Social Work Steward

This week I'm in Liverpool for the National Social Work Action Network conference being held at Liverpool's Hope University. I'm told the conference is sold out at over 300 registered delegates. 

Speakers include UNISON's National Officer for Social Care Helga Pile and the radical geographer professor Danny Dorling. 

Professor Dorling's latest research, which includes a map of the North/South divide in those not in education, employment or trainging (NEETs) makes the case for austerity among the rich.  

He demolishes the idea that reducing the taxes on the very rich will somehow make the bulk of the population better off.

Inequality levels are at an all time high. In November 2011, the High Pay Commission reported that the pay of the chief executives of the 100 largest companies on the London stock exchange had risen by 49 per cent during the previous year, compared with average increases of less than 3 per cent for their employees. 

Professor Dorling argues that if we returned to 1970 inequality levels £200 billion a year would be saved: more clear evidence that there are real alternatives to the Con-Dem coalition government's disastrous economic strategy.

I was reminded recently when taking my UNISON seat on the local Social Work Improvement Group of my right (and your right by proxy) to attend this meeting with time off with pay - putting my adoption report writing on hold for a couple of hours. 

On the agenda were a range of issues relating to the social work reforms and my role at that meeting was to ensure that there was an effective 'health check' process up and running and the social work supply and demand model was being properly considered (more about these at a later date).
 
Your right for your union reps to take time off with pay is under threat with the news of a new campaign launched this week by a group of anti-trade unionists worried perhaps by the surge in support for trade unions in the great pension strike.

The campaign also has the support of David Cameron who said it was a "scandal" that "some people in the public sector [are] being paid not to do the job they are paid for, but instead to undertake full time trade union activities"
 
These are basic employment rights stemming in law from the Employment Protection Act 1975.  If you need someone from the union to accompany you to a meeting about a sickness absence or to represent you at a disciplinary hearing - the employer must give your representative the right to time off away from their job. 

This system of paid time off for your union reps has not been brought about by the generosity or the goodwill of employers (as much as we would like to think they would do so anyway) but by rights hard-won by trade unions in the 50s and 60s.

As long as workers support their union and the union is organised, the campaign to erode these rights will not succeed - reason enough to elect a steward in your workplace if you don't already have one.

(Pic: Guillaume Paunier on flickr)

I have returned to UNISON activities since my last blog entry. I have been elected as UNISON steward in the workplace and have also secured the position of chair within our branch. This post involves having time to undertake union activities and a core role in chairing branch committee once a month and making sure everything runs through UNISON's codes of practice and rule book. (A little bit like the relationship between the GSCC and social workers I suppose!).

My current role is now working solely for the local authority social services department. I am relieved to return to having one sole employer rather than being seconded to the local foundation trust and having two sets of employers and procedures to work to.

Being an appoved mental health professional out of hours has made me see some interesting assessments taking place. I've already been to some of our local psychiatric hospitals, A&E departments and police stations as well as a community assessment in a private house.

Certainly my 'worst night shift' was two Mental Health Act assessments back to back and still needing to field calls on my return to the office at 6.30 am! Still, not all the nights have been as busy as that. As the only social worker on duty throughout the night the calls are of a generic nature and not 'just' mental health.... so my skills are developing in new areas such as child care and child protection.

In between all this there has of course been a strike and UNISON signing up to a tentative agreement. Our branch have passed a motion to support the call for UNISON to hold a special conference of branch reprentatives throughout the country to debate the governemnt's proposals. We need a quarter of branches to support this motion to ensure this conference can be held.

So if you are reading this..... get your branch to support this motion and support union democracy in deciding our future pension scheme.

(Pic: steve p2008 on flickr) 

Like many UNISON activists I have been trying to assess over the holiday the joint agreement on principles and timetable for discussions on the future of the local government pension scheme in England and Wales. This week I have been distributing this 10-page document and urging all our members to take time out to read it carefully as it holds the first clues as to what we got out of losing one day's pay last November.  It is also the clue as to what union members should now instruct our representatives when they meet on January 10.
 
This document does not mean that we will not have to work longer. Nor does it tells us that when it comes to drawing our pensions the rate of inflation indexing will revert with immediate effect back to the more realistic retail price index. The strike has not succeeded in moving the government on these two issues an inch.

If we start to get into the detail we learn that the 'overall financial constraints' in principle two indicates that our negotiations may only be able to deliver a scheme which meets the government's financial targets.  Principle five of the agreement with the Local Government Assocations basically accepts the government's aim to link our normal pension age to the state pension age - negotiation on this basis would represent a significant concession. 

