Some options:
£90 p.a. from The College of Social Workhttp://www.collegeofsocialwork.org/uploadedfiles/TCSWFinalisesMembershipOffer.pdf
£180 p.a. from BASWhttp://www.basw.co.uk/membership/independents/
JoSoPhine: Some options: £90 p.a. from The College of Social Workhttp://www.collegeofsocialwork.org/uploadedfiles/TCSWFinalisesMembershipOffer.pdf £180 p.a. from BASWhttp://www.basw.co.uk/membership/independents/
Well, actually, the public liability insurance from BASW costs £10 per month on top of your membership, so that is £120 a year.
The college difference is £30 per year.
So, given that the BASW accounts are published for members and we therefore know that this is actually what the insurance is costing...AND that they did take the lowest quote, the obvious conclusion is yet more government subsidy.
So...yes from January you appear to be able to get it cheaper at TCOSW ....but.....will that price be sustained or is it an attempt to put BASW out of business and then have a monopoly so they can charge what they like? Inthat case you will end up paying more than you did before, and be a member of an even more obviously government owned mute college. ( cf TCSW mute attack on the "trouble shooters to sort out worst families" policy)
I wonder if subsidising 80% of a self employed persons public liability insurance with government money (allegedly) is using taxpayers money to subsidise private business and more acceptable than using it to promote union membership?
All just speculation on my part of course, and I'm sure more will be revealed when these questions are asked by more significant parties.
Drattit...I was going to be more solution-focussed and less devisive.
However, I can't help thinking that undercutting BASW by such huge amounts 80%ish? reminds me of how a certain well financially backed bus company used to put free buses on its rivals profitable routes, just five minutes before each scheduled bus, and soon put the rival out of business.
The people who accepted the free rides are now paying 250% more than they were before, and some have no buses at all.
Surely it is ONLY £60 from TCOSW - well undercuts BASW!!! If, as I have always suspected, that most BASW members join because of the Indemnity then they will save a lot more by switching.
The College deal of £90 includes membership and insurance, so it is way cheaper than half-price? Thanks for pointing that out.
RE: ( cf TCSW mute attack on the "trouble shooters to sort out worst families" policy)
I did like what BASW had to say on this subject. Though the policy has e trailed in the media for a very long time and it is little more than a replication of the intensive family projects that have been running since c2009, so part of thinks BASW comments had been opportunistic Ambulance chasing.
So BASW membership for Independents is: £420 p.a.
The College of Social Work it is: £90 p.a
TCOSW announcement does say £60 and not £90 - or am I missing something?
1. College membership fees for the 2012 year will be:• Social worker in employment £60 p.a.• Self employed social worker £90 p.a. to include public liability insurance• Student social worker £10 p.a. until starting first job • Associate members £30 p.a. (and £10 for unwaged) 2. The Statement of Intent agreed with UNISON is available at, http://www.collegeofsocialwork.org/uploadedfiles/UnisonandTCSWStatementofIntentDec2011.pdf https://viewer.zoho.com/docs/urlview.do?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.collegeofsocialwork.org%2Fuploadedfiles%2FTCSWFinalisesMembershipOffer.pdf
Does the above indicate that members of the College will have to be GSCC or other UK regulatory body registered, as it is calling members a 'social worker'?
Moutain: The College deal of £90 includes membership and insurance, so it is way cheaper than half-price? Thanks for pointing that out.
UNISON/GMB?UNITE fees + TCSW membership = cheaper than BASW?
Dear 128,000 UK Social Workers it is so simple so cheap!
So basically its all about the money? and no-one seems concerned about what I was pointing out....WHY CAN'T BASW DO IT AS CHEAP AS THAT!!
If it looks too good to be true THEN IT PROBABLY IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE! It would be plausible if it was like for like and maybe 20% cheaper because of expected volumes. But not 80% cheaper surely?
Do you fall for the e-mail scams where the widow in Mozambique wants to give you £2m for using your account to get her husbands lottery winnings out too?
You really need to ask about the catch. If the catch doesn't bother you then you deserve what you will end up with further down the road.
