Over the past year, members of the CYWU section of Unite
have been fighting and campaigning to defend Youth Services provision in
Coventry. The Tory-controlled City Council had employed Price Waterhouse
Cooper
(PWC) as its partner consultants and the Youth Service is the first in
line to
feel the axe at a cost of £67,000. PWC will examine
all areas of the Council’s operations and advise on “savings”, that is
cuts…
The PWC review meant cuts of £360,000 resulting in cuts to
front line youth services, deletion of three fulltime posts and unilateral changes
to contracts with part time workers being forced to sign up to new contracts
involving fewer hours, reduced progression scales, reduced training and
development opportunities. The imposed changes will also mean salary cuts of 25
to 50% affecting mainly PT and women workers. Youth
workers are being forced to sign these contracts or make themselves unemployed.
Youth workers on £11,000 a year will be now be on £7,000. Workers who are
single parents will because of cuts to working hours lose Working Tax Credits
and many are finding it hard to pay mortgages.
SALAMI STYLE CUTS.
The Youth Services Review is the first of many. Over the
next year the Council has announced cuts of more than £10m and over the next
three years they aim to cut £74m from spending. This could mean a reduction
from 6,000 to 4,000 workers on the Council payroll. The exact figures are not
known as details of the proposed cuts are being kept hidden. All the Council
will say is that there will be no deviation from the PWC recommendations. So no discussions, no talks, no
consultation, meaningful or
otherwise. The effect of these cuts on the service workers is of no
consequence to the Tory Council. In a salami type tactic Youth services will be
hit first, followed by street cleansing and so on through all the services.
There is an urgent need for all sections of the city
council’s workforce to join together in action to protect services and jobs. If
this is not done, workers will be isolated in different departments, weakened
through isolation, picked off and a sense of defeat and demoralisation could
set in. This could embolden the Council to carry out the tasks wholesale and not
piecemeal.
Pat Seaman is the
CYWU Unite Deputy Convenor. This is
what she says:
"When the Children
and Family Education Service (CAFES) was
disestablished through budget cuts, it meant thatafter
school clubs for primary age children which were based in local communities
were cut, cuts in summer programmes and others programmes based in schools
around bullying and building self esteem. 40 or 50 mainly women and part-time
workers were affected. A front-line early intervention service was cut, a
service that met the needs of individual families , a service that dealt with
issues such as parenting skills and education, a service that tried to be
preventative, to deal with problems before they became too great and provided
safe places for children to play and learn. The diverted service resource is
now about case work and a curative approach where workers who were formerly on
JNC terms and conditions are now doing case work alongside social workers in multi-disciplinary
teams but on far less money and not having the necessary training."
"So early intervention
projects in areas of the city that suffer from multiple deprivation have been
cut. The need in the communities is great but the city council believes that
the job must be done by schools. Yet this is a social work role that needs to
be done by a qualified social worker. The CAFES has been cut and now the
attacks on the Youth Service are under way."
"The ABC (A Better
Council [sic]) review talks about efficiencies, doing things differently,
experimenting – but in reality it is all about cost cutting. PWC does a review,
makes recommendations and these are implemented by the Council without meaningful
consultation. A pilot review report into youth services indicated that
front-line staff were doing a great job and management and backroom staff should
be looked at, but when the review was published it was front-line staff for the
chop and management were left intact leaving three managers on about £60k per
year who deliver nothing and manage nobody."
"We are now at a
stalemate where cuts are being implemented without any meaningful consultation
having taken place. Poorly paid workers are being hit hard and the Council is
not concerned. Our members are in tears not knowing how to feed their children
on such low money or how to pay the mortgage. In these circumstances workers
will be forced to look elsewhere for jobs and we would lose valuable
experience. Workers who remain have been forced to sign new contracts under
duress or risk losing their jobs."
"Perhaps the worst
aspect of all of this is the loss of a service that carried out invaluable work
with young people, helping them through the difficult transition from youth to
adulthood. It is very short sighted to cull a service, to cull a workforce at a
time when young people are being hit hardest by the crisis with high
unemployment and social tension in inner cities is on the increase."
"In addition, in order
to save money the Council decided to put some of the provision out to private
tender, to private contractors, despite the fact that the Council provision was
meeting needs, but the private sector could not see sufficient profit levels in
tendering, so the exercise was a failure. Yet the basis of the exercise was to
save money and this has still to be done. The whole process in commissioning
bids was very expensive and time consuming."