There has been a gain in respect of the contribution issue which cannot be sniffed at - but we may well be back to square one in 2014.

So let's look at the gain - rather than our pensions increasing by 50% on the 1st April, as was the position we faced on the 29th of November, there will now not be any increases in the contribution rate in local government until 2014.  It also means that the sum of what we have gained - less that amount lost in one day's pay by taking strike action (as opposed to doing nothing at all which a minority voted for) - is the greater according to my maths  - so, well worth taking strike action in these terms.

Unlike some activists I will not be telling our members that this is now a question of 'damage limitation'.  We have not amassed the troops on the industrial battlefield to declare a ceasefire after the opening salvo  - at least that's the flavour of what I will be telling our members over the next few days when it comes to deciding what we do next.

(Pic: Nick Efford on flickr)

At 7am yesterday morning two trade union members turned up to unlock the building at my workplace and the struggle to get all union members out on strike began.

We have to 'think of the children' they claimed.

Dealing with betrayal at dawn is not easy but by nine o'clock we had 10 pickets, the majority of members on strike including a whole admin team who could least afford to lose a day's pay whose loyalty to the union was second to none. 

By 11am we had over two thousands strikers at our city march around town and by 2.30 pm at the regional rally central Birmingham there were 5000. By the end of the day there were over 23,000 on strike in our region. 

In order to look after the children in our service both now and in the future, we need social care workers who not be worn out or exhausted and with a carrot of a reasonable pension at the end of our working life.

By taking this action now and protecting the value our pension, we are thinking of generations of children in the future.

There must be something in the water or something because the head teacher of Vaynor First School, a reportedly loyal conservative supporter, has said that even she is now coming out on strike on Wednesday. For those unlike Mrs Foster-Agg who cannot see though the government smoke screens and, the so-called 'generous offer, I could not find a better analysis than that served up by our friends in the PCS union. People should also be aware that whatever the government say in the media they do need to get round to the small matter of tabling documents on the negotiating table.

Anyone who has told their manager they will be coming in, rest assured, you have every right to change your mind. The usual chestnut that going on strike will be a break in service and effect your pension is doing the rounds myth making. Unless you are excempt or about to retire the effect on your pension is negligible.

Finally the key thing now not just go on strike but to support the marches up and down the county and take to the streets!

Demontrators at March's anti-cuts rally

Hello and welcome to my stint on the Social Work Steward blog.  My name is Simon Cardy and I am a UNISON shop steward in children's services covering an office with a fostering, adoption, aftercare, and one of two looked-after children teams. 

I have been a trade unionist for almost all of my working life. I qualified with my CQSW in 1985 and joined a predecessor union (NUPE) in my first job as social worker later that year.  I was very green and 26 years old. I'm now 52, increasingly grey and in my 26th year of continuous service as a children's social worker. 

We are reliably told that the expected working life of social workers is just eight years compared to 15 years for a nurse and 28 for pharmacists and by this reckoning I shouldn't be here.

Determination

We are now just a few days away from an historic 'mass' strike of some three million workers on 30 November which many of us thought we might never experience in our lifetime. There is a real feeling of determination against the fact the government are robbing perfectly healthy pension schemes to help pay for finance capital's reckless mistakes.  Of note is the relative ease in which so many unions have coordinated our action against austerity - a coordination that until now few trade unions had been prepared to take. Such confidence, long overdue, bodes well for the future.

Every steward and every member should ask themselves - what I have done today to help make the strike bigger than we can imagine? Have I coaxed a colleague to join the strike? Have I recruited a non-member to join the union?

A challenge

While it has been heartening to hear the increase in the resolve to take action, as with every other strike we are having the usual struggle to convince some.  Children's homes for example are, in social work parlance, a bit of a 'challenge'. At one home last week a loyal trade unionist told me he had supported every strike he had ever been involved in but he was struggling with his conscience and so, he asked me, could he donate a day's pay to charity instead of going on strike?  He's what I say to him and every union member in children's homes:

It is every member's duty to take strike action if you are a UNISON member - there are no exemptions unless agreed by the branch. You are not responsible for managing and running the home if you are taking part in a legitimate trade dispute.

All waking and sleep-in union members still on shift at 00.00 hrs on the 30th should walk out at midnight.

It is the responsibility of managers to provide emergency cover and care for the young people. Do not fall for the myths that care workers cannot take strike action - they can and it's perfectly legal to do so.

Union members who are not due to work in the 24 hour period should support a picket line and donate a day's pay to the hardship fund.