Or as Greg Lake sang " The Christmas you get you deserve"
Ho Ho Ho and Happy New year!
Insurance is underwritten by the likes of Lloyds of London and pries must be market driven and must funded by a percentage of members fees? Delivery of online services/magazines/journals is much the same cost for 1 as for 100,000. So once something has a cost that requires say 1000 members paying £60, then the cost of electronic delivery to 100,000 is much the same. Only 10% of BASW members have joined it's virtual SW Union, so BASW members may well be getting Union representation by paying dues to UNISON/GMB/UNITE/ASPECT/COMMUNITY etc, so an extra £60 quid on top of Union dues seems a bargain. TCSW is also offering a telephone based helpline for the £60 quid. Lets not forget these are the fees for 2012 and anyone joinig in January will get 3 months for free (try before you buy).
At the end of the day things might come down to Value v Price, in a recession what will win out?
The New Year sales start on Tuesday January 3rd 2012, freebies available till April 2012, with the added value of Trade Union services from April 2012.
Yeah.....so......why can't Unison, with nearer a million members, offer its services for less than £160 per annum, if all the College costs are fundable purely from members £60 subscriptions? After all, it could take all of UNITE and GMB members to itself by such an easy and simple strategy in this economic climate!!
As I said before....Idon't believe any insurance company is offering insurance premiums at so vast a different rate to the same people who are carrying the same actuarial risk, depending soley on who the intermediary is. Being part of a much bigger organisation doesn't reduce your risk of a public liability suit.
If one in ten people will claim , then you pay for 1,000 claims out of 10,000 members, and 10,000 claims out of 100,000 members. Its not cheaper or lower risk....its a simple percentage.
At the moment the TCSW can't promise it will deliver significantly more members than BASW in the first year and thereby justify attracting any discount let alone 80% .
All the other sums you quote as being achievable should be just as achievable for BASW, or are you suggesting they are banking 80% of their membership revenue per year as surplus to operational requirements?
If all these services were affordable for this price, BASW would be doing it themselves in a situation where its continued existance is being threatened.
Does anyone else apart from JoSoPhine believe you can do all that for only £60 without external subsidy?
And the cost/obligation, indeed intrinsic change to the swubsidised organisation's fuction and accountability is the point I am making.
Plus the belief that the cost would rapidly soar to the same as BASW's if they were successful in putting BASW out of business.
THere are many things that I might want to put right of have donebetter about BASW, but I would not pay to be have my profession controlled and steered by the government and it's favoured appointees to it's own self-eatablished arms length charities.
To me its a non-starter.
BASW ...well, pehaps you could kick that into shape if it needs your money to exist at all.....but if someone else was funding it...where would it be now?
The reality is that the actual Indeminty Insurance is rarely claimed against - there will be a significant Policy 'excess' so the vast majority of representation work is funded out of normal subsciptions. Only when major issues (such as the Orkney Inquiry) arise will a claim be made against the Policy.
This may give more math insight:
"We plan to work with the College to offer social workers who are already UNISON members the chance to join the College for a top up fee of £60 a year (before tax relief) - based on the difference between the subscription rate currently paid to UNISON by members on the average income band for social workers, and the cost of College membership." http://www.unison.org.uk/socialwork/pages_view.asp?did=13450
So in April when the college becomes independent and has a member elected board, they will probably do the same as BASW and ask members to log in and tick a no further cost box and opt in to join Unison. Simple no further cost Union representation.
What if the College just agrees that any Union can offer representation, so long as they agree to split all College and Union fees pot on a 50 50 basis, with a minimum of say £90 going to each., with the College providing £60 and the Union £120?
JoSoPhine: This may give more math insight: "We plan to work with the College to offer social workers who are already UNISON members the chance to join the College for a top up fee of £60 a year (before tax relief) - based on the difference between the subscription rate currently paid to UNISON by members on the average income band for social workers, and the cost of College membership."http://www.unison.org.uk/socialwork/pages_view.asp?did=13450 So in April when the college becomes independent and has a member elected board, they will probably do the same as BASW and ask members to log in and tick a no further cost box and opt in to join Unison. Simple no further cost Union representation. What if the College just agrees that any Union can offer representation, so long as they agree to split all College and Union fees pot on a 50 50 basis, with a minimum of say £90 going to each., with the College providing £60 and the Union £120?
