- Conference
- 2024 National Delegate Conference
- Date
- 19 February 2024
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
Years of under investment and cuts have led the UK to be a poorer place.
Conference therefore notes with concern the growing issue of employers passing on costs to their staff as a consequence of cuts.
Uniforms, mandatory training, shadowing, criminal record checks, mandatory professional accreditations, annual registration fees, car parking and using a car to make visits are all essential for staff to be able to do their jobs, provide a good service and keep their community healthy and safe.
However, far too many workers are being charged for the very essentials they need to go to work. This can add up to thousands of pounds taken from workers’ wages every year, leaving workers out of pocket just for doing their jobs.
UNISON’s report, “Driven out of work” shows that one in five frontline public service workers use a car to do their jobs. For example, visiting patients, providing care, keeping vulnerable children safe, doing housing repairs or ensuring water supplies safe all require staff to drive hundreds of miles to do their jobs. But out of date mileage rates mean these vital staff are thousands of pounds out of pocket. Conference is dismayed that the average local government or NHS worker who drives daily is losing more than £6,000 a year.
Conference notes that the UK economy is fifteen years into economic decline, and this has cost the average worker £10,700 a year according to new research from the Resolution Foundation. Taxes are at a record high while investment in public services is at rock bottom, and the UK suffers from the highest income inequality of any major European country. Middle income workers in the UK are now 20 per cent poorer than their peers in Germany and 19 per cent poorer than those in France. For those on lower incomes the picture is even worse, with UK workers being around 27 per cent poorer than their German and French counterparts. Workers need to see genuine pay rises, not docked wages for essential workplace costs.
Conference highlights that, exacerbating this, the biggest costs are often passed onto those least able to afford them. Recent UNISON research on criminal record checks shows that more than four in five (85 percent) of public service workers requiring criminal record checks earn below the average wage in the UK, with two in five of them seeing their wages deducted to pay for it. Similarly, UNISON’s research on mileage rates shows that public service workers required to do a car for their job, and therefore left out of pocket by out-of-date mileage rates, earn on average just £22,499 – significantly below the UK average. Conference is concerned that budget cuts, low pay the costs of working are pushing essential workers into financial hardship and poverty.
Conference is clear: it is wrong for employers to pass costs onto their staff. When something is essential for a job to be done well, safely or to the employer’s standards, it should always be the employer who foots the bill.
Conference notes that it doesn’t have to be this way and applauds the efforts of UNISON activists across the country to challenge unfair costs of working. Conference also notes that many local successes where branches have secured local wins such as temporary uplifts to mileage rates, reversal of fees for criminal record checks and campaigns against car parking charges.
Conference also notes that the reason given by employers to activists challenging these costs being passed on is too often the wider austerity that has seen public service budgets slashed.
Conference demands a new economic strategy for the UK, one which ends austerity and delivers higher growth, better jobs, fairer redistribution and increased investment in world class public services across the whole country. Conference also demands action to tackle the deep regional inequalities that hold much of the country back. Local and devolved governments are best placed to work with local communities to generate better jobs and fairer economic growth, but the slashed funding, cuts and the lack appropriate powers are holding them back.
Conference believes that investment in public services is key to delivering higher growth and lower inequality, and that a growing economy rooted in fairness is the only route to rescuing public services. Conference agrees with the Resolution Foundation’s Economy 2030 report that the quality, not just the quantity, of taxes is critical to achieving growth and tackling inequality. Conference recognises that our tax system is out of date, with council tax based on three-decades-old property values, inheritance tax reliefs too easily abused, people on the highest incomes paying unjustifiably low rates and the entire system failing to keep pace with the need to transition to net zero. Conference believes that we need both higher and better quality taxes, shouldered by wealth and other forms of unearned income, not just earnings.
Conference believes that it is important that alongside excellent campaigns in workplaces it is essential that UNISON is also working to change the laws and regulations at national levels in Westminster and devolved administrations to protect workers from these unfair charges and deductions, as well as making the case for greater investment in public services paid for by fairer, more progressive taxation, and being part of the conversation about achieving equitable, sustainable growth.
Conference therefore calls for the National Executive Council to:
1)Ensure that the case for investment in all our public services is heard loud and clear in the coming likely election period by:
a)Continuing to support branches fighting cuts;
b)Support activists and members to engage in the public debates about how to achieve economic growth and wide scale benefits of investing in our local public services, using where appropriate the Resolution Foundation report’s findings and recommendations.
2)Progress policy development and campaigns on the costs of working including:
a)Collect evidence of the financial hardship incurred by our members working across public services as a result of the costs of working being passed onto workers;
b)Continue to lobby the UK Treasury to increase out of date mileage rates in line with the real costs of using a vehicle for work;
c)Campaign against essential costs of working being passed onto staff, including car parking, uniforms, mandatory training, shadowing, criminal record checks, mandatory professional accreditations, and annual registration fees;
d)Develop policy proposals that would ban the unfair costs of working being passed onto workers, and work with regions, service groups, Labour-Link and the Campaign Fund where possible to call for legislative change in Westminster and the devolved administrations preventing employers from passing on essential workplace costs to their staff;
e)Work with UNISON College to develop training for activists and branches to challenge unfair costs of working in their workplaces;
f)Undertake further investigation into whether unfair costs of working leave low paid and insecure workers earning below legal minimum levels or not.
3)Continue work on progressive taxation to fund public services and ensure fair, sustainable growth in every region by:
a)Continue work to develop options for more progressive taxation to better fund public services and shift the tax burden from working income to unearned wealth and corporate profits, drawing on the Resolution Foundation’s report;
b)Work with the TUC, WTUC, STUC (who have already issued their own taxation report) ICTU and other likeminded organisations to explore the case for fiscal devolution to improve growth and productivity in every city and region of the UK, develop progressive alternatives to council tax, and continue to make the case for central government investment to fund public services based on need, underpin growth and tackle regional inequalities.