suicide is to be avoided, as bad for the health".

Jane Carolan - hat tip UNISONactive