Labour Party Conference 2010: London Underground Strikes

I think that this is the time to remember the TSSA railway union General Secretary, Gerry Doherty's dignified speech to conference last Monday afternoon in support of Composite 7. 

Last night and today there was strike action by TSSA and the RMT in London over job cuts. 

Gerry pointed out that his "union has taken strike action for the first time since the General Strike of 1926. TSSA is a traditionally moderate trade union which is being forced to take strike action due to the Bullingdon Champagne Mayor (Boris Johnson) trying to cut 800 jobs without regard to health and safety on the underground.  The Lib Dems claims that they want to take the unions with them, but their Lord Snooty pals are dismantling the welfare state! They need to stop attacking the very people who they asked to vote for them. 

Warning we will take you on - even the non militant unions.  This is not meant as a threat or a promise.  We have no choice when they come for us - we will have to be in this together.  This movement has to come together and say we will not let them take us on one by one. 

On Monday the action will be another reason to vote for Ken". 

Tory housing claptrap and myth: young women become pregnant to get a Council flat

Yesterday morning I had the misfortune to listen to Andrew Pierce from talk radio show "LBC" pretending to be a journalist and  “interviewing” Tory Housing Minister Grant Shapps at their conference. Andrew had previously expressed his expert view that since he was brought up on a Council estate in Swindon he knew “for a fact” that girls would get deliberately pregnant to get a count flat.  How he actually knew this “fact” he kept to himself. 

He then spoke to Shapp and his first question was the Sun pub bore favourite about all these scroungers getting large amounts of housing benefit to live in London.  I thought for a moment he was going to ask about the 82,000 Londoners facing eviction from the recently announced cuts.  That moment obviously passed quickly.  Then a question on the usual prurient middle class hobby horse about young girls getting pregnant solely to get a Council flat and what-is-Shapp-going-to-do-about-it. 

My father died a Council tenant and my mother is still a housing association tenant.  Members of my family live and have lived in public housing up and down the country,  I have worked as a housing worker in Council and Housing Association estate offices for 18 years and I have never, ever known of anyone getting pregnant to get a council flat. 

Admittedly we do not ask as housing officer applicants this question (don’t give Sharpe ideas) but I have never seen or heard any evidence whatsoever.  It is an urban myth.  There will of course be an exception to the rule but the vast overwhelming majority of teenagers (repeat young vulnerable women) get pregnant for exactly the same reason that middle class kids get pregnant.   Inadequate and/or non existent sex education, drink, drugs, trying to keep a partner and sometime wanting a have a baby to love. Add to this mix poverty, inadequate health services and poor schooling and you do get high rates of teenage pregnancy on housing estates. 

But young women growing up on an estate are the first to know that getting a council flat does not mean (unfortunately) you have won first prize in life.  To think that someone would deliberately get themselves pregnant solely to bring up said child up by themselves in a bedsit on the 20^th floor of a tower block is just frankly deluded.

Labour Party Conference 2010: Mary Honeyball MEP London delegates meal

On the Sunday evening London MEP (and blogger) Mary Honeyball hosted a meal for regional Labour Party delegates and guests.

It was a really pleasant evening (I rushed from the LHG fringe to attend) and there was also lots of interesting discussion and information about conference and other things (including just a little bit of gossip). 

Good food and good conversation.  We also did some planning for the "Bloggers 4 Labour Fringe" on Monday (post to follow).

