NEWS
![[WMD.jpg]](WMD.jpg)
Workers Memorial Day 2006From its beginnings in Canada in the 1980s, "Workers Memorial Day" has become a feature in the international Trade Union calendar intended to commemorate those killed in the course of their employment by promoting work to ensure that such tragedies are not repeated. This year Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council responded positively to a proposal from the Trades Council that one of the trees planted at Sudell Cross, as part of the Town Centre regeneration, be dedicated to the Day. Council leader Cllr.Kate Hollern and Trades Council President John Murphy led the tree planting ceremony, watched by a gathering of local Health and Safety representatives and others, including Cllr.Andy Kay the Executive member for Regeneration. Cllr.Hollern spoke about the impact that accidents at work had upon workers and their families and said that she hoped that the tree would prove a focal point in future years for continued efforts to promote healthy and safe working environments. Alan McShane, from the Trade Union Education Centre, spoke on behalf of the Trades Council. "More and more peoples' health" he said, "is being ruined and their life cut short by exposure to asbestos, cancer causing dusts and chemicals and by being worked into the ground and burned out by the pressures of work". "But the crime here, and it is a crime, is that many of these so-called accidents just don't happen. Many of them are preventable and avoidable and are caused by employer negligence. In fact at least 70% of incidents that kill or injure workers are due to failures by employers to properly manage health and safety". The Trades Council maintains that the key issues for workers are having Union appointed and trained Safety Representatives in evey workplace, campaigning for stricter enforcement and for proper funding of the Health and Safety Executive and pushing for tougher penalties where employers breach health and safety laws. Trades Council critical of "A new deal for welfare
The Trades Council has submitted a response to the public consultation on the recent Green Paper "A new deal for Welfare: Empowering people to work". The response is highly critical of the Government's proposals to replace Incapacity Benefit with a new "Employment and Support Allowance. You can read our submission here. Trades Council opposes Rice visit
The Trades Council supported the "Stop The War" protests against the visit to Blackburn of US Secretary of State Dr.Condoleezza Rice. You can read herea copy of our latter to local MP, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. EU Funds for Economic Development
The Trades Council has written to Jack Straw MP to voice its concerns over the changes which will affect the European Union structural funds in the 2007-13 budget cycle. A copy of our letter is here. Local Strategic Partnership
Government guidelines determine that to access certain sources of money, such as the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, Local Authorities should establish a “Local Strategic Partnership” (LSP). For over a decade there has been in Blackburn with Darwen the “Blackburn Partnership”, and it has been very instrumental, along with the Council’s “Regeneration Department”, in helping the town secure various strands of “Regeneration” funding. This Blackburn Partnership has now been split into two. One half, which will retain the Blackburn Partnership name and logo, has become a limited company which will continue to have responsibility for “Business in the Community” type projects – such as the “Guardian Angels” and “School Friends” schemes. The other half, the old Partnership “Board”, has been expanded to form the LSP Forum. Members have been added from the “Voluntary” and the “Community” “sectors” in particular. On the old Partnership Board the Trade Unions had one seat and the CVS had one seat. On the new Board the Trade Unions have been given one seat as part of a “Voluntary Sector” - alongside representatives from the CVS, Homestart, the School Governors Association, Groundwork. Age Concern, the REC, EMDA, the Lancashire Council of Mosques, the Interfaith Council and the Community Legal Services Partnership. These representatives have a responsibility to cover “groups” which are sometimes wider than their particular organisations – “children and families”, for instance, or “environmental network”. “Community Sector” representatives have been drawn from the Community Associations Foundation, the Citizens Panel and the Youth Forum. In addition there are 11 “Public Sector” representatives (including the Police, the NHS, Blackburn College and Jobcentre Plus), 8 “Business” representatives and 8 Councillors. The Local Authority input is enhanced by a non-voting officer cadre. The Trades Council’s interest in these Partnership bodies has hitherto been guided by a wish to be involved in work aimed at developing the local economy and to aid the successful attraction of “external” funds. It is expected that the LSP will adopt, however, a rather wider remit. In a sense, it has been poured into a mould already made for it – the Borough “Community Plan” and its seven “aims”: * To improve the local economy
* To build stronger and more involved communities
* To enhance cultural harmony
* To improve health and social well being
* To improve and promote learning
* To improve the neighbourhood and environment,and
* To decrease crime. The LSP will be responsible for monitoring and co-ordinating the work of seven sub-groups covering each of the seven aims. It will be asked to put forward ideas as to how the Council’s activities can be better focussed. The constituent organisations, for their part, will be asked to examine their own activities in light of the Community Plan targets, to see how they can best contribute to them. The LSP will also have a responsibility for spending £9.7m from the “Neighbourhood Renewal Fund” (and any further money which can be secured in the future) and for overseeing the “Local Neighbourhood Regeneration Strategy”. The Neighbourhood Renewal Fund Money is available only to March 2004, and has been spilt into four “targets”; Area Based Initiatives, Support to Children and Families, Vulnerable Elderly People and People with Disabilities. The Trades Council is represented on the LSP by its Secretary, Ian Gallagher. He would find it very helpful to be invited to Branch meetings to report on the LSP and to get feedback on the issues covered.
