massive public sector strike on wednesday
info-woman | 15.07.2002 10:57
support the workers on Wednesday, join/visit the picket
lines!
The waking municipal giant
Council workers have been the victims of New Labour's private sector love-in. But not any more
Heather Wakefield
Monday July 15, 2002
The Guardian
Introducing her 1936 novel, South Riding, Winifred Holtby described local government as "the first line of defence thrown up by the community against our common enemies - poverty, sickness, ignorance, isolation, mental derangement and social maladjustment". This is still true of local councils. The nomenclature may be different, but the evils remain.
Fending them off are 1,300,000 local government workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the bedrock of local communities. Three-quarters of them are women and on July 17 most will take all-out strike action. It will be the first bout of national industrial action for council staff since 1989, the largest strike of women workers in the UK's history and the first time manual and white collar workers in local government have joined in common cause against the national employers.
The reason is straightforward. An annual pay claim by the unions - Unison, GMB and TGWU - for £1,750 or 6%, whichever is the greater, has been met with an unacceptable 3% offer. The employers are adamantly opposed to a flat-rate element to boost earnings at the bottom end of the pay ladder. Meanwhile 277,000 part-time women workers on the lowest rung earn less than £5 an hour, there is a gender pay gap of 34% and while the average basic wage heads towards £20,000, two-thirds of council staff earn below £13,500.
It is the big battalions of Very Old Labour councillors in the party's northern heartlands who form the most obdurate opposition to a flat rate increase. The govern ment's love affair with privatisation encourages councils to make comparisons with the lowest paid in the private labour market and threaten our members with outsourcing if they don't put up or shut up.
But it's more than pay which has roused the municipal giant. This dispute has become a conduit for the bitter disappointment and discontent which has quietly increased among staff since 1997. Home helps, housing workers, librarians and refuse collectors all feel the same. The "Best Value" regime has demanded more for less. Our members have delivered improvement with no thanks from the government. Inspected and assessed beyond sense, and frequently told that private is best, they have had enough.
If the strike is a surprise, it's because local government has become the poor relation of the public sector, our members the Lost Girls and Boys of the welfare state. While teachers, police and health workers are rightly feted and rewarded with higher pay awards, golden hellos, cost of living allowances and help with housing and transport, council workers carry on unnoticed, neglected and poorly rewarded. But no longer regardless.
Teaching assistants, "an asset of priceless value" according to Estelle Morris, earn little more than £5 an hour for playing an ever larger part in children's learning in the classroom. Yet between 1995 and 2001 their pay fell from 45% of teachers' earnings to 38%. Home carers on the same wages change catheters and perform intimate personal care for the housebound. They will be the group who unblock hospital beds for Alan Milburn. But social services inspectors regularly call for their wages to be cut and for privatisation to save on the pay bill.
Central and local government's neglect is indisputable. Pay has fallen behind the rest of the public and the private sector in the last decade. Some 10% of the workforce are on temporary contracts, the highest level in the economy. Training runs at a derisory day-and-a-half per year per employee, most of that targeted at professional and managerial staff. Every council faces recruitment and retention problems, running as high as 40% in social care. Some 29% of Unison members recently reported working unpaid overtime just to get their jobs completed.
What sort of complacency could have let this happen? Part of the explanation must lie in the fact that 75% of council staff are women. Some on the male-dominated employers' side no doubt regard them as lucky to be paid at all for jobs they do for nothing in the home.
Another is New Labour's love affair with the private sector. Private is sexy and dynamic. Public is dull and inefficient, despite growing evidence to the contrary. To be a local government worker in Blair's topsy-turvy world signifies a lack of ambition and fear of change. Not the dedication to public service which Unison members demonstrate every minute of the day.
Their angry mood resonates in every public sector union. The "new deal" which nervous ministers want to see with the unions will have to involve serious pay increases. But it will take more than cash. The government will have to demonstrate a new recognition of public commitment, question the wisdom of its ideological love affair with the private sector and acknowledge that, in many cases, staff are the services councils provide. A little respect and some serious long-term investment in people, prime minister. That would be a start.