GMB mythbuster on the Local Government Pension Scheme

MYTHS EXPOSED Inaccurate information and misleading statements about the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) are rife in the media. This guide highlights the most prevalent and erroneous of these myths and sets out the realities of the LGPS. MYTH: Workers in the private sector have to pay for the LGPS while local government workers reap the benefits REALITY: Everyone pays for everyone else’s pension. Companies with occupational pension provision for their employees include pension costs when pricing their goods and services. All taxpayers pay for the cost of inadequate pension saving (increasingly prevalent in the private sector) through the tax and national insurance spent on increased take up of state benefits and demand on NHS and council care services. MYTH: 25% of council tax is spent on the LGPS REALITY: This misrepresentation deliberately ignores the fact that 75% of local authority income comes from sources other than council tax. The true figure as reflected by the Society of County Treasurers is around 5% (£65 a year for the average council taxpayer). MYTH: LGPS costs are soaring and the scheme is unsustainable REALITY: The cost of the LGPS to employers for service from April 2008 (2009 in Scotland and Northern Ireland) was reduced during the reforms to the scheme that included changed benefits and higher average member contributions. Member contributions on average increased by 0.5% and have continued to rise since, now approaching 0.7% above the old scheme’s member contribution rates. The introduction of cost sharing in the new scheme is designed to manage future funding volatility. Costs associated with service before the new scheme was introduced should have been funded by employers in the past. These costs cannot be reduced by changing the scheme for current or future members. MYTH: The employer contribution rate in the LGPS is too high REALITY: There is not one employer contribution rate in the LGPS. There are over 7,000 participating employers in the scheme and each has their contribution set by the private sector actuary employed by the relevant one of the 100 funds in Great Britain. Current employer contribution rates range from 14% to 25% with an average of 18%. Given the level of past underfunding that remains to be contributed by many employers to the scheme this is a reasonable level. At the 2010 valuation the level may change because the future service cost has dropped as a result of the 2008 reforms but the legacy of past underfunding by employers remains in many, although not all, funds. MYTH: Local government pensions are paid directly by the taxpayer REALITY: The LGPS, like all private sector defined benefit schemes, is a funded scheme with real investments in UK and overseas business and tangible assets such as property all generating returns to the 101 funds that make up the Local Government Pension Scheme in the UK. The taxpayer funds a proportion of the employer contribution to the funds through local and national taxation. MYTH: The LGPS is only nominally funded REALITY: The LGPS has more than £100bn in real assets: property, investments in UK and overseas businesses, cash and government bonds. Four out of the largest 20 pension funds in the UK measured by asset level are Local Government Pension Funds [Hewitt 2010]. Total income to the scheme exceeds expenditure by £4-5bn every year [CLG 2009], even in the current climate of poor economic performance. Even in the depths of the recession LGPS investments provided nearly £3 billion for the LGPS in England alone, accounting for 27% of that scheme's income. Another factor contributing to the ongoing viability of the scheme to this is the increase in member contributions. Yield from employees increased by 15% in the last year as a result of the new contribution rates in the 2008 Scheme [CLG 2009]. MYTH: Scheme members retire on gold-plated pensions, protected for life REALITY: Around half of LGPS pensions in payment are below £3,000 a year [Audit Commission 2010]. The mean average pension is £4,033 with the average for women only £2,600 [CLG 2009]. As with any pension scheme member’s accrued rights, it was generally held that pensions already paid for were protected for life, however, the unilateral cut in the indexation of pensions from RPI to CPI has brought this into question for both public and private sector pensions. As a result of the Tory-Lib Dem budget LGPS members are likely to lose a quarter of the value of their pensions over the next 25 years pushing many more on to means tested benefits. MYTH: High earners in the LGPS receive unreasonably high pensions REALITY: In local government highly paid employees are in the same pension scheme as the workers near the minimum wage. In the private sector many company directors and senior managers set up their own exclusive defined benefit schemes on extremely generous terms while their employees have only a low value defined contribution scheme. The average accrued pension for a director in the private sector is £227,726pa, 56 times higher than the average LGPS pension [TUC PensionsWatch 2010]. Some members of the LGPS retire on very high pensions as a result of receiving very high salaries (236 local government employees earn more than £142,500pa), not as a result of an over-generous pension scheme. MYTH: Local government workers have a job for life and better pay than everyone else REALITY: The average length of membership in the pension scheme is only six years in stark contrast to the vision of a job for life. Existing jobs are often part time and low paid with minimal opportunity for overtime and other mechanisms common in the private sector to boost income. When comparing full time workers who are saving for retirement through an occupational pension scheme, public sector workers actually earn £22 per week less than their private sector comparators. The 'total reward figure', which is gross pay and employers' pension contributions, in the private sector is £666 and in the public sector is £644 per week [ONS 2010]. Local government pay is also low in the public sector context with two thirds of local government workers earning less than £21,000 a year. MYTH: To make pensions fair public sector provision must be reduced to the level common in the private sector REALITY: This would increase the number of older people forced to live in poverty which in turn will increase the cost to the taxpayer of state benefits, health and care services. It is never the right solution to inequality to stoop to the level of the lowest common denominator. In education the solution to problem of good schools and bad schools is not to worsen the good schools so all children are poorly educated. In pensions the solution is not to worsen the good schemes but to raise the standard of the inadequate schemes. In fact defined benefit pension provision in the private sector attracts a future service employer contribution of 15.6% [DWP Pension Trends] compared with less than 14% in the LGPS. MYTH: LGPS benefits need to be cut or member contributions increased because of deficits in the funds REALITY: The LGPS is estimated to be at least 75% funded with sufficient assets to pay all pensions due for the next 20 years without any further contributions [Audit Commission 2010]. Where deficits exist they relate to past service and underfunding by employers. One reason for current deficits is that LGPS funds were between 1990 and 1993 encouraged by the then Conservative government to fund only to 75% so the pension scheme could fund lower poll tax bills. Now deficits are measured against a 100% funding requirement, the cost of this historic underfunding is clear. Changes to benefits would only affect the future service cost which, as set out above, is already below the private sector average for defined benefit provision. MYTH: The current economic situation means member contributions to the LGPS need to be increased REALITY: Benefits already earned by members have to be paid, whatever changes are made to the scheme. There are no short term cost savings to be made from making radical benefit cuts. Increases to member contribution rates would not aid the Treasury’s finances unless the government introduced a specific tax on LGPS members (which would be contrary to their stated commitment to encourage pension saving). Instead any increase would be transferred into LGPS funds which have already been valued, without going through a valuation revision an increase in member contributions is unlikely to have any impact on employer contributions for at least three years. Members are currently subject to a three year pay freeze, without the protection for the lowest earners that exists in other parts of the public sector. Some members of the LGPS earn only 37p an hour above the minimum wage and many lower earning potential LGPS members opt out of the scheme on grounds of affordability. This trend is particularly common among part time workers (the vast majority of whom are women), in Greater Manchester, one of the larger funds, only 10% of full time staff opt out of the LGPS compared with 30% of part time staff. MYTH: LGPS members retire at 60 and get a pension for nothing REALITY: The normal retirement age in the LGPS is 65 and has been for many years. Members of the scheme contribute between 5.5% and 7.5% of earnings depending on salary, averaging over 6.4% overall. This is more than double the amount the average member of a defined contribution scheme contributes. MYTH: The new LGPS only affects new starters while existing members have their own preferential scheme REALITY: Reforms to the LGPS affected all contributing scheme members, existing and new. The LGPS is not a two tier scheme, the LGPS 2008 is the scheme for any one of the two million people working in LGPS covered employment whether they started ten years ago, ten minutes ago or are due to start tomorrow. Existing members sacrificed benefits and increased their contributions in order to keep the scheme sustainable. The LGPS is the largest pension scheme in the country with more than 1.7m contributing members, 1m deferred members and a further 1m pensioner members.

