Camden UNISON Annual Report for 09 March 2010 Annual ...
Camden UNISON Annual Report for 05 March 2012 Annual General Meeting (AGM)
Membership and Internal Organisation
To borrow from one-time local resident Charles Dickens some 200 years after his birth, the past year has been “the best of times, the worst of times” for our branch. On the one hand, many branch members responded with exceptional enthusiasm both to the TUC’s 26 March demonstration for the alternative to austerity and the call for strike action on 30 November in opposition to the Coalition government’s attack on the Local Government Pension Scheme alongside hundreds of thousands of other public sector workers across Britain and Northern Ireland. We also witnessed, however, the continued inability to halt the cull of jobs by the Labour-controlled council in Camden as it implements the Con-Dems’ cuts programme at local level Since the summer of 2010, the Council has axed more than 400 full-time equivalent posts, with more than 320 workers being made redundant. More than 60% of the redundancies were classified as compulsory. Of course, the figures for Camden represent but a small fraction of the job loss sustained across local government as a whole in the past two years.
Overall, the branch’s membership remained stable and, in fact, appeared to grow slightly over the course of 2011, largely if not entirely due to a surge in membership applications after the announcement in September of a strike ballot in connection with the pensions dispute. Some 500 joined the branch last year with 90 of them signing up in November meaning that we very nearly matched the overall level of recruitment seen in 2010. The vast majority of these were Council employees, which more than compensated for the loss of more than 290 members among Council employees. Most of these members left on the grounds of redundancy for the first time since 1993. With substantially more than 3,000 across all employers, Camden UNISON thus remains among the three largest of the union’s local government branches across Greater London, both in terms of absolute membership and in terms of union density in the main employer (the Council). Union density here refers to the proportion of the directly employed Council employees in membership. Our most recent calculation suggests that 49% of non-teaching staff across the Council are UNISON members, though that the figure is yet to be confirmed.
While the above facts are mildly encouraging against an often bleak background, they tell only a small part of the story. Without the spur of the pensions dispute, membership would almost certainly have shrunk in 2011. Though last autumn again illustrated that a union that shows itself willing to fight for its members will often grow, there are very significant question marks over the branch’s organisational capacity with a notable dearth of stewards in Central Services and to a lesser degree in Culture & Environment, while there has been a long-term to translate a substantial membership in schools into sustained organisation within and across schools. We need to address these deficiencies if we are to be better placed to mount the sort of resistance that will eventually be essential if we are going to defend existing pay, terms and conditions, much less reverse the erosion we have suffered over the course of the past several years, even prior to the emergence of the current Coalition after the May 2010 General Election. Over the course of the past three years since April 2009 the typical local government worker at the top of her/his grade has seen basic pay eroded by 13% in real terms, according to research carried out for UNISON by the New Policy Institute.
And unless and until we are prepared to act collectively to challenge the Government’s policy of making the public sector workforce pay for structural deficits chalked up through the bank bailouts the erosion of living standards looks set to continue. On Thursday 23 February the umbrella body for local authority employers confirmed their widely expected stance and flatly refused to make any pay offer even to the lowest paid sections of the workforce, so we face the prospect of the third consecutive year of absolute pay freeze – significant real pay cuts - for the vast majority of the workforce including those on below £21,000 annual wages. Below, I comment further on the national picture, which in turn forms part of a much wider European and arguably global assault on working class living standards and social welfare provision, elsewhere in the report.
Continuity and a Great Leap Forward
At the level of central branch leadership we have seen a degree of stability after the significant transition that took place in 2009. Since then, Phoebe Watkins and Barry Walden have ably shared the responsibilities of chairing branch committees and officers’ meetings, as well as providing invaluable support to me as branch secretary, a role I have tried to perform as best I can for nearly two and a half years. Vinothan Sangarapillai assumed the role of branch treasurer early in 2010, swiftly acquiring the nickname of the ‘Iron Chancellor’. He has been both competent and diligent, frequently advising against - though not always successfully restraining - our spending impulses. I would also like to praise the work of our incumbent publicity officer, Pete Ainsley, for maintaining the regular production of Camden Eye, as a high quality branch newsletter, while also thanking John Shepherd, co-convenor in Children, Schools & Families, for bringing the branch into the new millennium with our website (.uk), which was finally launched in the August 2011. Supported by the input of Vino Sangarapillai, the website has become a very useful supplement to the printed word, though it is still far from being our principal communication tool.
