Branch Meeting 25 March

As notified to branch members over the past couple of weeks, there will be a Branch Meeting of Lambeth UNISON at 12.30pm on Friday 25 March at Brixton Recreation Centre. We will be discussing job cuts and attacks on pensions and our guest speaker will be Heather Wakefield, UNISON National Head of Local Government.

What follows is the text of a circular to members setting out the motions received for debate. The deadline for amendments (to be sent to j.rogers@unison.co.uk) is 5pm on Wednesday 23 March;

Motions received for debate at Lambeth UNISON Branch Meeting on Friday 25 March at 12.30pm at Brixton Recreation Centre

Please submit any amendment to either motion to j.rogers@unison.co.uk by 5pm on Wednesday 23 March 2011. These will then be published at www.lambethunison.blogspot.com before noon on Thursday 24 March.

The movers of the motions will consider whether to “composite” the motions ahead of the meeting.

Motion One - Opposing Cuts, Job Losses and attacks on pensions

This Branch meeting condemns the Council’s “cuts” budget set on 23 February. We condemn the consequent threat to up to 637 jobs across the Council. We note that these cuts will include deep and devastating cuts in front line services, including;
The loss of school crossing patrols;
The dismissal of all parks rangers;
The deletion of all jobs in the One O’Clock Clubs;
Deep cuts in adventure play and libraries.

We also note that in many cases these cuts proposals contradict the Council’s equalities duties. In CYPS redundancy threats are hitting black workers hardest, in Finance and Resources, the jobs of women workers are particularly targeted for cuts, and in Cultural Services (ACS) job cuts target disabled workers.

These cuts come on top of many redundancies made already in the current financial year, including compulsory redundancies in CYPS and OCE, and the reduction by more than 300 of the number of agency workers in the Council over the past year. The cuts threaten hundreds of jobs, the devastation of valuable services and an intolerable burden of additional work on those who remain.

We endorse the action of branch officers in challenging the basis of the Council’s budget, questioning the adequacy of the Council’s redundancy notice and demanding a guarantee of “no compulsory redundancies.” We note that the Chief Executive has said that no redundancies will be made until at least 90 days after we receive detailed notification of reorganisation proposals in any particular area.

We also endorse the decision of the Branch Committee on 15 March to declare a trade dispute with the Council as a result of their refusing to give the guarantee, and to support requests from our members in libraries and the parks rangers for ballots for strike action against cuts and job losses.

We believe that these cuts come from the economic policies of the Tory Coalition Government and that we must therefore be part of a national campaign against those policies. We must therefore also support national action against the Government where, as in relation to public service pensions, this is possible and can defeat the Government.

We condemn the fact that the Government plan to reduce the value of our pensions by 20%, increase our pension contributions by an average of almost 50% and to increase the age at which we can retire. We reject this unjustified attack upon all public service workers and pensioners and believe that the TUC should coordinate national industrial action across the public sector in order to deliver a knockout blow to the Government and its plans for savage attacks upon our pensions.

We also believe that Labour Councils should resist rather than implement Tory cuts and that we must therefore be part of a local campaign against cuts, in our workplaces and the local community. We further believe that we must strengthen union organisation at every level in order protect jobs and services to the maximum possible.

We therefore resolve;
To call upon all members to attend the TUC March for an Alternative on 26 March;
To instruct branch officers, Convenors and shop stewards to organise regular UNISON meetings in every part of the Council, to aim to recruit as many non-union members to UNISON as possible, and to recruit shop stewards where we don’t already have stewards;
To ensure UNISON representation at every “start of consultation” meeting and to support UNISON members to prepare and campaign for counter proposals to management proposals designed to save jobs and services;
To call upon the Council to use some of the up to £30 Million in unallocated reserves to reduce the impact of cuts and to fund UNISON counter proposals which will save jobs and services;
To continue to monitor weekly the number and expense of agency workers and consultants across the Council and keep pressure on the Council to continue to reduce these in order to put more money into avoiding cuts;
To support any shop or section of membership who wish to be balloted for industrial action as part of our campaign against cuts and job losses, and to request the fullest support of UNISON Regional Office with any ballots;
To organise a consultative ballot of our members employed by Lambeth Council, to commence on Monday 4 April and conclude on Thursday 21 April to test support for industrial action across the Council;
To instruct branch officers to prioritise work to ensure the accuracy of our membership records in order to enable an official ballot for industrial action across the Council as a whole, in opposition to cuts and job losses;
To instruct all branch officers, Convenors and shop stewards to campaign amongst all UNISON members for a “yes” vote in the consultative ballot and in any subsequent official industrial action ballot;
To continue to support Lambeth Save Our Services, and to work with other organisations in and beyond the borough, to campaign against further cuts in jobs and services and against other aspects of the Government’s economic and social policies;
To publicise to all our members the scale and injustice of the Government’s attack upon public service pensions, and to campaign for support for industrial action to reverse these attacks and defeat the Government;
To campaign within UNISON and the wider labour movement for the widest co-ordinated national strike action to defend public service pensions, on the earliest practicable date.

Proposed – Jon Rogers, Branch Secretary

Motion Two - Strike motion

This branch deplores Lambeth Council’s savaging of 637 full-time equivalent jobs at a time of mass and rising unemployment, and the devastation of public services this would give rise to. Those keeping their jobs will inevitably be made to work harder to provide a worse service. Those who lose their jobs will face a labour market where five workers are chasing each vacancy. On top of this, there job seekers allowance is falling in value and housing benefit has been capped.

We note that this comes at a time when VAT has risen by 2.5%, inflation is running at 5.1%, we are being made to pay 3% more of our income in pensions contributions and our pay is being frozen for three years running. We also note that women and black workers are disproportionately affected by the council and government cuts.

This branch applauds the decision of Lambeth Living employees in Unison to strike against job cuts on 30 March. We also applaud the 100% support shown by librarians and park rangers in Unison for a strike ballot against cuts in their departments.

This branch also applauds the decision of Camden and Tower Hamlets Unison branches to ballot for strike action against the budget cuts, including school budget cuts. We also applaud the national strike action by UCU college and university lecturers against cuts, and the 93% vote for strike action against the pay freeze by Crown post Office workers in CWU. We note that the NUT and PCS have both taken decisions in principle to ballot for national strikes against the attacks on pensions and are actively seeking to coordinate action across the unions.

This branch agrees to:

1. Launch a campaign for strike action, involving lunchtime and after core hours meetings, weekly newsletters, workplace and departmental members meetings, solidarity visits to other union picket lines, a membership drive, press releases, lobbies and other protests.
2. Conduct a secret, secure consultative strike ballot from Monday 28th March through to Friday 8th April. The ballot will ask members if they are willing to take strike action or action short of a strike to defend all jobs and services and against compulsory redundancies. Ballot forms will be distributed at union meetings or by post and will be accompanied by literature or speakers outlining the reasons for a “Yes” vote.
3. If a “Yes” vote is returned, the branch committee will immediately reconvene this meeting to:a) ask the NDC/NEC to launch an official ballot from 18 April to 3rd Mayb) elect a strike committee, including as many representatives from different workplaces and departments as possiblec) organise a demo in Brixton with as many other unions as possible and Lambeth SOS.
4. Contact all other public sector unions, including GMB, NUT and UCU with a view to coordinating our campaign with theirs and, especially, taking industrial action on the same days.
5. Write to the NEC demanding that Unison launches national strike ballots in defence of jobs and services destroyed as a result of the national squeeze on local government finances, in defence of the LGPS pension scheme and in support of a real pay rise this year.

Proposed - Jeremy Drinkall, CYPS