Can you help raise funds for our welfare charity
Fancy doing, some good while taking a walking break in the Pyrenees? Then now is your chance to do something epic and get your name down for the UNISON There for you charity challenge.
The walk will take place in France from 22 to 26 September and will raise money for UNISON’s very own welfare charity.
It needs a minimum of 20 people taking part, and the closing date for applications is just over a week away on 31 January.
Last year’s Four Nations Challenge raised £23,000 for the union’s welfare charity.
“I guarantee that money raised really does make a difference to so many members lives,” s...
Source: UNISON Health and safety news - January 22, 2016 Category: Occupational Health Authors: tonyb Tags: Article News charity Pyrenees there for you welfare Source Type: news
Action for Children unions ballot for industrial action in pay dispute
High-handed action by bosses over pay at the charity Action for Children has prompted Unite and UNISON to ballot their members for industrial action.
The unions said that management intends to impose a one per cent pay award for 2015/16, with no cost of living rise for 40 per cent of the 5,000 strong workforce. They also intend to remove contractual pay increments for new starters, refuse to pay the UK living wage of £8.25 (£9.40 in London) and cut mileage rates.
Both unions’ ballots for industrial action short of a strike and/or strike action open on Tuesday 26 January and close on Tuesday 16 February.
The charity...
Source: UNISON Health and safety news - January 22, 2016 Category: Occupational Health Authors: Charlotte Jeffs Tags: Press release charity Source Type: news
UNISON says A & E minimum staffing levels vital for patient care
Commenting on the leaked NICE report on staffing levels in accident and emergency departments, UNISON General Secretary Dave Prentis said:
“This comes as no surprise. UNISON has long argued the benefits for minimum staffing levels, including those in casualty departments.
“The fact that someone had to leak the information brings government transparency on these issues into question.
“We believe NICE should be able to complete and publish its guidance and the NHS should have been afforded the time and resources to implement any changes before being assessed by the Care Quality Commission.
“It is vital that there are...
Source: UNISON Health and safety news - January 20, 2016 Category: Occupational Health Authors: Charlotte Jeffs Tags: Press release accident and emergency NHS Source Type: news
Save our services – where our campaign’s going in 2016
After five years of relentless austerity, local authorities across the UK have been put in an impossible position, forced to make unfair cuts to libraries, buses, social care, leisure centres – the list goes on.
The funding that councils get from Westminster – either directly or through a devolved government – to spend on local services continues to fall. At the same time, rising demand for support from vulnerable groups like older people, the homeless and children puts even more pressure on council finances.
And this is hard for local government workers to deal with. My job as an officer for council staff in UNIS...
Source: UNISON Health and safety news - January 18, 2016 Category: Occupational Health Authors: NtimN Tags: Article News UNISON voices local government Save Our Local Services save our services Source Type: news
UNISON warns on academies push in new legislation
The government’s push to force more English schools to become academies would mean more and more resources devoted to administration, legal advice and contractual issues rather than education, UNISON warned today.
Speaking after the publication of a new Institute for Public Policy Research report, UNISON national secretary Jon Richards said it highlights a “growing divergence in the legal position between maintained and academy schools”.
The IPPR report comes as the UK Parliament considers the government’s Education and Adoption Bill, which includes new provisions for converting English schools to a...
Source: UNISON Health and safety news - January 18, 2016 Category: Occupational Health Authors: tonyb Tags: Article News academies education services England IPPR schools Source Type: news
‘UNISON means? Confidence, learning and not getting a pay cut’
“I first got involved with UNISON six years ago when they cut our pay from £9 per hour to £6.
“I work with elderly people who have substance abuse problems, dementia, and mental health problems.
“A lot of the residents we’re getting now are highly dependent. Before, we were encouraging people to go out to school, maybe getting them in to classes so that they felt independent, but now the atmosphere is lower.
“Sometimes my shifts are spent with service users: doing personal care, providing lunch, doing their shopping, or sometimes I’m in the office booking appointments with GPs or taking people to hospital, an...
