Standing in Unison

So this is the post I planned to write about last Thursday but had no time to actually put together.

As most of you know, last year I was made redundant from work. Cutting a long story short, me and my colleagues were transferred across from the Council where I worked to a new company on totally the other side of London, making it impossible for us to actually travel to work without physically moving house. Not exactly a practical solution with just a couple of months’ notice.

What’s more, the relatively generous (or, as I would argue, fair) terms and conditions given by the Council and fought for over many years are protected only for one year. After that, you’d switch to the company’s terms and conditions, which for us would have been a £10,000 a year pay cut and 10 days less holiday, amongst other things. But we would have got a few Argos vouchers to make up for all that. Whoopie doo-wop.

Overall, it was a painful, stressful experience and one I would not want to go through again. And it was not made any easier by the Council or company or who – in my opinion – consistently withheld information from us to make their lives easier. We were problems, not people: just names and payroll numbers on a spreadsheet.

Moreover. it’s always been my belief that the process was just not carried out correctly. There were various “data protection” failings which included me being sent another colleagues personal details in the post, containing the sort of stuff I should never have been able to see. It felt to me like they had no real experience of outsourcing and were just making it up as they went along.

So I will be forever grateful to my trade union – UNISON, especially our tireless Branch Secretary, John, who fought our corner from day one. As soon as I joined the Council I joined UNISON, and within weeks it was clear we were for the chop…I mean outsource. John was instrumental in motivating existing members and recruiting new one’s to highlight our and other departments’ plights. We carried out industrial action which included – fantastically – volunteering our unpaid labour for the day at a local charity in Edgware. You can watch a short clip of us doing a DIY SOS aired on BBC London here.

Sadly, John and UNISON’s fight is far from over. The Council want to become a “commissioning authority,” with a core of about 300 contract managers who can make no real decisions and just tick-off companies for not meeting the required standards. Thousands of current staff face at best an uncertain future and at worst the doll. Local democracy as we know it will be non-existent: councillors will be no more than lobbyists, unable to exercise any authority or help individuals at all. And when companies go bust (which they do, frequently) it is the local people who will suffer. Again and again…

It is for those reasons that UNISON has continued its fight on behalf of members, taking the Council to court for failing to meet the basic legal requirements set out to protect workers and give people – yes, people – a fair level of information about what is happening to them, and therefore their families too. The case was heard last week, and the judge ruled that there had been a “relatively serious failure” of their responsibility in outsourcing staff. Essentially, they need to tell people what is going to happen to them and what their options are. What a revelation, eh?!

My message to staff that are there currently is keep fighting. It is not all lost yet, and the local mood is in your favour – just look at Friern Barnet library which has been handed to the community to run now. And with John and UNISON there, you stand every chance.

So, today’s song of the day draws on that spirit of togetherness: it’s Terry Hall & Mushtaq with “Stand Together”:

A great track. I love Terry Hall’s work, especially his stuff with The Specials and Fun Boy Three whilst Mushtaq is from Asian hip-hop/world fusion outfit Fun-Da-Mental, known as the “Asian Public Enemy” for their politically charged work but I have to say I’m not overly familiar with. Will rectify that.

For me, it is essential that local services are run by the local authority, and that should happen in the locality. Social care is not just another “business” and companies will do whatever they can to maximise their profit – that is why they exist. But to mix up the two is madness, and we simply must not allow such services to be passed into private hands: the consequences are just too drastic to think about, as shown by the recent tragic example in Surrey.