- Conference
- 2022 Local Government Service Group Conference
- Date
- 15 February 2022
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
Conference notes that school support staff have worked tirelessly in schools throughout the pandemic to support pupils, parents, and their communities – from ensuring free school meals provision, to deep cleaning schools, to covering classes when teachers were isolating. Conference believes they are the unsung heroes who rarely get the recognition they deserve by the media and decision makers.
Conference further believes that school staff were severely let down by the Westminster governments who failed to implement sufficient safety measures in schools to protect them, their families, and pupils. This has left many unnecessarily exposed to a much greater risk of Covid and long Covid.
Conference further notes that whilst support staff have exemplified the very best of public service ethos during the pandemic, we have seen examples of very worst behaviour by some outsourcing companies. A UNISON survey showed that some of the largest private catering companies in schools refused to pay their staff full pay when they needed to isolate, leaving many low paid staff in fear of both illness and poverty due to the paltry rates of statutory sick pay in the UK.
Conference believes that the huge work pressures of the last two years combined with low pay have created a crisis. In a recent UNISON survey for the annual Stars in our Schools celebration, more than two in five (42%) school support staff in England and Wales said they were actively looking for better paid jobs because of the rising cost of living and persistent low pay in education. The survey responses painted a bleak picture of school employees living with no heating or hot water because of broken boilers they cannot afford to fix, worrying about how to pay for dental treatment and reliant on food banks. Conference strongly believes this is scandal, a personal crisis for every individual member and a recruitment and retention crisis for every school.
Conference therefore calls on the Service Group Executive to:
1)Run a high-profile public campaign to highlight the invaluable work of school support staff (during and prior to the pandemic) and the risk that large numbers of staff will leave due to intolerable work pressures and low pay; with the aim of pressurising governments to increase funding for school support staff pay;
2)Reaffirm the service group’s support for the reinstatement of the School Support Staff Negotiating Body (SSSNB) in England;
3)Continue to campaign nationally and locally for all outsourced services in schools and colleges to be brought in-house;
4)In the interim to work with the Schools, NJC and SJC Committees to run a campaign to win improved terms and conditions for outsourced staff with the aim of getting them onto NJC/SJC terms and conditions and the Foundation Living Wage / Scottish Living Wage as a minimum; and to support members taking industrial action carried out within all relevant legislation and the UNISON rule book to seek to win these terms where negotiations do not work;
5)Work to ensure staff suffering from long Covid are fully supported by their employers; including campaigning for the disregarding of any sickness absence related to Covid-19 for the purposes of sickness absence triggers or sickness management policies, as is the case in the NHS;
6)Work with the NEC to submit evidence to the Covid public enquiry on the failure of the Westminster government to implement sufficient safety measures and guidance in schools during the pandemic.