- Conference
- 2016 Local Government Service Group Conference
- Date
- 23 February 2016
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes that massive cuts have been made across local government, with billions of pounds of central government funding removed since 2010. By 2019/20 local councils will lose £75 out of every £100 that the government spent in 2015/16, and thousands more services will have been lost. UNISON members who are chief officers and senior managers often have to make extremely difficult decisions, and implement political decisions made by national or local politicians, about cutting services.
This situation often causes stress for UNISON members. A 2015 UNISON survey of chief officers and senior managers in local authorities made clear that overwork and stress are a major issue for staff. Of course, at senior levels staff expect to work more than their contracted hours when necessary. But UNISON’s survey found that almost a third (32%) of chief officers and senior managers work 10 or more hours more than their contracted hours, in a typical week. So nearly a third regularly give their employer an extra 25% of working hours, unpaid. The same survey found that 67% of chief officers and senior managers feel they have too much work to do, and just under half said that workplace stress is affecting their job performance.
Conference believes that while many branches deliver a good service for chief officer and senior manager members, some branches find it difficult to do so, perhaps because of perceived conflicts with other membership groups. Conference recognises that chief officers and senior managers need effective representation at all levels of the union, on individual issues and in collective negotiations.
Conference believes that chief officer and senior manager members could be an important source of ideas and expertise in developing the service group’s campaigns against privatisation and outsourcing.
Conference instructs the Service Group Executive (SGE) to:
1)Launch a campaign to deal with stress among senior officers, including working with the Chief Officers and Senior Managers Sector Committee to push the Joint Negotiating Committee (JNC) Employers to produce joint guidance on stress, producing recruitment materials which focus on this issue, and highlighting the equalities dimensions related to workplace stress;
2)Use the local government press, which is read by many chief officers and senior managers, to highlight the issue of workloads and stress among chief officers and senior managers in local authorities;
3)Ensure that the Chief Officers and Senior Managers sector committee are involved in developing campaigns against privatisation and outsourcing;
4)Ask the NEC and/or its Development and Organisation Committee to consult the Chief Officers and Senior Managers Sector Committee on branch structures and to set up a working party to review how best to organise this group of members.