Author: Stirling Websites

The UK sees record levels of strike action as ambulance workers, nurses, transport workers and teachers take a stand against the crisis in our public services.

Yet, rather than engaging with the people who keep our country running, or finding solutions to staffing shortages and waiting lists, the government is intent on punishing frontline workers when they speak out.

UNISON believes that the new anti-strike bill, named the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill, is a full-frontal attack on working people and the trade unions they organise within. It seeks to drastically curtail labour rights in Great Britain and allows employers to sack the people whose hard work and goodwill our public services depend on.

Three things all UNISON members need to know

Here are the three things all UNISON members need to know about this new legislation, which begins its journey through parliament on 16 January:

1. Minimum service levels 

The bill will grant the government powers to set ‘minimum service levels’ for six key public services: health; fire and rescue; education; transport; decommissioning of nuclear installations and management of radioactive waste and spent fuel; and border security.

2. Work notices

The bill will hand a new strike-breaking tool to employers: work notices.

If workers in any one of the six listed public services have voted for industrial action, the employer would have a right to serve the union with a ‘work notice’ specifying the number of people required to work, and the work to be performed during the strike in order to meet the ‘minimum service level’ imposed by the government.

3. Removal of protection for striking workers

If a work notice requires that an employee works during a strike, they could be sacked if they refuse.

This is because the bill removes key protections from individual workers exercising their rights to strike. Frontline workers will face dismissal for taking part in lawful industrial action.

Read the full article here.

The survey will remain open until Tuesday 7 February.

Do you work in social work? Are you a family support worker or social work assistant? Do you work in a practice role that does not require a social work qualification?

Help us help you by taking UNISON Scotland’s survey

The survey will help us progress the issues we know this group of members are experiencing.  It will also help with local organising linked to the National Care Service proposals. All our members in council social work teams face huge uncertainty including this group of unqualified staff. 

The National Care Service (NCS) Bill proposes a fundamental reorganisation of adult social care, and if passed will enable the inclusion of children’s services, justice social work and drugs and alcohol services.
Over 200,000 people work in this sector, including those employed by councils, the third and private sectors, and the NHS. There is no clarity about pensions provision within the bill. It could see 75,000 workers transfer out of local authority employment with no knowledge of how this will affect their pensions.

UNISON wants decent pensions for all care staff regardless of who employs them but there is nothing in the bill that will ensure that either.

So what will the National Care Service Bill mean for your pension?

If you work for a council-
Councils employ 75,000 workers in social work and social care, who may transfer to work in the third or private sector. The Scottish Government has avoided giving any assurances about pensions, and the law does not properly protect pensions.
If you are in the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) then you can rely on a pension based on your salary. Typically, you pay in about 6% and your employer pays in about 19%.

After you transfer, you may only get a “money purchase” pension where you build up a pot of savings and hope to ‘buy’ a pension when you retire. You and your employer will both pay up to 6% of your salary. This is only half what you need to avoid poverty in retirement.

If you work for a third-sector or private employer
Contracting regulations say councils should ensure outsourced staff can keep their existing pension scheme or a similar one.
New starters working alongside them should get access to the same pension, and other care staff at least get a modest pension. In future, if the National Care Service issues a contract, this will not apply and we don’t know if there will be any safeguards.

If you work for the NHS
As with council staff, if you are in the NHS Pension Scheme and you are outsourced, you only get minimum protection and a much inferior “money purchase” scheme.

How this affects employers
Pension schemes often run with a deficit, and if staff transfer then part of this deficit transfers with them. This means new employers may be required to pay a debt. If the debt doesn’t transfer to the new employer, then the council will be left with it, when council finances are very tight already. About a third of workers in the LGPS are care staff, and their pension contributions are invested to help pay their pensions. If they are forced out, or new starters can’t join, then pension fund finances may be destabilised, and worker contributions and pension benefits may have to change.

Want to find out more?

