UNISON LG 09: Independent Safeguarding Authority

I am trying to catch up and post on last week’s conference(s). This is on Composite B which was about the new Independent Living Authority (ILA). Another speech that I was bumped off.

"Conference my branch represents some 3000 members who work for over 140 housing and supporting people employers across London and the Southern England.

We have 2 main concerns about the new authority. Firstly it is money. Many of our members are part time workers and many shamefully are on minimum wage even while working and living in London bringing up families. As you would expect privately run care organisations and agencies pay rubbish money.

While our members understand the need to to have effective safeguards for our residents and clients everyone knows that there is low pay in this sector means that my members whose employers or agencies refuse to pay for registration will have to pay nearly two days pay to register.

Secondly, our experiences of how the Criminal Records Bureau or CRB operates in many housing and social care organisations hardly fills us with confidence that members will be treated properly by the new authority. Routinely despite clear guidances that it should not happy many of our members are CRB checked unlawfully since they have no access to vulnerable groups. Workers have also been been treated unfairly and not in accordance with natural justice in previous investigations over registration.

Finally conference please fully support this call for training and support for branches to properly protect members and campaign to make sure that workers do not have to pay this proposed poll tax on those who care for others.

Please support this motion".

“Injury in the name of profit is not acceptable”

Back to “The Smoke” after the Holiday. The boredom of driving long distances over the holiday period to visit friends and families was alleviated by listening to Radio 4’s ‘end of the year’ programmes. They revisited many of their key stories and yesterday, I listened to most of “Face the Facts” with John Waite (photo right). There was the horrific story of caravan park owners who tried to frighten elderly residents into selling their vans to them for peanuts by fire bombing! There is a loop in the law that gives such residents the least amount of legal protection of any tenure.

Another story looked at how seemingly ‘respectable’ companies break the law by demanding employees are CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) checked when they are only legally able to do so with adults who work with children or vulnerable children (and certain specific occupations such as solicitors and accountants). This issue has also arisen in my branch, with some housing associations carrying out CRB blanket checks of all employees, regardless of whether of not they work with children and vulnerable adults. Must add this one to my “do something about it” list for 2009.

This radio programme is also credited with helping to bring about a public enquiry into the Stockline Plastic Factory Explosion which killed 9 workers in 2004. There seems to have been a sad tale of an inadequate safety culture in the factory before the explosion and insufficient Health & Safety Executive (HSE) regulation. The deaths probably could have been avoided with a few hundred pounds worth of preventative maintenance. The company was only fined £400,000 for the 9 deaths. One positive result (if ‘positive’ is the right word to be used in such circumstances) is that currently companies which breach health & safety laws are assessed for fines by the courts on the basis of financial information submitted by that company. Dr Bill Wilson MSP (whose quote is the title of this post) is trying to pass a bill that would ensure that such companies have an independent assessment of their finances.