Changes
We have, however, very recently lost a senior branch officer, Sarah Friday, who has been the branch’s very effective Health & Safety Officer since 2005, undertook crucial work on two key outsourced contracts and more recently had served as the convenor for the Central Services directorate. Happily for her, Sarah has just started a full-time post working for another trade union and, needless to say, we express our appreciation for her work in recent years and wish her well in the new role.
We have also seen the departure from Camden of Kunle Olulode, a key activist over the course of two decades and the long-time convenor of the Camden Black Workers’ Group (CBWG). Kunle’s commitment and energy had been vital to maintaining the CBWG in recent years and his presence is certainly missed. He was, however, only one of several UNISON representatives to leave Camden on grounds of redundancy last year with the likes of Keith Axon, Martin Cornish and Kwesi Hughes among those leaving the Housing & Adult Social Care directorate on the basis of redundancy and/or early retirement.
Two key stewards in Central Services, Maureen Blackett, a representative for nearly 20 years, and Shayne Perry, a picket line stalwart on 30 November 2011 have stood down, leaving critical vacancies to be filled in the Benefits division, an historic stronghold for the branch where Government ‘welfare’ legislation poses the threat of rundown and eventual closure. Unfortunately, Sharon Thomson, who has served as a convenor for Central Services and more recently as co-convenor for Culture & Environment, has resigned from UNISON duties, though the good news – for us at least – is that she won’t be leaving Camden just yet and I very much hope that she can take up the cudgels once more for members at Cressy Road and beyond in the near future.
In early 2010 we established the part-time post of branch organiser, which John Mann filled initially on a fixed-term contract. After considerable discussion branch committee members agreed to extend the post for a further year and after a competitive recruitment process John was appointed to the slightly modified role and will continue for at least another 12 months from this April. He has played an indispensable part in securing long overdue employment rights for sessional staff at the Talacre Sports Centre after a very protracted battle. Out of necessity, John has taken a leading part in supporting members on outsourced contracts in the private and voluntary sectors, and has also been central to the development of stewards’ organisation among the membership on the NSL parking enforcement contract of which more later in this report.
In the Phoenix Road branch office, which Google would have you believe was the national union’s base, we have been very fortunate to retain both Paul England as branch office manager and Tsui Tsang as branch administrator. As branch secretary I owe both them and John Mann a continuing debt of gratitude. In addition, a new regional organiser has been assigned to the branch by UNISON’s Greater London region with Amanda Baird, who also covers the Haringey, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest branches, replacing Dan Peppiatt since last May. Amanda conducts monthly ‘surgeries’ by appointment with stewards regarding individual casework, usually on the last Wednesday of the month.
National picture: ‘The Fight of Our Lives’?
Shortly after last year’s AGM, we witnessed the half-million strong ‘March for the Alternative’, called by the TUC. The turnout far exceeded media projections and the expectations of many national trade union offices. The make-up of that day’s demonstration highlighted the mobilising potential UNISON possesses. Our branch took part in a slightly chaotic, but very spirited feeder march to the main demonstration and attracted some 2,000 people.
A little more than three months later on 30 June four national unions (the ATL – historically a far from ‘militant’ teaching union, the NUT, the largest of the teaching unions, the PCS, far and away the biggest union in the Civil Service and the UCU lecturers’ union) mounted a day’s strike action against the Government’s pension proposals. In London upwards of 20,000 civil servants, lecturers and above all teachers marched from Lincoln’s Inn Fields to Central Hall Westminster. To the best of my knowledge only five UNISON banners appeared on the London demonstration that day, but I am pleased that one of them was our own Camden banner.
From its national delegate conference in Manchester last June UNISON eventually launched what developed for a time into a major, possibly unprecedented, campaign in defence of public service workers’ pensions. To its credit our branch leadership had been preparing members from the spring onwards for the prospect of strike action in defence of our pensions and arming them with potent arguments to confront the associated media onslaught denouncing our supposedly ‘gold-plated’ retirement provision. While the summer passed quietly at a national level by late September, UNISON’s machine had swung into action in a fashion I had never previously witnessed in at 15 (+) years of membership. The branch office was almost literally inundated with leaflets promoting a campaign for a ‘yes’ vote in the ensuing strike ballot, while many members received emails and/or text messages from the union. In addition, the branch produced its own publicity and had a ‘battle bus’ in action both during the balloting period and on 30 November itself. Thanks to the Tower Hamlets branch, we also had badges to wear during the ballot and the immediate run-up to the strike.