Privatisation at Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council
Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council claimed, in its Best Value Plan for 2000-20001, that it wanted to be a "local leader in good employment practice". At the same time, however, it has decided to attack the interests and well-being of its own employees - citing a "Best Value" review as the reason!
The Council has decided to contract out a portion of its work to CAPITA, a company whose exponential growth over the last decade has to a large extent depended upon Government and Local Authority outsourcing. Part of the process involved the Council inviting CAPITA to rummage around its operations in a "scoping" exercise to determine what services it would take over. As a consequence, upto 500 employees have been transferred to CAPITA and it has taken responsibility for services like housing benefit administration.
CAPITA have said that they will develop a new office in Blackburn, employing an additional 500 staff in work for other clients.
The Borough Council has hailed these developments as a breakthrough for service delivery and the health of the local economy. The Trades Council, on the other hand, has condemned the move, identifying it as part of a strategy for the privatisation of Public Services whose objective is the fragmentation of the Public Sector workforce and the weakening of Collective Bargaining and conditions of service in the sector.
The Trades Council has pointed out that even staff transferred under TUPE can find their conditions eroded over time, that in similar circumstances CAPITA has opertated a two-tier structure of terms and conditions (with inferior conditions for new starters), that the "new" jobs promised are likely themselves to be jobs "outsourced" by other local employers and that far from being a boost to the local economy the scheme could well result in an overall reduction in the quality of available employment and thus have a negative impact on local prosperity.
We have also drawn attention to the documented service failures associated with outsourcing in other parts of the country - failures which tend to fall heaviest on the poorest citizens.
Within a few months of the start of the contract CAPITA were hitting the local headlines because of delays in processing benefits. In November 2002 a number of Blackburn with Darwen Borough Councillors were as surprised as everybody else to find that dozens of staff normally assigned to Council Tax enquiries had been redeployed to the Housing Benefit department as CAPITA continued to struggle to meet deadlines. This redeployment had been achieved by the transfer of Council Tax enquiries to a CAPITA call-centre in Coventry - a fact that only came to light as a result of a caller asking an officer about her accent! Detailed public scrutiny of the deal has been made impossible by the decision of the Council that many aspects of the agreement are "commercially sensitive".
Privatisation at Queens Park Hospital, Blackburn
Staff at Blackburn's Queeens Park Hospital are amongst those threatened by the Government's deployment of PFI -"the Private Finance Initiative" - in the National Health Service. The Trades Council has contributed to the local campaign against PFI through the release of a special edition of its local bulletin.
Click here to read the text of this (Word document) Whereas the NHS in Blackburn has a track record of delivering capital schemes to time and cost deadlines the PFI scheme has been riddled with delays and cost recalculations. Some of these, it must be said, have been due to improvements in the bed targets, which the Trades Council was, we believe, the only local organisation to highlight and crticise. Fears of a "Railtrack on the Wards", meanwhile, have hardly been assuaged by the news that the PFI consortium will be headed by Balfour Beatie.
"Stubbins Safety Net"
AEEU and GPMU stewards at Stubbins Paper Mill, the workplace of one of our GPMU delegates, have developed an innovative local Health and Safety web site. The site is intended to be both a point of contact and information for Stubbins' workers and a channel for the local stewards to link with activists worldwide.
You can vivit the site at www.stubbissafety.fsworld.co.uk.
HOME LOCAL TRADE UNION CONTACTS LINKS