Motions for AGM 2009

Motion 1 - Honoraria
Motion 2 - Baby P
Motion 3 - Pensions
Motion 4 - Pay Campaign

MOTION 1 - HONORARIA PAYMENTS

In accordance with Branch Rule 12 (iv) Honoraria payments are recommended to be paid as follows:

Secretary £1788
Treasurer £1198
Assistant Secretary (2) £847 each
Auditors (2) £139 each

Proposed: Branch Committee

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MOTION 2 - UNISON'S RESPONSE TO THE DEATH OF 'BABY P'

This branch welcomes the various UNISON responses to the aftermath of the death of 'Baby P' and to the second Laming inquiry.

While these responses focus primarily on children's services in England and the legal context - for example, the Children's Hearing system, is different in Scotland, this branch believes that many of the problems identified are common across the UK.

These include :-
1. Continuing chronic under funding of children's services, both locally and nationally. In 2006/2007 Scottish local authorities spent an average of 70% over the Scottish Government's Grant Aided Expenditure on children's services. This has not changed materially since the 'concordat' and in areas like Edinburgh and Aberdeen the pressures on funding have hugely increased.
2. Unrealistically low staffing levels and continuing vacancies. In real terms, front-line qualified staff in children and families social work has been cut in some areas despite the increased pressures and expectations on social work.
3. An 'inspection culture' which focuses on achieving often meaningless targets while ignoring whether expected standards can be achieved within the resources allocated. This leads to priorities being set on bureaucratic indicators rather than real practice outcomes.
4. A focus from the Scottish Social Services Council which concentrates on sanctions against practitioners while failing to exercise any meaningful sanctions related to its other duty of ensuring employers deliver on their side of the codes of conduct, including providing adequate resources.
5. An increase in the time front-line staff are having to spend on recording data primarily for statistical purposes, often related to inspections, at the expense of direct service-user contact. The problem is increased by the chronic lack of admin support.
6. A growing managerialist approach which fails to support front-line staff and acknowledge their crucial task of working with intense and complex situations.
7. Increasing and unmanageable caseloads.

These issues, among others, have led to a general feeling throughout the workforce that the system is unsafe. Practitioners are justified in believing that they will carry the can for any tragedy irrespective of whether they were adequately resourced.

While it is unrealistic to expect no child will ever come to harm, it is realistic to expect that the government and local authorities should face up to their responsibilities to adequately resource children's services.

The branch therefore calls for :-

1. A continuing campaign to expose the resource crisis in children's services involving research into caseloads and practices and regular publicity on the issue to ensure that the public and decision-makers are made aware of the seriousness of the situation.
2. A UK-wide review of staffing and caseloads which recognises the complexity of the task and real time required to fulfil the task.
3. A Westminister government and devolved administrations strategy, in partnership with local authorities across the UK, that owns up to the problem and sets out a plan to invest in front-line children and families social work at a level that makes the task realistic.

Branch Committee

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MOTION 3 - DEFEND PUBLIC SECTOR PENSIONS

This AGM recognises that just as negotiations on the National and Scottish Local Government Pensions Scheme draw to a close, and after NHS colleagues have settled on their pension scheme, our pensions are once again under attack.

The meeting is deeply concerned since the start of the current financial crisis in September last year, the media critics of public sector pensions have been having a field day, demanding that "the pension's apartheid" is ended.

Headlines on a regular basis refer to "Pensions Haves and Have-Nots" or are issuing "Warnings over Public Sector Pensions." The vitriol heaped on public sector workers has rarely reached such heights and is repeated time after time.

These pensions are deferred wages, funded by employees and employers contributions and not by the taxpayer. Millions of readers are drip fed continually that public sector pensions are "cushy", "gold-plated" and "A luxury that the country can't afford". Yet the average local government pensioner receives on £3,800 per year or £74 per week.

What is usually quoted is the figure for a high flying, highly paid civil servant, and while we would all like that level of pension, for our members such a pension is a dream.

Now, the Tory Party are making it clear that if they get into power, they will end the final salary schemes and replace them with stock market linked plans. Eric Pickles, the current Tory Shadow Secretary of State for communities and Local Government has also made it quite clear that the time has come for what he calls "reform".

We should be clear that this will mean the destruction of public sector pensions and poverty in old age for many of our members. The Tories have also been backed by the Liberal Democrats, who have stated that our pensions as "unsustainable and unaffordable".

This AGM rejects these accusations. Our members pay into their pension schemes over all the time of their employment and are entitled to a pension on retirement. However, it also supports affordable pensions for all workers and believes that any solution should be based on levelling up, not cutting the public sector pensions that we are all going to rely on.

Political parties should be urging the private sector in this country to face up to their responsibilities by setting up decent pensions schemes and should not be forcing our members into pensioner poverty by cutting public sector pensions.

This branch calls on UNISON's NEC.
1. To maintain and expand their campaign to combat the adverse and misleading publicity about public service pensions in the press and media.
2. To provide information all UNISON members on the plans for public sector pension schemes, of all the parties standing for election in the next Westminster elections, so that our members can make an informed choice about which political party candidate to vote for.
3. To encourage and support regions and branches to campaign locally to defend our public sector pensions and to lobby local politicians on this issue.

Branch Committee

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MOTION 4 - LOCAL GOVERNMENT PAY

This AGM notes the positive role of UNISON Scotland's leadership, specifically the Local Government Committee and the Local Government Conference, in the way in which the 2008 Pay Claim was conducted.

Whilst the final settlement was not as good as hoped, the conduct of the campaign, especially the regular meetings of branch secretaries and branch delegations, meant that all branches were fully involved in the strategy and the key decisions throughout the campaign. The debate at these meetings ensured that the majority views of the branch representatives directed the campaign strategy.

The meeting recognises the effective joint work done by lay activists and full-time staff in campaigning amongst the wider membership for a YES vote in the strike ballot and for the excellent turn-out in the two days of action in August and September. It believes that the clear messages and hard work, supported by good publicity and campaigning materials, served to motivate members to take action and to get public opinion on our side.

The meeting believes that this led to a pay offer which was better than would otherwise have been achieved and which was put to the membership in a ballot. We accept the will of the wider membership in that, despite the recommendation to reject, a narrow majority voted to accept the revised pay offer. It recognises that whilst the turn-out in the second ballot was higher than the first, it still represented less than 50% of the membership. However UNISON is a democratic union and as such it has acted upon the majority view.

As always there will be lessons to be learned from the 2008 Pay Campaign that can help UNISON to prepare for the 2010 campaign. This must include a look at the joint union campaigning as well lessons internal to UNISON.

We note that UNISON Scotland is carrying out this review. The meeting calls on the Branch Committee to fully engage in the review of the 2008 Campaign and in the preparation of a Pay Claim to take effect from 1 April 2010, and to involve and inform the membership at all stages.

Branch Committee

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