The pensions dispute is, however, now in abeyance as talks continue on the basis of a ‘Heads of Agreement’, which our branch committee does not consider as an acceptable framework for an eventual settlement. Eleven other national unions have rejected the broad principles accepted by UNISON’s service group executives on 10 January and several of those (including the NUT, PCS and UCU) are seriously contemplating further strike action on 28 March with the firefighters’ union (the FBU) looking increasingly likely to ballot for action as well. While the ‘Heads of Agreement’ for the Local Government Pension Scheme avoid any immediate employee contribution increases, with any day of reckoning postponed until 01 April 2014, our side has already conceded on other key issues associated with the strike including:
• The increase in retirement age, aligned with the rise in the state retirement age to 68 (and quite possibly beyond 70 within a generation),
• The decoupling of annual pensions uprating from the more favourable Retail Price Index, and
• The demise of the current final salary scheme in favour of a career average scheme, which is very likely to prove less beneficial to most scheme members.
In his annual speech to the Manchester conference last June, UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis spoke of ‘the fight of our lives’ in defence of our pensions, yet to me and others in the branch leadership, we seem to have retreated to our corner after we stood at least even with our opponents after the first round of the bout. Sadly, since the extraordinary day of co-coordinated strike action on 30 November, the united front of unions has apparently been broken and UNISON appears to have sent a signal to the Government and the employers that they not worry overly about the prospects of effective opposition to the ongoing cuts in real pay and the jobs ‘massacre’ across the public sector, which is now projected to claim some 710,000 posts, as opposed to the 400,000 suggested at the time of Chancellor George Osborne’s autumn 2010 statement.
At a local and regional level, we have witnessed a number of serious attacks on pay and conditions, some of which have provoked sustained and very determined resistance. Both Birmingham City Council and the local authority employer in Doncaster (South Yorkshire) have provoked strikes in the past year through a combination of job cuts and significant worsening of contractual terms and conditions. Without doubt, though, the most notable example has been Southampton City Council, where a Tory administration has sought to impose swingeing pay cuts across virtually the whole of the workforce. Nearly one year various forms of industrial action involving both Unite and UNISON members continue, with the rolling programme of action securing partial retreats.
Now, however, the Southampton Council’s leadership is threatening to remove union facility time from senior branch officers, with Tory-controlled Swindon going down the same path in recent weeks. Elsewhere, the Tory-led authority in Plymouth temporarily derecognised the local authority’s UNISON branch late last summer, though an agreement was eventually reached to restore collective bargaining rights to UNISON after both the GMB and Unite withdrew from a previous agreement on new contracts with the Council. There is a very real prospect that alongside further measures to force privatisation of public services and dilute the protection to outsourced workers afforded by the TUPE regulations the next Queen’s Speech will contain legislation to radically restrict paid time-off for public sector union officers. Prime Minister David Cameron has already signaled his sympathy with the objectives of the cynically misnamed Trade Union Reform Group of Conservative MPs, backed by Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles and led by men of unimpeachable integrity such as former Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, and ex-junior minister Aidan Burley, best known for bankrolling a friend’s stag night at a French ski resort where guests wore Nazi regalia. As quite a few members will already be aware facility time in Camden has come under the spotlight as our branch has been targeted by the leadership of the local group of Tory councillors, Andrew Mennear, the Conservative MP for Witham in Essex, Priti Patel, and the none too union friendly Evening Standard newspaper.
Meanwhile, in London a number of local authorities have either threatened or actually implemented attacks on pay and conditions including Labour-controlled Waltham Forest, where the Council has made use of Section 188 powers under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 to sack and reengage on far worse contracts a substantial layer of the directly employed workforce. Other councils such as Greenwich and Newham have made similar, albeit less drastic, moves over the past two years. The next section of the report outlines a more complicated and in some ways divisive approach, which Camden management has been pursuing.
The Coalition has, however, certainly not had everything its own way – most recently it has staged a significant climb-down regarding its Workfare programme, which highlights the reality that protest and resistance do have real effects. More significantly still the Government has undoubtedly encountered a huge political problem over the past year in its attempts to force through the so-called Lansley Bill, with its threats to fragment and further privatise huge swathes of the NHS. The breadth of opposition this proposed legislation has aroused from not only our own and other unions, but associations of medical professionals and the general public means that the Bill’s passage is not a foregone conclusion and with that in mind I would strongly urge members to attend the demonstration and rally in defence of the NHS that is taking place on Wednesday 07 March.