Source: UNISON Health and safety news - January 18, 2016 Category: Occupational Health Authors: Mitsy Harmon-Russell Tags: Article UNISON voices careworker community and voluntary heart unions living wage save care now success zero hours zero-hours contracts Source Type: news
Yoga, stand-up comedy, silent bears and screaming…
The sound of children, exhorted to raise their voices as loudly as possible in a chorus of “row, row, row your boat”, is perhaps not what you’d expect in a library.
But instead of being shushed into silence by scowling adults, the morning’s smallest visitors to the Blackheath library in Sandwell are urged to “scream!” And they give it their very best.
Blackheath is one of three libraries in Sandwell: a cheery, new building that seems at odds on a traditional high street, but you don’t have to be there long to realise that it has already sealed its place as a hub of the local community.
On a grey winter’...
Source: UNISON Health and safety news - January 18, 2016 Category: Occupational Health Authors: HarrisonDi Tags: Article Magazine librarian libraries library local government love your libraries West Midlands Source Type: news
Where we’re at with the Trade Union Bill campaign
Thanks to everyone who has put their time into the campaign against the Trade Union Bill so far. The Bill has now gone through the House of Commons, but the good news is that we won some important concessions and we have the chance to win more in the House of Lords. Proposals on publishing social media and campaign plans two weeks before a strike were withdrawn as were plans to criminalise minor breaches of a picket line code of practice.
Everything we’ve gained so far has been because of UNISON members. Because members wrote to their MPs, visited them or attended the mass lobby, several Conservative MPs spoke out agains...
Source: UNISON Health and safety news - December 2, 2015 Category: Occupational Health Authors: Dave Prentis Tags: Article General secretary's blog Source Type: news
Axing student bursaries will deter many from careers in nursing
Hundreds of student nurses are expected at a UNISON-supported protest outside the Department of Health later today (Wednesday) against government plans to axe the NHS bursary for nursing degrees.
In last week’s spending review, the Chancellor announced that next September would be the last time anyone in England could apply for the bursary.
Organised by student nurses, the two-hour protest starts at 2pm outside Richmond House on Whitehall. They are campaigning to save the bursary that helps around 15,000 students a year become nurses.
During the afternoon, the trainee nurses aim to hand in a letter to Jeremy Hunt urging ...
Source: UNISON Health and safety news - December 2, 2015 Category: Occupational Health Authors: Charlotte Jeffs Tags: News Press release dave prentis NHS student nurses Source Type: news
Today is a crucial day in the calendar – today is equal pay day
Today is a crucial day in the calendar. It’s not one that’s marked with a bank holiday nor one which you’re likely to see splashed across the front pages of the papers, but it’s a day that reminds us how far we still have to go.
Today is Equal Pay Day – the point at which the average woman with a full-time job effectively starts working for free, whilst their male counterparts carry on earning through to the end of the year. That’s because the overall ‘pay gap’ between average male and female salaries currently stands at 14.2 per cent.
Clearly such an enormous disparity means we have a lot more wo...
Source: UNISON Health and safety news - November 9, 2015 Category: Occupational Health Authors: Dave Prentis Tags: General secretary's blog News equal pay equal pay claims equal pay day equalities Source Type: news
Government must find the cash to allow the elderly to be cared for with dignity, says UNISON
Commenting on the warning today (Monday), from the Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, that dignified care social care for the elderly will be at risk unless the government makes more money available, UNISON General Secretary Dave Prentis said:
“Government spending cuts have put local authority budgets under intolerable pressure, which in turn has meant that many councils are expecting home care companies to provide care to the vulnerable and the elderly on a shoestring.
“Because money is tight, councils tend to let their care contracts to the firm who ...
Source: UNISON Health and safety news - October 12, 2015 Category: Occupational Health Authors: Charlotte Jeffs Tags: News Press release local government social care Source Type: news
