Leeds Council Bulletin - Issue 1, June 2011

Leeds Unison urges members to reject council's final offer

Leeds Against the Cuts

Support the 30th June strike At present all Unison members in Leeds City Council are being Demonstration: balloted on the council's final proposal for cuts. The unions first Assemble11.30am balloted in February, with the Joint TUC rejecting the offer but Outside Leeds Met library continuing to negotiate. Rally: After the employer made slight concessions on what activists Starts at 12.00am describe as a poor deal, the unions are now being asked to consult City Square, Leeds their members on the 'final' proposals, with no alternative on offer. This situation in Leeds Unison has arisen not only because the Trade unionists in PCS, UCU, council has refused to make further concessions on parts of the NUT & ATL will be taking offer but as well because the GMB, also with a large membership, strike action against pension had already begun to ballot its members. cuts on June 30th. What is significant however, is the changing mood amongst the This is the first wave of activists. Prior to this development, at an all-stewards meeting last action that hopefully month, the Unison leadership spent most of its time undermining UNISON will be joining in the the mood for strike action. Despite this, activists voted against autumn. See article overleaf doing nothing, with speaker after speaker describing what the offer for the latest... really means for their members. Shamefully our Labour-led council has already rubber-stamped 90 million of cuts in February and is proposing a further 47 million for next year. With wages making up almost half (442 million) of total expenditure, the council intends to cut up to 3,000 jobs over four years with around 1,000 already leaving this year through its Early Leavers Initiative. A key sticking point for the unions has been the council's intended changes to its redeployment procedure (Managing Workforce Change). It intends to reduce the time from 12 months and three months notice, a total of 15 months currently, to nine months from July, and from April 2012 to six months. It also wants to reduce the period of pay protection staff have in the event they lose their job and are put into a lower grade, from three years to one year. The redeployment policy was designed to protect staff from redundancy but with these reductions the employer is able get rid of staff much more readily without commitment to 'no compulsory redundancies'. Indeed, these proposals represent the biggest attack on jobs, pay and conditions to council employees seen in decades and the effects of these cuts are becoming painfully clear, with the threats of closure to adult mental health centres, Leeds Crisis Centre, care homes for the elderly and libraries. With children's and adults' social services forced to contract, share services or be outsourced, closed or privatised it is the frontline services that our members proudly deliver that will suffer, which will have a detrimental impact on the population of Leeds. Our employer has always been intent on implementing these cuts. However, it is imperative that all the unions must jointly organise and campaign for members to vote a decisive 'no' to these proposals, and in doing so build support for coordinated industrial action through protest lobbies and local demonstrations. Only decisive action can defeat the cuts. The ballot ends on Monday 27 June.
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Leeds Council Bulletin - Issue 1

No to pension attacks
Council workers are facing unprecedented attacks - in the form of massive job cuts and a tearing up of terms and conditions in many areas. In just two weeks time it is expected that the government will announce their intention to impose a 3% increase in public sector pension contributions. This is a pay cut in real terms and comes on top of a twoyear pay freeze. Unless defeated through mass strike action, many workers will be faced with the choice of pay up or be forced out of the pension scheme. The government is also proposing a career average instead of final salary scheme. They plan to cut the local government pension from 1/60th of our annual salary to as low as only 1/100th and they want to make us work till we are 68. These changes, if effected, could cost some workers up to 1,000 more a year for a pension worth nearly half of what they would get now. Even some of the employers are panicking. They are predicting that 20-40% could leave the schemes, sending the funds into downward spirals. If the government gets away with it, this would be the biggest attack on public sector workers' pay and conditions in a generation. That is why it requires the unions to use the full strength of the five million public sector trade unionists. Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison has now declared that Unison will ballot over the summer or early autumn for strike action over pension attacks if the meeting with government on 28 June does not lead to a deal. Prentis also said: "It will not be one day of action - it will be longterm industrial action throughout all our public services to prevent destruction of our pension schemes." This is to be welcomed by Unison members and other public sector trade unionists. This shows that trade union leaders can be forced to ballot for action, when faced with an onslaught of attacks from this government and growing anger from public sector workers. The start of the fightback will come from the three quarters of a million workers in education and the civil service who are preparing to strike on 30 June. Unfortunately Unison, GMB and UNITE will not be taking action with other unions on 30 June but the union leaders are calling on all members to support the lobbies and demonstrations and for members not to cover the work of the strikers. Only recently Socialist Party members on the Unison national executive tried to commit the union to action on pensions no later than 31 October 2011 but this was not agreed. At a local level there are branches whose members are demanding to ballot for strike action against cuts. They are being prevented from doing so by the union leadership. These ballots should now immediately be sanctioned. We must now give full backing to the 30 June strike and use it to build for an all public-sector strike that would rock this government to its foundations. Unison must be ready to start the pensions ballot immediately if the government refuses to back down on pension attacks

Join the Socialists!

The Socialist Party argues for more than just fighting the cuts. As long as capitalism exists working people will face a future of uncertainly. What we gain today, the bosses will try to take back tomorrow as they are doing with the NHS. We need an alternative way of running society, a socialist society, based on meeting the needs of the many by planning production in that direction rather than making profits for a few at the top. To do this we need to take the banks and the other monopolies that dominate our economy into public ownership and run them democratically. The Socialist Party is made up of ordinary people like you, so if you agree then join us in the struggle for socialism. We campaign for the following: Stop all cuts and closures. Oppose compulsory redundancies and fight for every job No to privatisation and the Public Finance Initiative (PFI). Bring all privatised council services back inhouse. Organise agency and parttime workers. No to a twotier workforce. Defend every service. Fight for the council to set a needs budget rather than doing Camerons dirty work for him. Trade unions to disaffiliate from New Labour, whose councillors are cutting 3,000 council jobs in Leeds, and support candidates opposed to all cuts. Link up with service users, anti-cuts groups and community campaigns to defend all public services.

For an all public-sector strike in defence of pensions Defend the final salary scheme No increases in contribution rates No to lower pension benefits

Find out more: www.leedssocialistparty.wordpress.com / leedssp@hotmail.co.uk / Twitter: @leedssp