Camden Council: the Axe Keeps Swinging
Though some of the specific details have changed, we have known the broad outline of the Council’s approximately £83 million, three-year cuts programme since the second half of 2010. The 27 February Council meeting simply confirmed the direction of travel. For the local authority’s tenants is a rent rise of more than 8%, along with a steep in service charges. Council Tax, meanwhile, remains frozen for another year in exchange for a small ‘cushion’ from central Government. At the start of this report, I indicated the scale of job loss to date, with the ultimate tally due to reach 970 by the end of Financial Year 2013-14, so we are now approaching the half-way point of the so-called Medium-Term Financial Strategy, though with the promise of still more if somewhat less drastic cuts in an ‘age of austerity’ without an end in sight. To date, there has been a reduction in spending on agency staff, though we have yet to receive a definite figure in this regard, while the Council’s expenditure on consultants has reportedly fallen by more than 35% from a 2009-10 high, but still stands at more than £10.6 million for the financial year now ending. There are other implications for staff with the acceleration of a property sell-off, ostensibly to assist Camden bridge a huge gap in capital funding, and the ensuing physical concentration of much of the workforce in far fewer buildings including the new ‘campus complex’ that is due to form part of the King’s Cross redevelopment.
Pay ‘Modernisation’
Last September (2011) management unveiled a set of proposals under the generalised heading of pay ‘modernisation’ for virtually the whole of the workforce outside of schools and craft jobs in Camden Building Maintenance. The ostensible short-term objective is to shave some £2 million in savings on the total pay bill in line with targets set in the three-year Medium-Term Financial Strategy. This, however, is only part of a long game, with the ultimate goal to ‘save’ a cumulative amount of £45-£50 million by 2027-28.
The complex and in some ways quite sophisticated package of proposals would include the introduction of performance-related pay for those staff on current grades SO1-PO7 alongside numerous almost invariably detrimental changes to terms and conditions. Among the proposed changes were the extension of the standard contractual working week from 35 to 37 hours (with no rise in pay), a radical redefinition of standard working hours and the virtual elimination of allowances paid for working anti-social hours. The proposed contracts of employment would apply to all new starters and to all those existing staff promoted into new posts, though for the rest of the existing workforce sign-up to the new contracts would be ‘voluntary’. Management has repeatedly insisted on its desire to achieve a negotiated settlement, but at the same time have also made clear that it reserves the Section 188 weapon (sack and reengage after 90 days) in the absence of any collective agreement or insufficient levels of sign-up to the new terms and conditions. To date branch officers (alongside the GMB’s regional official) have continued to talk with senior HR figures, securing some blunting of the original proposals. The latest proposals, for example:
• Revert to the historic 35-hour week for all existing employees, but still call for a 37-hour week for new starters
• Allow for some overtime payments above plain rate
• Incorporate some Bank Holiday payments (beyond Christmas Day as originally proposed)
• Permit existing staff to continue accruing Long Service leave entitlement, which would then be frozen from March 2015.
Management has also agreed, in principle, to a formal appeals process over appraisal ratings with the possibility of union representation for a member appealing against her/his rating, which would be explicitly linked to pay for those who agree to the new contracts. There is also the promise of a compensation/incentive payment for all those who sign up, though it is clear that the current formula that the sums on offer to many of those who would lose out come nowhere near making up even a year’s loss of earnings.
As part of our counterproposals to management we advanced the demand for an immediate £250 rise for all those staff currently on Scale 5, Scale Point 25 and below to be consolidated into base pay. To date, the management response has been to offer £250 only on a one-off basis to those on Scales 1 and 2 (under £19,000), with payment conditional on sign-up to the new terms and conditions. While we remain committed to continuing to talking with management with the stated goal of achieving a negotiated settlement, though the gap has not narrowed substantially and there is no prospect of any deal before a report goes to the Council’s Cabinet on 18 April. Management’s apparent aim is to conclude any ‘deal’ in anticipation of a second report to the Cabinet in early summer, with a view to starting implementation over a six-month period from this September.