If there are non-union or agency staff on the rota they can run the home for a day if you cannot recruit them into the union before the strike.

Life and limb

Take a leaf out of the approach fire service used when they were on strike - which was to picket the workplace and respond to life and death incidents on their merits. Trade union members should only provide cover where managers can clearly demonstrate that they have no-one to respond to an obvious emergency akin to a life and limb incident.

Trade union members should use the opportunity to act as a positive role models to young people, explaining what would happen if there were no trade unions and showing them that it is right to stand up for your rights as a member of a trade union by taking collective action.

The strike is a potentially also a valuable learning experience for young people and care workers should think about how they engage with young people about the issue If their school is closed because of the strike. Young people should be encouraged to visit their teachers' picket line and join local marches and rallies taking place across the country.

A 78% majority have voted yes for strike action to try to protect pensions from the onslaught of the Con-Dem austerity measures. The 30th November will see UNISON join with sister trade unions on a day of protest that will most likely be the biggest since the General Strike of 1926.  

This could be a historic day for the union movement to lead a fightback against a totally unjustifiable attack on living conditions for millions of public sector workers.

We hope all our members support the action and support their union on the 30th November.

Question Time on TV last night heard the usual mumbo jumbo from the Daily Mail about public sector workers "not being moral" if they went on strike and we heard the Tories' divide and rule drivel about the private sector paying for our pensions.

The lies behind the Daily Mail headlines of 'gold plated pensions' make my blood boil when the fact is the average pension is £4,000 (hardly gold plated!).

The anti -capitalist protesters were next in line for derisory comments from some members of the panel. Our Tory MP scoffed as she asked how they could be drinking coffee from Starbucks or using a laptop if they were against capitalist greed. The Daily Mail thinks they have nothing better to do and are an eyesore for tourism. They don't have anything of note to say......

Our liberal on the other hand felt that it was good to shout back against the greed of a capitalist system causing systemic failure to address the growing gap of the rich and the poor.... (but not the rights of workers to strike against injustices that are making them poor).

I liked the poet's observations on the system when he asked "why can't we recapitalise the people like we recapitalised the banks". Invest in humans..... listen to the concerns of those who are against the greed of a system inherent in making the rich more wealthy while making the rest pay for their banking mess.

Why not occupy the streets, it's at least getting news about corporate greed in the news.

I have a right to protest as well. I don't expect news papers which supported Hitler to support workers sick of having their contracts torn up in their faces. But I do expect the Labour Party to support workers in industrial action.

(Pic: *Emmett* on flickr)    

UK inflation on Retail Price Index up to 5.6%. Consumer price index up to 5.2 %.

Con-Dem coalition 'doing all they can to help'.

Tories meet with the big six electricity suppliers to get tough on price hikes... and from the summit.. come back and tell us to shop around with the big six!

Pension contributions to go up 50% to pay the fat cats for their banking crisis.

Vote yes to strike action.

As UNISON prepares for a national ballot and potential strike over pensions, activists are being urged to ensure members vote in the ballot. This should be a straightforward task you may think.

There are three things a member is required to do:

a) open their posted letter 

b) Put a cross next to YES or NO in the letter and

c) post the letter back in a pre-paid envelope.

What could be easier you may ask?

Clear message

Unfortunately, the national turnout is a major problem for any election held in Britain let alone union ballots. UNISON needs a big response so it can act on what the members may decide. If they don't vote, then the union's hands are tied.

So the message is clear. Please use your vote!  

New job

On a micro level, I have a new job. The new job offers me a contract where I can work out of hours and weekends freeing me up during the week, so I can be with my baby and reduce child care costs along the way. My workplace has been reduced to effectively being a 'crisis service and not a recovery service' (see previous posts) and still has another three months consultation period to follow on top of the last year's upheavals and job cuts.

The team I am leaving are great people to work with, good colleagues and committed staff. But a 40% cut in staffing with the prospect of moving base and doubling the patch in terms of population has been taking its toll on staff morale and stress levels.

The coalition government, I am afraid, did not protect the frontline service in this area.            

Protecting our pensions

As I am moving into a new job and so my UNISON steward role also comes to an end for now. You must seek election in any new workplace in order to become a steward. I have been elected as a UNISON steward in the last four of my workplaces and have no doubt that I will be active again in the future. But for now I will be an active member of my union who, with 1.3 million others, may well just help change the course of history and protect our pensions from these attacks.

Unity is strength!

(pic: openDemocracy on Flickr)