Picture of former Labour West Ham Councillor, Mayor, MP and founder of the GMB, Will Thorne on a fact finding mission to Revolutionary Russia in 1917.  Hat tip Tom and original link to GMB site here.

Helal Abbas - Labour Mayor for Tower Hamlets Campaign Launch

Picture is from the launch yesterday by Tower Hamlets Council Leader, Helal Abbas, of his campaign to become Labour Mayor. (picture by Dan McCurry)

I wasn't there but from Facebook reports I understand there was lots of Party members and 28 Tower Hamlets Councillors present.  There was also at least 2 Newham Councillors.

The Labour Party has expelled 11 members including 8 Councillors for supporting the "Independent" candidate and quite rightly anyone else who campaigns against the Party will also face expulsion.

There was 5 campaign sessions in Tower Hamlets this weekend. The campaign office is at 349 Cambridge Heath Road, London, E2 9RA and will be open for canvassing and leafleting from 10am-6.30pm every day until the election.

Or you can ring 0207 729 6682 or email abbas4mayor@gmail.com for further details.

I'll be seeing what Tower Hamlets trade union affiliates can do to help.

Labour Conference 2010: Labour Housing Group Fringe

On the Sunday evening there was a packed fringe meeting of the Labour Housing Group (LHG).  Which is a national organisation directly affiliated to the Labour Party.  It is "dedicated to developing and promoting effective housing policy". The meeting was chaired by Marianne Hood OBE.

First speaker was Unite National Housing officer, Rachel Maskell.  "We have a massive housing crisis.  4.5 million people on the rehousing waiting list, 1.8 million families. She praised the last Labour Government for doing good stuff on Education and health but the next Labour government must prioritise "Housing and jobs".  There needs to be a change in political will.  A 100,000 new homes would cost £6 billion but would result in 750,000 jobs construction jobs.  Labour knows that homes are not just about "brick and mortar" its about people.  Most jobs in housing especially in social care are carried out by low paid women. Cuts in the housing sector are an attack on women.  Cuts in the legal aid budget not only means cuts in benefits for the already poor but cuts in the ability to challenge unfairness and wrong decisions.  Labour believes in campaigning for work and homes for all people.  The Tories version of this is the Work House".

