- Conference
- 2016 Local Government Service Group Conference
- Date
- 23 February 2016
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes that the Westminster Government continued austerity measures are devastating local authority services and undermining our communities across the UK. UNISON members are facing mass redundancies; threats of privatisation; cuts to pay and terms and conditions and massively increased workloads and pressure. In these core and common issues UNISON can and should continue to seek to exercise our collective strength as one union; organising, supporting and learning from each other.
Conference also notes that policies relating to local government are diverging across the UK nations and regions. In Wales, most recently, this has been expressed in a series of new legislation being carried through by the Welsh Government: the reintroduction of the Code of Practice on Workforce Matters (2 Tier Code) in Wales; the establishment of an Education Workforce Council to include the registration of classroom based school support staff; the Health and Wellbeing Act; the establishment of a Public Services Staff Commission; the Local Government (Wales) Bill (covering the reform and reorganisation of councils in Wales) to mention a few. All of these developments need to be responded to, campaigned on and organised around, by UNISON.
Conference also notes that UNISON is head and shoulders above other trade unions in responding to these shifting and increasing demands but accepts that more needs to be done to ensure that our resources and expertise are effectively and equally deployed across our regions and nations.
Conference therefore calls on the Service Group Executive to:
1)Review how our resources and expertise are deployed to meet the ever increasing demands of devolution, to ensure that UNISON can respond as effectively to changes locally as it does at a UK level;
2)Liaise with the National Executive Committee about how other departments e.g. policy and communications can also ensure that resources are effectively and evenly deployed to meet the demands of devolution;
3)Continue to ensure that all policies and committee papers are ‘devolution-proofed’ and reflect the common and divergent situations across the UK.