The cuts have led inexorably to review after review after review across all directorates. Culture & Environment undoubtedly bore the brunt in the first year of the programme, but the scythe has swept through Adult Social Care (including mental health services) and we are now witnessing compulsory redundancies among support staff in both Camden’s community and voluntary aided schools. Some of the most damaging restructures have included:
• The closures of the mobile library service and the Regent’s Park Library, while three other libraries face a precarious future on the basis of volunteering, having ceased to be Council-run facilities. Some 35 further jobs have been lost across library provision
• The complete shutdown of meals on wheels provision, with the loss of some 25 jobs. The previous administration had outsourced this service to FreshCM, a subsidiary of the multinational privateer, ISS, in 2008
• The end of direct Play Service provision with 120 or more full-time equivalent at risk by 31 August of this year. The small numbers of redundancies to date have been voluntary, but this is the tip of the iceberg. The branch has pressed with some success for a more favourable basis for redundancy calculations and is continuing to argue that TUPE protection should apply to any current Camden staff transferring to the voluntary sector
• Fifteen jobs eliminated and significant changes to the service’s functioning across the Temporary Accommodation Group (hostels) with three stewards leaving on grounds of voluntary redundancy
• The Repairs & Improvements team in Housing saw nearly a dozen compulsory redundancies last spring in the second phase of a protracted restructure and this was one area, which witnessed spirited resistance. More than 40 members took part in a one-day strike on 30 June 2011 over the redundancies. Sadly, this was one of the very few actions seen across London in opposition to compulsory redundancies, but much credit must go to Richard Loveridge and Liz Wheatley in particular. Though there was no victory, at least ‘Jare Oyewole is still an activist in our ranks, working to rebuild organisation in the Temporary Accommodation Group.
Quite apart from the review, members should also be aware that the pressures of casework faced by convenors and senior branch officers have rarely, if ever, been greater. As of 23 February Camden HR reported that there were 123 ‘live’ cases involving in the main sickness absence and disciplinary issues, as well as a record number of underperformances cases (nearly 15). While not all of those staff affected are UNISON members, most are and those figures obviously don’t reflect the volume of casework associated with outsourced contracts and the voluntary sector.
Private and Voluntary Sectors
The pace of privatisation slackened somewhat this past year, as straightforward job and service cuts predominated. The Council did, however, award two major contracts to for profit companies, with the multinational ISS taking over the cleaning contract for at least three years replacing MITIE from the start of 2012, while also assuming a number of much smaller corporate maintenance contracts from this month. In addition, security firm CIS took over most reception/security responsibilities apart from the Town Hall complex and the Crowndale Centre. As mentioned above, the ‘social enterprise’ GLL is due to tighten its grip on the management of the borough’s leisure facilities, with the takeover of operations at the Talacre Sports Centre, though this transfer has been deferred thus far by more than 10 months from an originally scheduled date of early May 2011.
NSL: One of the branch’s success stories in 2011 came in the private sector, with management at parking enforcement contractor, NSL, winning union recognition for the purposes of collective bargaining on the basis of our union density, which now stands at some 70% of the eligible workforce. NSL is now a major player nationally in the parking industry, but recognises unions on fewer than half a dozen contracts. The Camden NSL contract is the first in London where UNSION has been able to wrest collective bargaining rights. There are now eight UNISON stewards in place across the company’s Camden bases, establishing a very good ratio between stewards and members. The branch has also lodged a pay claim, which NSL has thus far refused to discuss, though this may change one we notify them of the outcome of an indicative ballot for industrial action, which has seen a 97% ‘yes’ vote as of Friday 02 March.
Termination of the Tompkins & May Contract: Soon after the Surrey-based building firm, Tompkins & May took over contracts for maintaining Camden’s hostels, sheltered accommodation and council homes in Hampstead district in 2009, the branch began sounding the alarm bell concerning the company’s financial integrity. Initially, we were told in December 2009 that the firm had received a clean bill of health. Though we were far from convinced, compiling hard evidence beyond dubious Experian credit ratings proved difficult. In the meantime, UNISON waged battles on behalf of a number of the seven individuals who TUPE’d from Camden to Tompkins & May over the course of the ensuing 18 months. Finally, in July 2011 the Council acknowledged that it may well have been a victim of fraudulent invoicing and terminated the contract with Tompkins & May. Since then the remaining workers who had transferred from Camden have returned to the Council along with a number of other craft operatives and half a dozen administrative staff. There have been a number of ongoing issues regarding harmonisation of pay and conditions, where the branch has made some progress on behalf of the five remaining administrative staff.
Elsewhere, funding cuts for voluntary sector organisations have taken their toll with cuts and even wholesale closure now on the agenda. At Age UK Camden, for example, members in the pension scheme face the prospect of its complete closure from this autumn, while the future of Camden’s Community Law Centre could well be at stake over the coming months.