Next was new (small caps) Labour MP and former Unite Assistant GS Jack Dromey.  "Labour has a proud record of achievement in housing but there is still a £19 billion backlog in decent homes.  Labour  took decisive action to stop reprocessions.  There is much to be proud of the Labour record and we must never allow the Tories to rubbish our record.  But we must return to a time such when even Tory PM Harold Macmillan use to boast that the Tories would build 200,000 new homes per year.  We need to build 300,000 new homes per year. The cuts in housing benefit will result in the cleansing of the poor and vulnerable.   There are still 400,000 homes that are needed to be brought up to decent homes standard.  If this was done did would create 54,000 jobs in construction.  We need to create a great national movement to make housing a key political issue.

Vice Chair of the LHG Jacky Peacock OBE spoke next about her work as a Housing advice worker and how she often has to warn private tenants that they are perfectly entitled to report their landlord for not  repairing serious health and safety hazards.  However if they do - they run the risk that they will be evicted since if Landlords follow the legal rules there is nothing that can be done to stop them. There is no defence.  She believes that this government now wants to strip public sector tenants of their rights as well. Thatcher in her wildest dreams never thought she could get away with this.  She predicted that the reductions in housing benefit will result in the abolition of the statutory right to rehousing by the vulnerable homeless since Council's will simply not be able to cope with the numbers.  The wheel is being reinvented and she remembers how shocked she was to see people sleeping on the streets 30 odd years ago when "Boarding House" allowances were abolished. 

Former Housing minister Nick Raynsford spoke how the previous Labour government had been able to avoid the consequences of the worse recession since the war by fast and brave actions.  This recovery has now been stopped.  Tory Ministers, Pickles and Sharp, compete on who can be the most horrible to housing.  Remember the Tory lies before the election when they accused Labour of scare mongering about threats to tenants rights.  Some £60 billion had been invested by RSL's in housing during the last 25 years. This housing "bonus" is under threat by cuts. 

London GLA member Nicky Gavlon Nicky spoke about how the Tories and their Lib Dems allies have only 2 housing policies - a obsession with cutting and hostility to public sector organisations and the public service ethos.  She did bring up the idea of a London branch of the LHG which I fully endorsed in the Q&A as a means to counter the right placing their tanks on our lawn and winning the battle of ideas.  Nicki mentioned that we hope to be able to launch this in London at the Labour Regional biannual meeting in November.  Watch this space. 

I had to miss the end of the meeting to rush off to the Mary Honeyball MEP meeting - which was a shame but this is conference.

NHS White Paper - Model response deadline 5th OCTOBER URGENT‏

"Our NHS, our future. Get your response into the Government's white paper. Tell them he drive to hand over large parts of the NHS to the private sector is driven by ideology, not by evidence. See below for a draft response....."


White Paper Team,
Room 601,
Department of Health,
79 Whitehall,
London
SW1A 2NS

nhswhitepaper@dh.gsi.gov.uk

Deadline 5th October 2010

RESPONSE TO NHS WHITE PAPER

This organisation (Print)……………................................................................ maintains that the proposed White Paper would have a seriously detrimental impact upon the services, values and founding principles of our National Health Service.

These proposals have little support from NHS staff or patients, and lack an electoral mandate: not one of them was put to voters in May.

The drive to hand over large parts of the NHS to the private sector is driven by ideology, not by evidence. Bitter experience shows privatisation (such as hospital cleaning, and computerisation) costs more or undermines quality.

The scrapping of 150 Primary Care Trusts and replacing them with GP commissioning bodies would (a) be more expensive (b) fragment services (c) open up a new “postcode lottery” of inequalities, (d) fail to safeguard  vulnerable patients (e) bring more privatisation and (f ) lead to GPs rationing care.

The abolition of PCTs and SHAs would result in all future decisions being taken without the scrutiny or influence of local councillors or the public. The public has a right to influence the NHS and not just to become a consumer.

Foundation Trusts would be encouraged to focus more of their resources on attracting wealthy private patients from home and abroad, with services for NHS patients squeezed by £20 billion in cuts.

Please ensure our organisation’s response to the NHS White Paper is registered.

