- Conference
- 2014 National Black Members' Conference
- Date
- 1 January 2014
- Decision
- Carried
Conference condemns the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition for the widespread and unprecedented destruction of public services that has resulted from the savage and unprecedented reductions in central government funding to local government, health, education, police, probation and the rest of the public sector. Public sector workers have borne the brunt of this in job losses, the pay freeze, and attacks on terms and conditions. But the Coalition Government have chosen to ignore race as a contributing factor to inequality. And Black people continue to struggle in the workplace and society due to austerity measures and budget cuts which research has shown have had an adverse effect on Black communities.
With austerity planned until 2018 this will mean Black communities bearing the brunt of these cuts across the UK.
The imposition of austerity measures are decimating services, cutting jobs and welfare provision and continue to have a devastating impact on Black workers, young people and Black communities.
Levels of inequality are rising and this is becoming more acute as many families plunge deeper into poverty made worse as disproportionate gaps in economic and social indicators continue to widen.
Working people and vulnerable groups should not be paying the cost of a crisis they did not create.
Unpublished government figures revealed that in 2012 half of the UK’s Black men were unemployed and that this rate has increased at twice the rate of young white men. If this situation continues to go unchallenged we will lose a whole generation of talented young Black people to unemployment, debt and underachievement, as we did in the recession of the 1980’s and early 1990’s.
UNISON’s own research has shown how redundancies and job losses have had a disproportionate impact on Black public sector workers. Black communities are also suffering from the cuts in the public services that we rely on.
The public sector cuts and job losses are not just a response to the economic conditions facing the country. They are a sustained ideological attack on public services. These cuts are an attempt by the Tory right to reverse the years of improvements made to public services. They have deceitfully used the cover of the economy to implement these swingeing cuts and continue to claim that there is no alternative, but we all know that there are alternatives.
A report from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination concluded that the UK Government needed to develop a detailed action plan to tackle race equality in employment and expressed a number of concerns. The committee recommended that austerity measures should not exacerbate racial discrimination and inequality. At present these recommendations appear to have been ignored by this government.
They have however, wasted no time in taking steps to review, amend and delete provisions of key equality legislation which make it unlawful to discriminate on the basis of race or other protected characteristics set out in the Equality Act 2010. Additionally, with the removal of the need to undertake Equality Impact Assessments this will affect the levels of monitoring statistics being published.
UNISON is committed to ensuring that Challenging racism in the workplace puts the emphasis on organising and negotiating around equality. This will become even more important than ever as the economic conditions worsen and lead to higher unemployment and insecurity within our Black communities.
UNISON’s initial freedom of information exercise conducted across several regions in 2012/13 clearly showed that Black workers were paying the price with their jobs and the significant impact of Local Authorities shredding hundreds of thousands of jobs. These kind of statistics need to be challenged and an alternative to the austerity measures must be put in place to stop any discriminatory practices and these must be legally challenged by UNISON.
There is an alternative to austerity and these measures being pursued by a Government that is out of touch with the realities of ordinary people’s lives. This alternative stands in sharp contrast to the vitriolic campaigns of UKIP and the right wing media, who seek to lay the blame for the current economic crisis on immigration and the most vulnerable in our society.
George Osborne’s spending review in the summer 2013 confirmed that austerity plans will see no pay increments from 2015 and pay freeze across the public sector with a 1% pay offer. The impact of this continuing pay policy on low paid Black Women and young people will be devastating.
With MP’s being awarded a 12% increase in pay in 2012, a disgrace of unbelievable hypocrisy as we are clearly not all in it together.
Conference, we must call on this Government to provide accurate figures on the effects of the recession and austerity measures on Black workers and to address racial inequality in the labour market, employment levels, access to higher education and decent housing.
We deplore the absence of a Government wide race equality strategy, the systematic dismantling of cross government race equality structures and dilution of polices to tackle racism and race discrimination in the labour market and in society.
Conference recession can hurt, but austerity kills – the bedroom tax that made a middle aged woman take her own life, the removal of carers from the national systems that condemns the old to die in pain, reduction in employment by creating zero hours contracts and the increase in the use of food banks to feed families. The largest network food bank The Trussell Trust estimated that the number of people turning to them for help has been raised by 100% in the past year, many from Black communities.
Conference on this evidence austerity measures should have been discontinued, it is now up to us as trade unionist to start acting in a way that takes into account everyday working life and the reason why we should never be passive.
With this in mind the priority must be given to a campaign to end the public sector pay freeze and for the continued action to promote the living wage as part of a strategy to end the blight of in-work poverty.
The voice of opposition to the Coalition is being held by UNISON. We are promoting the need for an alternative economic strategy, one that invests in the public sector, creates a climate for economic growth, reduces unemployment levels especially targeting youth unemployment, ensure a tax system that is fair for all and address the system that allows tax avoidance by multinational organisations.
It is now up to us as trade unionist to start acting in a way that takes into account everyday working life. We should never be passive.
We salute the many UNISON branches campaigning and achieving living wage and note that raising the National Minimum Wage to the Living Wage would raise billions in extra taxation a decision which would see less paid out in means tested benefits and boost local economies throughout the UK.
Our priorities and alternative economic strategy is not just a message for the Coalition Government but a message for all politicians, local, regional, national and European level.
We therefore call on the NBMC to work with the NEC, service groups and sector committees to promote an alternative economic strategy that:
1) Builds on the living wage campaign through organising in the workplace and promoting self-organisation groups in branches and community coalitions;
2) Focus on organising and recruiting Black members to build on our equality strategy, collective bargaining strength and campaign for an alternative to austerity;
3) Demonstrate its support for the campaign for a Robin Hood Tax and encourage all Black members to support this campaign;
4) Highlights the issue of zero hour contracts and develop a regional and national strategy with other trade unions across the TUC to build against this inequality;
5) Advise Regional Black Members Self Organised Groups to give priority to building political influence including the implementation of a political education programme.
6) Offers advice to UNISON regions on appropriate Black community organisations that they can work in partnership with in local campaigning against the cuts to jobs and services. These community organisations must share UNISON’s values and are committed to campaigning, including political campaigning, in line with the policies and priorities of the union.
7) Highlights a strategy campaign that tackles youth unemployment by working in conjunction with UNISON’s Young Members Forum and the NUS Black Students Association.
Conference further calls on the National Black Members Committee to
8) Hold a fringe meeting at the National Black Members Conference in 2015 on the campaign to address the impact of cuts and austerity on the Black community;
9) Report back on the activities through Black Action and other UNISON publications.
10) Make contact with Labour Link and request a shared work programme aimed at:
• Increasing the number of Labour party candidates who are from Black communities, committed to improving the quality of life for working people and their families and representative of working people.
• Campaigning for the return of a Labour government committed to improving the quality of life for ordinary working people, including ensuring all employment and trade union rights and facilities which the ConDem government may cut are reinstated and improved upon.
Submitted by: National Black Members’ Committee
Greater London Region
Hammersmith and Fulham Branch
Eastern Region