Read the full Pensions briefing here

In a week when workers across the UK – including many of our members – have been continuing to take industrial action, the government is attempting to fast-track its controversial anti-strike bill through parliament.   The bill is a real and present danger to working people and the unions that represent them, and UNISON is supporting the TUC’s campaign to defeat the bill and is urging activists to spread the word with members   Read Christina’s right to strike blog

Three reasons the bill is so bad for working people

TUCs protect the right-to-strike campaign

Sign the petition now – and share it

TUC right-to-strike rallies

As you will be aware the current cost of living crisis is affecting all organisations, and Local Government is not immune from that pain. The lasting effects of Covid, alongside other global and national events, have led to inflation levels not seen since the early 1980s. This has also not been helped by the year-in-year-out cuts to Local Government budgets passed on by the Scottish Government.

Stirling Council is now looking at a budget gap of £23m for 2023-24. Without a significant response, that is estimated to grow to almost £35m by 2025-26.

Stirling Council is already looking at what they can do and how they do it so that they can better support the workforce, serve our communities, and maintain financial sustainability.

Stirling Council is asking services to identify savings proposals that equate to 10% of their 2022-23 net budget. This work will need to be done by the end of this month.

It’s evident that savings of this scale won’t be possible without cuts to services and a likely reduction in the number of staff working for the Council over the next 12-18 months. Please be assured that we currently have a No Compulsory Redundancy commitment and the focus is on anyone leaving the Council doing so voluntarily, and we will work closely with management throughout the process, in line with our existing Organisational Change Policy. Please be assured  UNISON does not support job losses, however, given the budget gap it is inevitable that savings have to be made. We have concerns for those staff who will be working to deliver services where the workforce is reduced. Please be assured we will work closely with the employer to ensure there are the appropriate processes are followed should staffing resources be reduced within your service.

We know how unsettling all of this will be, and we’ll keep you informed and involved at every stage.

Audit Commission LG Finance Bulletin

The Audit Commission today published its Local Government Finance Bulletin This independent analysis confirms that:

• Councils face the most difficult budget-setting context seen for many years with the ongoing impacts of Covid-19, inflation and the cost of living crisis. They will need to continue to make recurring savings and increasingly difficult choices with their spending priorities, including, in some cases, potential service reductions.
• Two-thirds of councils intend to use reserves to help bridge the 2022/23 gap between anticipated expenditure and revenue (budget gap) of £0.4 billion but this reliance on non-recurring reserves is not sustainable in the medium to long term.
• An increasing proportion of local government funding is now either formally ring-fenced or provided with the expectation it will be spent on specific services. They calculate this to be 23 per cent of total revenue funding in 2021/22. Ring-fenced and directed funding helps support the delivery of key Scottish Government policies but removes local discretion and flexibility over how these funds can be used by councils.
• Revenue funding from the Scottish Government to the local government between 2013/14 and 2021/22 increased by 6.1 per cent (in real terms) whereas Scottish Government revenue funding to other parts of the Scottish Government budget increased by a significantly higher figure of 27.2 per cent over the same period.
• Total net debt (total debt less cash and investments) has increased across councils by £0.2 billion to £16.4 billion. Fifteen councils have increased their net debt in 2021/22. This compares to eight councils in 2020/21.  Councils’ total debt has increased by £0.3 billion to £19 billion; this may be related to the increased need to borrow to fund capital expenditure, with 19 out of 32 councils having increased long-term borrowing from the previous year and 15 councils with increased short-term borrowing compared to the previous year
• The 2022/23 estimated budget gap as a proportion of the 2021/22 net cost of services varied across councils from an anticipated surplus of 0.2 per cent to a gap of 23 per cent.
• Scottish Government revenue funding in 2022/23 decreased by 0.1 per cent in real terms when non-recurring funding elements are excluded and total revenue funding will fall by 2.4 per cent in real terms in 2022/23.
• When Covid-19 funding in 2021/22 is removed from their analysis they find that the Scottish Government budget is set to increase by seven per cent in real terms, as opposed to a real-terms cut in local government funding of 0.1 per cent.

The National Care Service Bill has significant implications for staff pensions.

Please see below

• a briefing for members in social care and social work on what the bill means for their pension
• a longer briefing which identifies significant risks to workforce pensions, employer finances, and pension fund stability resulting from the current proposals.