- Conference
- 2024 Local Government Service Group Conference
- Date
- 19 February 2024
- Decision
- Carried
Conference believes that all public services are best delivered in public sector institutions by workers who are well-paid and respected for the jobs that they do. We know, however, that a combination of cost-cutting and marketisation in the Further Education sector has led to a proliferation of services in colleges being delivered by private contractors. Some of these are working for wholly-owned subsidiaries, some for arms-length organisations and some for specialist services, such as cleaning and catering. In the vast majority of these employers, their employees receive worse pay, worse pensions and worse terms and conditions, such as inferior sick pay and holiday pay, than their directly-employed counterparts.
Conference believes that all public sector workers should benefit from the improvements in working conditions brought about by union recognition and collective bargaining. To achieve this, we must improve membership density in contracted-out services in colleges; we do this by ensuring workers know what we can do for them. Organisers need resources to fight against outsourcing, campaign for insourcing, identifying new reps amongst outsourced workers and recruiting new members. Reps to feel empowered in their role to pursue collective bargaining issues and as well as supporting individuals.
The experiment to increase the role of the private sector in providing public services has failed in the college sector. In November 2022, the government in England admitted that the incorporation of FE of the past 25 years had been wrong and brought all colleges back into the public sector. Now we must fight to ensure that everyone who works in a college in the UK is directly employed by the public sector, beginning by securing improvements in the terms and conditions of those currently employed in contracted-out companies.
Conference calls on the Service Group Executive to:
1) Carry out an in-depth mapping exercise to identify the true extent of private sector provision in the FE and 6th form colleges sector across the UK;
2) Continue to campaign for all services to be delivered in-house, as the ultimate aim, by resisting moves to outsource services and campaigning for contracted-out services to be brought in-house;
3) Develop a strategy to recruit and organise workers in private sector companies in colleges;
4) Advise and support branches on campaigns and strategies to support contracted-out workers in colleges;
5) Strive for union recognition and collective bargaining in contracted-out organisations;
6) Organise sessions for reps in contracted-out services at national and regional seminars, webinars and events;
7) Advise and support branches to campaign for annual cost of living wage rises for outsourced workers in the FE sector as they do for directly employed workers within the sector.