Have your say on pay at Clarion Housing

 

Hello Clarion UNISON member, Final Clarion Pay offer to all staff negotiated by UNISON   Following meetings with local reps and UNISON national officers (including information from the bargaining support unit), UNISON put in a claim for £2500 for staff. Clarion counter offered a flat rate 2% pay offer. There was a series of meeting between Clarion UNISON representatives, national officers and HR to discuss the claim.  UNISON reps also had briefings from HR and Clarion Financial officers.   At the final stage of the negotiation process there was a final offer of 3.8% which was accepted by your Clarion UNISON representatives, who agreed to recommend the offer to members as the best offer that could be achieved by negotiation.   Staff on the new London Living Wage will be increased to £14.80 (6.9%) and the National Living Wage increased to £13.45 (6.7%).    The decision to accept or reject the offer will be yours, however, members must be prepared to take some form of industrial action if they reject this offer.   Please vote ACCEPT or REJECT below (link in email sent to members) John Gray Clarion UNISON Convenor

Local Government PAY 2009 – FINAL OFFER

The Employers’ Side met yesterday and agreed to increase their offer to a final offer in settlement of our 2009 pay claim as follows:

· Pay

From 1 April 2009 an increase of 1.25% on SCPs 4 to 10 inclusive

From 1 April 2009 an increase of 1.00% on SCPs 11 to 49 inclusive

· Annual Leave

From 1 April 2009, an increase from 20 to 21 days in minimum annual leave for employees with less than five years’ service.

By 1 December 2009, the NJC will produce joint guidance on best practice in handling redundancies.

So the latest offer has gone up from 0.5% to 1.25% for low paid and 1% for the rest. This would be back dated to April this year. Also an extra days days leave for workers with less service and an agreed union/employer guide on good practice over redundancies.

The joint unions will meet on Monday 27 July to consider a response.

In a press release UNISON Head of Local Government Heather Wakefield says:-

"We are pleased that the local government employers have come forward with an improved pay offer. While we believe that our members are worth more, we are pleased that the employers have realised that 0.5% was an insult. It is also vital that we have an agreement in place to protect jobs in the sector. This will help keep services running through the recession - when families and communities need them most. "UNISON's national committee and the NJC trade union side will meet next week to start the consultation on the offer."

*Scale points 4-10 earn between £11,961 - £13,336 (scale points 0-3 no longer exist)

**Scale points 11-49 earn between £14,197 - £41,083

I think it is fair to say "well done" to the Joint Union negotiators for helping to bring a positive offer to the table in these difficult times and also getting a fairly significant increase on the previous offer. I can imagine the Daily Hate headlines tomorrow morning. But maybe we can get more?

My employer is so far still holding out on a 0% increase for non-NJC Staff (i.e staff not on local government rates – usually directly employed staff who do not have TUPE protection). With us there is any appeal process in hand and this offer should help us argue against the 0% non-offer. I am just back tonight from a Housing Association Branch Executive meeting where I heard that one employer proposed a 5% cut in wages. This was beaten back and in fact many employers have increased wages for this year by more than 1%.

I think that those in local government UNISON leadership roles should wait until they can properly consult their ordinary members on this final NJC offer. Before passing instant judgement and slobbering over the thought of leading their members (who they obviously consider too thick to think for themselves) into the valhalla of glorious strike action.

There is life after Glasgow East

Okay, okay waking up this morning to news of the defeat in Glasgow wasn’t exactly a great start to the day but it’s happened.

It was not exactly unexpected and such is life – this is after all what happens in politics. The Nats won by 365 votes out of 25,259 votes cast on a 42.25 turnout.

I’m not going disguise the fact that this is a defeat but it is not unimaginable that Labour could have sneaked in by a similar margin. Then the headlines would have still been bad but the mood music would have been very different.

I don’t think anything in politics is predictable and I do not think defeat for Labour at the next general election is at all inevitable. I am not sure that a change of leader will make any difference, change of policies - yes. There may not have been a local government strike in Scotland in the run up to this election but UNISON are balloting Scottish council staff members over their below inflation (pay cut) offer of 2.5%. I am sure that there were at least 365 council workers in Glasgow East who had received a strike ballot paper in the last week or so.

By coincidence last night in West Ham we had probably our most constructive Labour Party campaign committee meeting I have ever chaired. Despite our difficulties and differences there is still lots of enthusiasm for the Party.

After all it is only just after a year since the stunning Labour victory in Ealing and Southall (19 July 2007). Mind you I won’t go down “a year is a long time in .....