Heather Wakefield is Unison's national officer for local government.
wakefiedhj@btinternet.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
lines!
The waking municipal giant
Council workers have been the victims of New Labour's private sector love-in. But not any more
Heather Wakefield
Monday July 15, 2002
The Guardian
Introducing her 1936 novel, South Riding, Winifred Holtby described local government as "the first line of defence thrown up by the community against our common enemies - poverty, sickness, ignorance, isolation, mental derangement and social maladjustment". This is still true of local councils. The nomenclature may be different, but the evils remain.
Fending them off are 1,300,000 local government workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the bedrock of local communities. Three-quarters of them are women and on July 17 most will take all-out strike action. It will be the first bout of national industrial action for council staff since 1989, the largest strike of women workers in the UK's history and the first time manual and white collar workers in local government have joined in common cause against the national employers.
The reason is straightforward. An annual pay claim by the unions - Unison, GMB and TGWU - for £1,750 or 6%, whichever is the greater, has been met with an unacceptable 3% offer. The employers are adamantly opposed to a flat-rate element to boost earnings at the bottom end of the pay ladder. Meanwhile 277,000 part-time women workers on the lowest rung earn less than £5 an hour, there is a gender pay gap of 34% and while the average basic wage heads towards £20,000, two-thirds of council staff earn below £13,500.
It is the big battalions of Very Old Labour councillors in the party's northern heartlands who form the most obdurate opposition to a flat rate increase. The govern ment's love affair with privatisation encourages councils to make comparisons with the lowest paid in the private labour market and threaten our members with outsourcing if they don't put up or shut up.
But it's more than pay which has roused the municipal giant. This dispute has become a conduit for the bitter disappointment and discontent which has quietly increased among staff since 1997. Home helps, housing workers, librarians and refuse collectors all feel the same. The "Best Value" regime has demanded more for less. Our members have delivered improvement with no thanks from the government. Inspected and assessed beyond sense, and frequently told that private is best, they have had enough.
If the strike is a surprise, it's because local government has become the poor relation of the public sector, our members the Lost Girls and Boys of the welfare state. While teachers, police and health workers are rightly feted and rewarded with higher pay awards, golden hellos, cost of living allowances and help with housing and transport, council workers carry on unnoticed, neglected and poorly rewarded. But no longer regardless.
Teaching assistants, "an asset of priceless value" according to Estelle Morris, earn little more than £5 an hour for playing an ever larger part in children's learning in the classroom. Yet between 1995 and 2001 their pay fell from 45% of teachers' earnings to 38%. Home carers on the same wages change catheters and perform intimate personal care for the housebound. They will be the group who unblock hospital beds for Alan Milburn. But social services inspectors regularly call for their wages to be cut and for privatisation to save on the pay bill.
Central and local government's neglect is indisputable. Pay has fallen behind the rest of the public and the private sector in the last decade. Some 10% of the workforce are on temporary contracts, the highest level in the economy. Training runs at a derisory day-and-a-half per year per employee, most of that targeted at professional and managerial staff. Every council faces recruitment and retention problems, running as high as 40% in social care. Some 29% of Unison members recently reported working unpaid overtime just to get their jobs completed.
What sort of complacency could have let this happen? Part of the explanation must lie in the fact that 75% of council staff are women. Some on the male-dominated employers' side no doubt regard them as lucky to be paid at all for jobs they do for nothing in the home.
Another is New Labour's love affair with the private sector. Private is sexy and dynamic. Public is dull and inefficient, despite growing evidence to the contrary. To be a local government worker in Blair's topsy-turvy world signifies a lack of ambition and fear of change. Not the dedication to public service which Unison members demonstrate every minute of the day.
Their angry mood resonates in every public sector union. The "new deal" which nervous ministers want to see with the unions will have to involve serious pay increases. But it will take more than cash. The government will have to demonstrate a new recognition of public commitment, question the wisdom of its ideological love affair with the private sector and acknowledge that, in many cases, staff are the services councils provide. A little respect and some serious long-term investment in people, prime minister. That would be a start.
Heather Wakefield is Unison's national officer for local government.
wakefiedhj@btinternet.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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