OUR NHS - OUR FUTURE (hat-tip UNISONactive)

50th Anniversary of Nigerian Independence

I know that ignorant murderous bigots have tried to disrupt the 50^th Nigerian independence celebrations, but today at work I wished all my Nigerian friends and colleagues well on this special day. 

This of course immediately turned into a spirited discussion between interested parties about  the pros and cons of modern day life in Nigeria! 

But I think  everyone is really proud of what Nigeria has achieved against all the odds and also its limitless future potential. 

Happy Birthday Nigeria!

UNISON NEC By-elections 2010

I hope folk don’t mind, if I use this post to recommend to eligible UNISON members who have recently received ballot papers to consider voting for the candidates listed below. 

I completely and utterly deny the simply outrageous suggestion  that I am simply recommending the opposite of whoever the forces of the evil one, Red Mouse Kim, are supporting.

So now that this is clear - please encourage members to vote for (and pass on to your networks) the forces of light and reason. 

Mind you I do wish that UNISON candidates who are members of tiny and bizarre micro Trotsky sects would admit to their membership in their union election addresses. But there you go - I suppose you can guess why. 

If you have received a ballot paper please consider voting for:-

Local Government: Vote Paul Gilroy

Young Members: Vote Graham Smith

Northern Region: Vote  Ian Fleming

Higher Education: Vote Wendy Craig

Police & Justice: Vote Annette Mansell Green

Labour Party Conference 2010: A London Housing Workers' tale

This is a guest post from the "front line" of public housing in London by a good comrade, Alan Griffiths (in photo voting with left arm up). He was a London UNISON delegate at conference. He is also a fellow Newham Councillor (and he even has a splendid Welsh name)

Despite lots of frantic waving of papers he was not selected to give this speech on Tuesday's Crime debate. Which I think was a shame.

"Conference: Since the ConDem government began, Police Community Support Officers, created by the Labour government, have been sent Redundancy Notices.

The proposed closures of County Courts and of Magistrates Courts will mean even more delays in getting cases heard.

I’m here this morning to give you a housing officer’s experience of crime and disorder issues, with some examples.

I gave evidence, at half a day’s notice, in a fraud trial at a Crown Court. I had to be careful not to let the Jury know that the defendants had previous convictions and that I had already repossessed a flat. That case is highlighted amongst the achievements of the Council’s Fraud Team. Those defendants had false identities, several addresses and lived in a half-million pound house.

Partnership working reduces Crime and Disorder.

I have submitted a statement and given evidence to a Magistrates’ Court, supporting a Police application for a Premises Closure Order.

Partnership working reduces Crime and Disorder.

I once had a tenant approach me, very concerned that a man she really didn’t want to know was to be released from prison on Licence. I phoned his Probation Officer and asked for an extra condition on his Licence.

Partnership working reduces Crime and Disorder.

Not so long ago, Police raided a flat and arrested two young men, one a close relative of the tenant. Later the Police opened the metal tool box that had been thrown out of a window shortly before they arrived and found two guns. The Crown Prosecution Service thought there wasn’t enough evidence for a criminal prosecution. It would not be appropriate for me to tell you what the Police officers involved thought of that! The landlord went to the County Court and the Postponed Possession Order has conditions including that the arrested relative does not live at the flat, does not have a key to the flat and does not have a key to the block.

Partnership working reduces Crime and Disorder.

Conference, three of the four cases I have just mentioned were in the same block of flats in less than two years.

Partnership working reduces is Crime and Disorder.

The key partnership for reducing Crime and Disorder is between Councils and Police. Tory MPs voted again that, just like earlier Tory MPs voted against the National Health Service.

I introduced Acceptable Behaviour Contracts or Agreements at my work and there was a time when I had done more of them than all my colleagues put together.

Some foolish people would like you to believe that those informal methods are an alternative to Anti-Social Behaviour Orders in every case. Every Acceptable Behaviour Contract or Agreement that carried my employer’s logo included a clear threat of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order if the perpetrator’s behaviour did not improve. Without ASBOs the next step would have to be prosecution.

The Tory Home Secretary has allowed it to be put about that she is thinking of repealing Anti-Social Behaviour Orders. I had a John P McEnroe moment “You cannot be serious”. Next week she has a chance to show that she is serious and say it isn’t so.

If she does not, we’ll all be entitled to have a Billy Connolly moment “Hangings too good for the likes of Youse. It’s a good kick up the arse ye need”.