"We plan to work with the College to offer social workers who are already UNISON members the chance to join the College for a top up fee of £60 a year (before tax relief) - based on the difference between the subscription rate currently paid to UNISON by members on the average income band for social workers, and the cost of College membership."http://www.unison.org.uk/socialwork/pages_view.asp?did=13450
OK, So previously you joined the college for £240 and got Unison membership for £60, and Unison and COSW split the total 50/50, We couldn't understand how they could do that, for the price...but now that deal has been suspended.
NOW I can join the College for £60, and when April comes and a Union deal has been agreed...opt into Union membership AS WELL for NO EXTRA COST?
So Unison and the College get £30 each a year to give me all that? I couldn't even get a years subscription for PSW for £30!!
Yes the maths does help JoSoPhine....but not he way I think you mean it to.
If I join the College now for £60 and later on have to "opt in" to Union membership.....the Union membership will have to cost a hell of a lot more than £60 for them to split the total 50/50 and still have enough for both to provide a service.
You forgot to refer to this bit of my email:
"What if the College just agrees that any Union can offer representation, so long as they agree to split all College and Union fees pot on a 50 50 basis, with a minimum of say £90 going to each., with the College providing £60 and the Union £120?"
So maybe the joint fund would hold say £240 per member, the College would get £120 thereof and each Union would get £120, for each member of it's Union joining the College on the proviso the Union put into the joint fund £180 and the College £60. IE A 50 50 split of the unified fund
Ok then I'll talk you through it. ( In my best patronising voice)
If the total cost is £240 for joint membership...to be split 50/50 between any union and TCSW;
If I have already joined the College for £60 , then when I get the chance to join a union I owe the balance of £240 (-£60) which is £180 .
Unison membership is £160 by itself!
Why would I pay £20 more for joint membership?
And as Rolph Harris would say " Can you see what it is yet?"
To make it worth while having joint membership once you have joined the college alone for £60 the price has to come down well below the cost of Union membership alone.
So instead of getting cheap Union membership with your college membership , you now have to decide if you want to pay out an extra £60 on top of your union membership for TCSW membership........and if you are already getting what you consider to be a satisfactory professional indemnity and rep service from your Union, the College has got to have a lot of appeal in what it provides other than that.
Do you think it will attract the 30,000 members based on that deal? And even if it does that is only £1.8million a year and not enough to run the college it is planning without at least three times that in government subsidies.
I've tried to follow and indeed contribute to this debate but there are things i don't understand;
1) Why has BASW formed a union again when it already has BUSWE from all those years ago? Which union does BASW say we should join?
2) Why, in any case, would anyone join a little Union like one of those, when they could join one with the resources of Unison?
3) Does anyone believe the story that BASW formed the new Union because their reps were so good they were not allowed into hearings?
3) Should we not all be rather angry with those who have messed up the prospect of the incredibly empowering COSW/UNISON combo, apparently for self-seeking reasons?
Quixote: 3) Should we not all be rather angry with those who have messed up the prospect of the incredibly empowering COSW/UNISON combo, apparently for self-seeking reasons?
Well BASW could not reach a deal with UNISON, which must have has some sort of math rational, so decided to seek calls to self reason and rationalisation. (rational lies)
BASW parted company with BUSW after only about a year due to Trade Union pressures I believe so it has just had its Advice & Representation Service which now appears to double up as the Social Workers Union!
BUSW became BUSWE (British Union of Social Work Employees) which represented NSPCC staff and then it became something else!
The problem is that a union does a lot more than Advice and Representation, although I am sure BASW does that well; after all, those things fall very much within a social workers skillset. Does the new Union have any recognition from employers, does it participate in collective bargaining, consult on redundancy and redeployment etc. etc.?
I think that the answer is "No" although I am sure that Hilton will correct this with clear examples if I am incorrect.