Category: News

Annual General Meeting

You are invited to the Young Members’ Committee Annual General Meeting (AGM) which will take place at UNISON HQ, West Campbell Street, Glasgow on the 20^th of March from 11am to 5pm.

The AGM is an important meeting for all members. It provides an opportunity for you to ask questions about the work of the union, you can see how committee finances have been used and, help to set policy and agree priorities for the year ahead.

The AGM also provides an opportunity for you to elect officials to lead the committee and represent your interests. A whole range of different roles are available in the committee and each one carries an important set of responsibilities. A list of roles will be circulated for you to consider.

Hold the date

Monday 20^th March @ 11am-5pm

Details for joining the meeting digitally will be sent out nearer the time. Due to UNISON rules, any member joining online will be “spectating” and have no voting rights, therefore we urge you to attend in person if you are able.

Motions and Rule Changes

If you would like to submit a motion for consideration or a change in the rules of the committee, please do so by 27^th February by emailing millie.holroyd@nhs.scot

Access Requirements

We recognise that to ensure all of our members can fully participate it may be necessary to make adjustments, if you require any adjustment, please contact the committee and we will discuss your requirements.

Our joint TU pay claim for 2023 has now been submitted to COSLA.  The full version which contains our detailed argument is here.

In summary, our claim is for:

• A settlement that runs for the period 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.
• An increase of 12% or £4,000 whichever is the greater to all spinal column points (based on a nominal 35-hour working week).  This would equate to a £2.20 increase in the hourly rate.
• An underpinning minimum rate of pay of £15 per hour.
• An increase to the mileage rate to ensure parity with NHS colleagues.
• A no compulsory redundancy agreement.
• Completion of the review, established as part of our 2021 settlement, of professional fees (beyond the SSSC fees which are now paid for local government workers) incurred by members in the course of their employment.
• Early completion of the review, established as part of our 2021 settlement, on how we achieve a no-detriment reduction in the working week to enable members to achieve a better work-life balance.
• Agreement to change the national calculator for the normal working week to 35 hours.
• No less than parity with other local government bargaining groups.
• Early commencement of negotiations with a clear expectation of settlement implementation by 1 April review date.

The claim is set at a level that we believe recognises the following key points:

• The RPI rate, at the time of writing, is sitting at 13.4%^[1];
• The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which advises the government on its economic plans, forecasts that RPI inflation for 2023 as a whole will be 10.7%;
• Substantial increases in the cost of living over recent years have significantly reduced the value of staff wages and the rise in prices facing workers is now at a 40-year high.
• Appropriate reward is needed to sustain the morale of staff in their crucial role of delivering high-quality services;
• Appropriate reward is needed for the increased workload and stress placed on staff against a background of unprecedented changes in working practices and the demands that were placed on them during the Covid pandemic.

Our right to strike is under attack. We need to show this government we are ready to fight these unjust laws.

Join our day of action – 1 February 

The TUC will coordinate a protect the right to strike day on Wednesday 1 February.

Join an event in your area on Wednesday 1 February

Thousands of UK workers are being forced to take industrial action to protect their pay, standard of living and the services they provide. But rather than helping workers live decent lives and improving the services that millions of people rely on every day, the Westminster government is turning its back on working people.

Rishi Sunak is trying to force his anti-union “sack key workers bill” through parliament in a matter of weeks. It means that when workers democratically vote to strike, they could be forced to work and sacked if they don’t. That’s wrong, unworkable, and almost certainly illegal. We need to stop this bill.

These new laws are a direct attack on working people’s fundamental right to strike to defend their pay, terms and conditions.

Read the full article here

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