Because of how the Water Companies are funded by OFWAT whose priority is value for money for the consumer and also the companies adopting risk-based strategies in order to deliver maximum profits for their owners, very little money is spent on maintaining our assets. Customer pressure groups objecting to high profits and increasing bills compound […]
Conference motions
Conference notes that the ConDem government has refused to reduce the national deficit by alternative methods e.g. increasing taxation levels on multi-nationals, the implementation of the ‘Robin Hood’ tax, and forcing tax-dodging billionaires to pay their taxes in the UK. The result has been a massive attack on Local Government Staff and the services they […]
Conference is deeply concerned about the disproportionate level of cuts to youth provision in the statutory and voluntary sectors. The workforce is facing major redundancies and those workers who survive the cull are facing attacks on their pay and conditions. Losing the skills and expertise of youth and community workers made redundant will have a […]
Conference is outraged by the savage funding cuts being inflicted on Further Education and Sixth Form colleges by the Tory led Government. Cuts that will both threaten large scale job loses in colleges and lead to increasing hardship and deprivation in the communities that our colleges serve. Conference notes that many of the colleges facing […]
Conference is deeply concerned that the attacks by the Coalition Government on the Local Government Pension Scheme will have a devastating effect on UNISON’s low paid and Black members. Conference notes new research by the Runnymede Trust that finds that Black people are three times as likely as white people to experience poverty in retirement. […]
The Localism Bill contains an important measure that will impact on local government and our members which is known as the Community Right to Challenge The Community Right to Challenge is presented as a measure to encourage the involvement of charities, social enterprises or employee mutuals in the delivery of local authority services. However if […]
This Conference notes with concern the National Employers Bodies- NJC and SJC- failures to properly negotiate an affordable pay settlement. In 2010 the Scottish Employers side stepped the established negotiating body and imposed a 3 year settlement including a 2 year pay freeze. In reality UNISON members in local government are suffering a multi year […]
This Conference notes the increasingly open and brutal nature of the Tory-led government attacks on public sector workers. Threats to the local government two-tier code in England (whilst the Welsh Assembly Government is proposing to retain it), the warning to academy schools not to sign up to national terms and conditions and the increased drive […]
This Conference notes that members working in housing face redundancy, job insecurity, attacks on terms and conditions and pay, more stressful jobs and working environments and a renewed threat of privatisation as a direct result of the Conservative-led Government’s economic and housing policies. Conference further notes: 1)Cuts in housing benefit that will lead to an […]
This Conference believes that library services are key source of local employment and make an essential contribution to local communities and educational achievement. Despite recent pressures, many libraries have developed innovative and imaginative ways of serving local communities. However the service across the UK has suffered many years of funding cuts and the threat of […]
Conference recognises the threat to thousands of local authority workers’ jobs who currently administer Housing Benefit due to the Westmister Government’s decision to replace in and out of work benefits and Housing Benefits with a ‘Universal Credit’. UNISON will need to respond robustly to defend members jobs and to retain a locally accessible provision for […]
This Conference deplores the recent announcement of the tri-borough merger of Hammersmith and Fulham, Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea we are now seeing the brutal attacks to our terms and conditions, job’s and pensions. Over the next three years the tri-borough proposal are suggesting that there will be a saving of 35 million a year […]
Conference notes that the Equality Act 2010 harmonised former equality legislation – the Sex Discrimination Act, the Disability Discrimination Act and the Race Relations (amendment) Act and related legislation. Although the 2010 Act failed to meet the aspirations of many interested parties, including UNISON, there are significant benefits for employees and public sector services. However, […]