Public sector union UNISON has warned councils in England not to short change workers when they plan their budgets for 2008.
‘Our members won’t settle for a below-inflation pay rise next year,’ said head of local government Heather Wakefield.
She was responding to news that councils in England will get a funding boost of almost £9 billion over the next three years – a year on year increase of four per cent, 4.4 per cent and 4.3 per cent.
UNISON warned that although the three-year settlement may appear to be in line with inflation, councils are expected to make three per cent efficiency savings alongside it.
Wakefield said: ‘Overall it amounts to a budget cut.
‘We are already seeing a steady stream of redundancies in local government and this settlement is bound to make matters worse.’
She called for ‘some of the efficiency savings to be invested in frontline staff as the government promised at the start of this exercise.’
UNISON and other trade unions are also angry at the government’s part in blocking EU legislation to protect vulnerable agency workers.
Employment ministers from across Europe failed to thrash out a deal to implement the Agency Workers Directive when they met last week.
The deal, which has been stalled for the past five years, would give agency workers the same employment rights as permanent staff.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: ‘There is real anger among unions that the UK government played the pivotal role in blocking progress on this modest measure to improve workplace justice.’
Barber pledged that ‘unions will not give up the campaign to deliver justice for agency workers’.
Earlier in the week the UNISON NEC decided that it will be at the heart of a co-ordinated public-sector pay campaign, designed to win decent pay for those delivering public services in the face of government plans for wage-cuting pay rises of just two per cent over the next three years.
Prentis told the NEC that UNISON will work with other public-service unions across all sectors of membership to co-ordinate a pay strategy, including early joint claims, and build support among members.
UNISON’s health service workers have submitted evidence to the independent pay review body showing the cost of low pay and arguing for a substantial rise and the union is consulting local government members in England and Wales over the pay claim for 2008.
The joint unions in Scotland have already submited a claim for a pay rise of five per cent or £1,000, whichever is greater and other sectors of members are drawing up their pay claims as well.
The NEC sent messages of support to sacked UNISON activists Karen Reissman in Manchester and Michael Gavan in Newham, as well as members taking industrial action to protect their conditions and rights in Glasgow and Barnet.
