Corporate Services & Chief Executives News
updated 14th October
UNISON, the largest County Council Trade Union, has expressed its outrage at the latest proposed Council cuts.
These will affect every area of the Council, with massive reductions in services and thousands of redundancies.
We all need to protest against these cuts -
Come and join the mass lobby of County Hall on Thursday 21st October - see Home page for coach detials
As all UNISON members are aware by now, the attacks being made on our services is gaining in momentum at Notts County Council and it doesn’t look as if it is going to get any better in the future.
Current departments at risk include Facilities Dept, Design Publication and Print and County Supplies. These three departments have all had Tribal reports done by external consultants (at tremendous cost) and their recommendation for County Supplies is to proceed with a no change option – will the leader of Notts County Council adhere to this recommendation or will this profitable service also be privatised?
In Corporate Services, Property Division we currently have 242.5 fte posts which will reduce to 113.5 posts which management hope will be achieved by staff taking voluntary redundancy.
UNISON suggests they get independent financial advice before volunteering for redundancy as this may affect any benefits you are currently in receipt of or need to claim after being made redundant.
UNISON position relating to redundancies
The Building Schools for the Future posts are also at risk due to reduced workloads, the withdrawal of Government funding and the financial pressures facing the Council!! 253 combined posts in Property Services and Building Schools for the Future have all been issued with a Section 188 Notice.
The publication of the Section 188 Notice marks the start of the consultation period with employees and the recognised trade unions to look at ways to reduce the number of redundancies through redeployment, the vacancy protocol or voluntary redundancy.
The 90-day consultation period will end on 18th October 2010.
Where staff are at risk of Redundancy they also need to be aware that if they cannot be redeployed into another post they will be made Compulsory Redundant which is in accordance with Notts CC policy. The costs of redundancy will be the same whether you take compulsory or voluntary there is no extra monies involved.
Improvement Director post
You will know by now there is an outcry over the salary being paid for the Improvement Director post which also includes a market factor supplement.
This is a direct slap in the face to all staff who are facing job losses and it stinks of a two-tier system, one rule for the staff and different rules for Senior Officers of Notts County Council. Why should senior officers receive a market factor supplement on top of a very decent salary when ordinary members of staff have had to put up with the following conditions:-
- no pay rise this year even though the Tory government stated all staff who are on less than £21k a year will receive a £250 lump sum payment
- year on year efficiency savings prior to these reductions of public services
- lost our additional annual leave for staff who have done 5 and 10 years service
- reduction of the Redundancy payments policy.
- more public services will possibly be TUPE’d over to the private sector.
These are just a few examples of how staff have been treated since the Tories came into power at NCC and it clearly shows that the Tories do not care about public services otherwise they would be trying to save services not sell them to private providers who will look at making profit before anything else so public services will be severely diminished in the future.
Remember we need to fight the cuts to public services and every UNISON member must be prepared for a long hard battle if we are to retain public services in the future.
Maggie Pilmore
UNISON Convenor for Corp Services/CEX’s