Comments on: A touch of frost, by Heather Wakefield

By: Richard

Richard — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:10:13 +0000

I am a Social Worker working in Child Protection. The current climate is one of media opprobrium, low morale, and administrative gridlock resulting from government-imposed targets and micro-management. People are leaving in droves, and a pay freeze is likely to make recruitment and retention even harder

By: david hambly

david hambly — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:17:48 +0000

Unison will now have to offer a real lead to workers in the coming onslaught against the public sector. We are facing a situation not seen for 30 years as the class struggle is reignited with a vengence. Public sector workers like the Leeds refuse workers have already, shown the way. I believe we will need to take direct action over pay, pensions and protection of our terms and conditions. otherwise the tories will turn the clock back a century. We must fight for justice and against fat cat bankers who have bled the economy dry. Already Brown plans to sell of public assets at knock down fire sale prices to private equity investors. If we fail then workers face the real prospect of most jobs being around the minimum wage, we must fight back against the jack boot of Nu Labour and New tory in truth one and the same.

By: Jon

Jon — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:04:01 +0000

I work in Local Government, in a Finance department and I understand the difficult situation we are in very well. Local Governemnet is so constrained by the limited scope for increasing Council Tax and the likley reduction in future government funding. I personally would be happy to have a zero percent pay rise this year and believe the rest of the public sector should too. I dont think there is any point going to war over the difference between 0% or 1% because it really does not make that much difference to your monthly takle home. I would rather that jobs were saved and they we get throught these difficult times.

By: Heather Wakefield

Heather Wakefield — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:17:18 +0000

Dear ‘ad’,

That is very bad news indeed and my heart goes out to your colleagues, but I felt I should make clear that redundancies have been occurring for some time in local government too – and are accelerating by the day. Unison’s ‘Jobs Watch’ shows that 12,000 jobs have been lost in local government this year – when you add redundancies and deleted posts together- and many, many more are threatened. That’s on top of a large number of posts held vacant and the widespread use of agency staff, many of whom have disappeared without trace. Local communities need those jobs and services at this time and local economies will be badly affected by the loss of local spending power. For every £1 a council spends on local services, £1.64 pence is generated within the local economy. A ‘private’ versus ‘public’ war is the last thing people need at this time. No, they need every job they can get and our economy needs their spending power and taxes.

By: ad

ad — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:58:55 +0000

My employer made about one seventh of its staff redundant last month.

My heart bleeds for you.