National Delegate Conference 21-24 June
2011
Tuesday briefing 2: We need to nail the lies and myths
Scotland’s Jane Carolan will lead off the key economy debate
this afternoon by calling on us to ‘nail the lies and myths’ of
the Tories and their backers that there is no alternative to cuts.
From the special seminar in Glasgow last September, UNISON Scotland
and branches across the country have been putting the arguments
to members to debunk the Tory and media myths. But it is hard
work and still many of our own members have yet to be convinced.
And if they are not convinced, how can we expect them to take
action when it is needed? So we need to keep hammering away at
the UNISON Scotland key messages.
1. Public service cuts are driven by ideology not economics
2. There is nothing inevitable about public service cuts - they
do not make economic sense FACT: for every £1 earned by public
service worker around 70p goes back into local economy.
3. The economy depends on healthy public services - cuts risk
a double dip recession
4. There is no private/public divide. The private sector depends
on public sector contracts. FACT: for every one public sector
job lost, at least one will be lost in private sector.
5. These measures hit the poorest far more than the rich - we
are not 'all in this together' FACT: The poorest families will
be hit by government cuts FIVE times worse than top earners.
6. FACT: After the second world war the deficit was at least
three times (at peak 5 times) higher than it is now, yet we built
the NHS and the Welfare State.
Add to these a new killer fact that Jane will speak of this afternoon.
£25 billion is lost by tax avoidance every year. plus an additional
£8 billion is lost through ‘tax planning’ by wealthy individuals,
the so-called non doms.
Get all these arguments, a powerpoint and other tools to back
them up at www.unison-scotland.org.uk/publicworks
Edinburgh: You’ve heard the debates, now here’s the reality
Conference this morning roundly condemned privatisation and all
the damage that does to services, jobs and hard won conditions.
It also laid out the strategies to fight back.
Nowhere is the reality of all that closer to home than in the
Lib Dem/SNP plans for Edinburgh. And it is not just Edinburgh
facing this fight. It has been explicit from the start of the
process that the Edinburgh experiment is seen as a template for
the rest of Scotland.
If Edinburgh is sold off, you may well be next. The City of Edinburgh
Council is considering bids for the privatisation of large swathes
of local council services. This would be the largest ever single
privatisation of services in Scotland affecting up to 4,000 jobs.
The preferred bidder for two major contracts will be announced
on 25 August. The privatisation is being pursued through a "competitive
dialogue" - similar to competitive tendering but with slightly
greater reference to service quality.
Each of the three privatisation projects is being shadowed by
an inhouse option and all the service options - public and private
- will be evaluated in time for a reports to full council in August
and December.
However, the worry is that politicians have got themselves so
out of their depth that they will be scared of going for the in-house
option.
Lead negotiator Kevin Duguid outlines the UNISON position. “We
continue to put the bidders and the process under the microscope
and have recently put a set of questions to bidders about workforce
issues which we will publish online.”
Early in the campaign the Branch pointed out that the council
report recommending the privatisation was a stitch up. It used
completely different types of councils to Edinburgh as comparisons.
Four of the original bidders had been fined for illegal price
rigging in public contracts and one of the companies was linked
to the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories by the Israeli
state.
Some of this information had been concealed from elected members
so UNISON successfully lobbied for a scrutiny system whereby senior
councillors from each party get unrestricted access to shadowy
truth about privatisation.
For example, fatal accident convictions were concealed , despite
bidders being given the chance to ‘come clean’.
The ‘Our City’s Not For Sale’ campaign continues and has included
briefings, an information pack for councillors, expert analysis
of the process, leaflets, demos and street leafletting by members
in the city centre.
John Stevenson, UNISON Branch President, said, "The public needs
to hear about the issues. That's why we have challenged the political
parties to a debate; and we are calling for a pause while proper
consultation takes place".
The politicians are not consulting the public on these plans
so the Branch is holding its own public consultation on 27 June
at 6pm in the Augustine Church, George IV bridge Edinburgh. It
has published a list of 10 questions as a starter. Questions that
the Branch believes that many councillors would struggle to answer
given how poorly many of them seemed to be briefed on the whole
issue.
top
|