There is considerable uncertainty about future contracts for homecare with for profit and ‘social enterprise’ firms such as Housing 21. This firm, a supposed ‘social enterprise’, is responsible for one of the most appalling examples of wage cutting we have yet seen in the borough. Within seven weeks of taking over the operation of the Mora Burnet House supported living facility for older people in Winchester Road, Housing 21 announced a restructure, which required 18 out of 19 existing employees to apply for ‘new’ jobs on dramatically worse pay, with the hourly wage rate slashed by nearly 34% from £11.86 to £7.85. Thanks to the branch’s intervention the lowest rate has been increased in line with the £8.30 an hour London Living Wage and we are now seeking legal advice about the possibility of a Tribunal challenge for breaches of the TUPE regulations and unfair dismissal of the majority of the workforce, who took redundancy rather than swallow such drastic pay cuts.
Finally, in this regard, the manifesto pledge made by the current Camden Council Labour group in its 2010 election campaign regarding the London Living Wage on outsourced contracts has yet to translate into reality. Admittedly, the Council has acted to ensure that no direct employee is paid less than £8.30 an hour, but on the cleaning, catering and parking enforcement contracts among others a majority on the workforce is on hourly pay below London Living Wage. Indeed, the vast majority of cleaners now working for ISS are on the national minimum of just £6.08 an hour in one of the European Union’s most expensive cities. Chronically low pay is also a key element in the current dispute with NSL. The branch continues to push for the Council to take meaningful action to address the scandal of poverty pay among workers, often from migrant communities, on outsourced contracts with highly profitable firms.
The Academy school at Swiss Cottage, operated by University College London, will open this autumn. Despite the current Camden administration’s opposition to further Academies and so-called free schools, with the Labour group intervening against the proposed transformation of Haverstock into an Academy, the threat persists not least in the context of the ongoing debate over creating a new secondary as a free school south of the Euston Road, never mind the likely pressures from Education Secretary Michael Gove for the bulk of schools to leave local authority control in the near future. There are many reasons, both pragmatic and ideological, to oppose Academies and free schools, not the least of which is the threat posed to members’ pay, conditions and indeed jobs.
Camden UNISON means solidarity
One reason to take pride in our branch has been its historic willingness to lend support to fellow trade unionists and others facing exploitation and oppression, whether locally or internationally.
Not surprisingly, our branch has actively backed campaigns against the sell-off of the NHS. We have also supported fellow UNISON (and Unite) members in Southampton locked in a bitter dispute with their Tory-run council over pay cuts. Ours was one of the few branch committees in London to host a delegation from Southampton last year.
The branch has also continued to back the fight for the London Living Wage at University College London and at the University of London’s Senate House complex. The branch banner featured on the very lively picket lines mounted by RMT members employed by the cleaning contractor Initial at St Pancras during a two-day strike on 16 and 17 February by cleaners, most of whom receive hourly wages of less than £6.80.
The branch also provided material support in the early days of ‘Occupy LSX’ as demonstrators camped out for 137 days at the edge of St Paul’s Cathedral. While it is too early to assess the legacy of the ‘Occupy movement’ either in Britain or internationally, I would suggest that it’s not far fetched to suggest that it has helped shift public discourse in highlighting the rapid and still accelerating growth in inequality and particular role of banks and financial institutions in triggering the ongoing crisis in which all too many of us find ourselves together.
To conclude on a positive note, a number of branch members took part over the course of the past six months in various protest actions mounted by electricians and building workers against seven large companies, including a subsidiary of the giant Balfour Beatty over the threat to simply tear up the industry’s master agreement and slash pay rates by up to 35%. Week after week of early morning demonstrations paid off last month as all seven of the employers dropped their original proposals and agreed to enter into talks with the Unite union. Obviously, this is just one small section of workers fighting back and no definitive victory has been secured, but their success shows what determined, innovative resistance can achieve.
“Till half and half is equalized
Put down the tools
See the car, see the house
See the fabulous jewels
See the world you have built it with shoulders of iron
See the world but it is not yours, say the stealers of Zion
Geneva
Wall Street
Who makes them so fat?
Well, well me an' you better think about that . . .
Till humanize is equalize
Put down the tools
Every face on every side
Throw down the tools
Stay at home
Don't check with Rome, paint ‘Strike!’ on the door
It's one to one the fight is on so don't go to war" – ‘The Equaliser’, from the album Sandinista!, Joe Strummer (1952-2002)
George Binette
Camden UNISON Branch Secretary
05 March 2012.
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