Heather Wakefield
Heather Wakefield is Head of the Local Government Service Group of the UK's largest public service trade union Unison, representing over 700,000 of the union's 1.4 million members. She was previously a researcher and London regional official for Unison, Women's Rights Officer for NCCL (Liberty) and is a regular commentator on local government and women's issues.
VIDEO BLOG: Mutual appreciation? By Heather Wakefield
18 August 2010 | Heather Wakefield
From Toy Story to Tory story, by Heather Wakefield
An afternoon South of the Border in Latin America with Oliver Stone on Wednesday and a 3-D trip to Toy Story 3 last night have stuck in my fuzzy ‘downtime’ brain, despite my best efforts to crank up a gear and blog for Public Finance. Read more...
6 August 2010 | Heather Wakefield
Council workers still frozen out, by Heather Wakefield
In his Big Budget this week, the Chancellor announced a two-year pay freeze for public sector workers from 2011-2012. However, with uncharacteristic magnanimity, he also said that those earning £21,000 or less would receive an increase of at least £250 a year – about enough to buy five rolls of Osborne and Little’s cheapest wallpaper or perhaps pay one quarterly fuel bill – and an increase of £3,000 in the £18,000 threshold they were talking about before the election. Read more...
24 June 2010 | Heather Wakefield
PF took my comments out of context, by Heather Wakefield
Your web story, ‘Union members might accept job losses in return for more say’, reports less than 10% of my speech to the CIPFA conference – and so takes the little mentioned entirely out of context. It creates the impression that Unison is prepared to negotiate away our members’ jobs in return for vague promises about in-house service delivery and genuine engagement. We most certainly are not. As you reported, I made my view very clear – that every redundancy is a personal tragedy. We will fight to defend every job cut Read more...
11 June 2010 | Heather Wakefield
Bigging it up for public servants, by Heather Wakefield
Public sector workers are unused to receiving invitations these days (other than to take their P45’s, clear their desks or take their brooms and go quietly perhaps), so when David Cameron’s ‘Invitation to Public Sector Workers’ pinged up on my screen, I thought Unison members’ luck might have changed. Read more...
4 May 2010 | Heather Wakefield
After the elections: bring them to book, by Heather Wakefield
While they should really be facing charges of crimes against humanity for the global misery they have inflicted, banks and business leaders instead continue to demonstrate a breathtaking absence of shame or sympathy for their fellow human beings. Those in our communities dependent on public services or state support for anything approaching a civilised existence, must be very afraid indeed of those now biting the hand that fed them. Read more...
9 April 2010 | Heather Wakefield
Chelsea pensioners, by Heather Wakefield
As if Chelsea losing 4-2 to Manchester City wasn’t bad enough! I was in a stunned and unusually muted queue descending the Matthew Harding lower terraces on Saturday, when a nearby fellow Blue – generally more prone to pies than conversation – managed to punctuate my aura of despair by asking what was happening to his council pension. Read more...
3 March 2010 | Heather Wakefield
The cult of council tax cuts, by Heather Wakefield
In the male-dominated world of local government, competition for the largest is currently focused firmly on council tax cuts. This macho race to the bottom is as true in the capital as elsewhere. While Labour councils in London celebrate a freeze and Hammersmith & Fulham a cut, mayor Boris Johnson is planning to opt for a second year of ‘no council tax growth’, despite promising to re-allocate ‘spending to areas of greatest need, like the police force’. Sadly, he’s not alone. Read more...
9 February 2010 | Heather Wakefield
The perfect pay storm? By Heather Wakefield
Over 1.5 million workers employed by councils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland face a pay cut from April 1, after the Local Government Employers informed Unison and the other unions at a meeting last Wednesday that there would be no pay offer this year. Everyone from the cleaner to the chief executive will suffer – though clearly not equally. Read more...
25 January 2010 | Heather Wakefield
Battles on the home front, by Heather Wakefield
Housing policy popped up in the general election campaign last week with the Liberal Democrats pledging to make 760,000 empty homes in England available for people who need them. Absent owners would be eligible for a grant or cheap loan to renovate them and bring them into use for social housing or private rent and 65,000 jobs would be created in the process. Read more...
18 January 2010 | Heather Wakefield
Good will hunting, by Heather Wakefield
Few could take issue with the notion of a National Care Service, given life in last week’s Queen’s Speech. Unison certainly doesn’t. We want the promised universal access and national standards. We believe that the NCS should provide care on the same basis as the NHS and could be funded through increased National Insurance contributions and/or other means of taxation. Read more...
30 November 2009 | Heather Wakefield
Unkind cuts, by Heather Wakefield
Sorry to be a party-pooper, but this has been another of ‘those’ weeks in Unison’s local government section – an increasingly familiar week, in which our ‘Jobs Watch’ tracked the relentless rise in council redundancies and news landed of a proposed end to facility time for many of Unison’s lay representatives in Lancashire and Essex. Read more...
9 November 2009 | Heather Wakefield
A touch of frost, by Heather Wakefield
There will not be a collective holding of breath from 1.5 million local government workers on October 26, when Unison lodges its claim for their 2010/11 pay increase. Messrs Darling and Osborne have been vying with each other to see who can freeze public sector pay the hardest and, with successive pay rounds having dealt them the cruellest hand, council employees will know they have one big fight on their hands to get any pay rise at all. Read more...
16 October 2009 | Heather Wakefield
Labour’s not finished yet, by Heather Wakefield
‘A party of restless and relentless reformers’ was how Gordon Brown described us here at Labour Party conference in Brighton yesterday. That felt about right, and in case anyone was in any doubt that the prime minister is serious about Labour’s purpose, he outlined a list of commitments for the next Parliament and beyond that should make David Cameron’s eyes water. Read more...
30 September 2009 | Heather Wakefield
Live from Liverpool, by Heather Wakefield
We may never know if Gordon Brown’s fondness for Dear Prudence stemmed from a love of the Beatles’ 1968 vintage White Album track, but he was in the Fab Four’s home town yesterday, forced to confront the sort of economic and fiscal crisis that Dear P alone might not be able to solve. And there was, of course, no doubt that she is well and truly ‘out to play’. Read more...
16 September 2009 | Heather Wakefield
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