"What is also galling
is that as part of the ABC review the Council has set up in each area of work
review committees where council workers have been involved in workshops, work
mapping, analyses of job roles and responsibilities, not in order to provide a
leaner and fitter service to the public or make job areas less stressful, but
merely to rationalise provision to cut costs and get rid of jobs. Workers have
therefore been involved in an exercise that could potentially lead to the same
workers losing their jobs and the potential savings have been identified by the
workers themselves. It is like turkeys voting for Christmas as many workers
believe that by taking part in such reviews their jobs will be safe."
"The cuts are being
implemented by an uncaring Tory council. They are not interested in dialogue or
consultation. When the general election comes, the choice will be between
Labour and Tory. We know what Labour has done. We don’t have any illusions. We
are not stupid but we can’t let the Tories in. We know what they represent. “
THE REALITY OF THE
CUTS
The interview with Pat Seaman was an eye opener in that the
reality of cuts, the translation of financial figures into service provision,
social need, job cuts and the effects on individual lives, hits home hard. The
claims of the Labour government, our government, that front line services will
not be hit, are nothing but lies and we know that. Local authority workers know
the reality that they live through daily in their working lives.
They have been and are being subjected to a barrage of
propaganda from the media, at the behest of the rich and powerful, that public
sector provision is over bloated and workers are overpaid with fantastic
guaranteed pensions. Labour in office does nothing to dispel these claims, yet
many working class people know that despite what they have suffered under
Labour, the Tories will be far worst. The ghost of Thatcherism will run riot.
Coventry Council was the first in the country to pilot
single status agreements. It was claimed that such agreements would bring about
a more equitable wage/salary system and people would be rewarded appropriately.
The reality was it was a cost cutting exercise where many low paid workers lost
£1000s in their annual salary. The same system, having been completed in
Coventry, is now being rolled out across the country.
UNITED TRADE UNION
ACTION TO DEFEND PUBLIC SERVICES
We must learn the lessons from that. If the attacks on the
Youth Service are not defeated, every other department will be in turn under
attack. No section of workers will be immune. All council workers should
realise that all jobs are under threat. They should not participate in reviews
that cut their jobs or the jobs of fellow workers. The reality of what is
happening to the youth service should be hammered home as they will face the
same if the council is successful in its plans.
The main unions in the council are Unison, Unite and the
GMB. At a minimum there should be joint meetings at all levels of all the union
members so that any feeling of isolation and therefore vulnerability can be
dispelled. Defence of services and jobs must involve all trade union members in
the first instance and through united action the non-unionised workers can be
drawn into the movement. Trade union
councils at a departmental or service provision level should be set up.
Delegates should be elected to a whole city council level to coordinate the
fight back against the cuts.
The same should happen regionally and nationally where
projections are that local authorities will face cuts of up to 30% in funding
over the next three years. If this is not fought, it will be devastating for
service and jobs. All trade unions in the public sector should be working out a
national strategy and programme to fight the cuts. Such a fight must involve
the muscle of the TUC.
A NATIONAL CAMPAIGN
NEEDED.
The National
Pensioners Convention should be congratulated for organising the march and
rally on April 10th in London against cuts in public services. It was supported
by 21 national trade unions. The rally should be the beginning of a campaign to
fight the cuts, a campaign that must be extended to all corners on the UK.
IT
MUST ALSO BE A CAMPAIGN THAT IS LED AND ORGANISED BY THE TUC UNITING IN ACTION
WORKERS FROM THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTORS OF THE ECONOMY.
Public sector
workers lose their jobs or suffer cuts in wages or hours. Private sector
workers lose services or must pay more for them AND SO DO PUBLIC SECTOR WORKERS
AS CONSUMERS. WE ARE ALL IN THIS BATTLE TOGETHER.
A recent public survey of attitudes to the cuts revealed
that 75% of those polled did not believe the public sector cuts should take
place. The attitudes were attacked by the media, by the capitalists who own and
control the media, as being archaic and ill informed. Workers have seen that
the present crisis was caused by a casino-type credit system presided over by
overpaid and over-bloated bankers. They know that it is a crisis of capitalism
that they are being asked to pay for.
FIGHT THE CUTS. FIGHT
CAPITALISM.
In the fight back against the cuts our first message must be
that we will not pay for a crisis that we did not cause. Secondly, we must
fight to defend jobs and services. Thirdly, we have to explain that for as long
as the present system of capitalism remains with all its crises, there will be
constant attacks on all of the social, political and economic gains of the
past. The era of reforms is over. We are now in a period of counter reforms.
Therefore, the only way to safeguard what we have won through struggle as
working people is to fight to change the nature of society, is to fight for
socialism.
