Children's Play Area Designs: July 2017

UNISON has won a landmark court victory today (Friday) that makes it much harder for employers to ignore staff when making major changes in the workplace.

The Court of Appeal ruling means that for the first time employers will be obliged to consult with unions around any workplace issues that affect their members.

Until now, unions only had the right to be consulted where the law required this, for example in TUPE regulations where employees transfer from one employer to another, and in redundancy cases.

The ruling means employers will also have to involve unions in issues such as those around working hours and holiday pay.

It will benefit thousands of employees whose rights at work are under threat and means that employers will face greater scrutiny over their treatment of staff, says UNISON.

The victory came about after the union took up a case involving parks police who were made redundant by the London Borough of Wandsworth.

The Court of Appeal ruled that UNISON had the right to be consulted by Wandsworth over the job losses.

UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis said: “This is the second major legal victory in a week for working people. It means that employees in any workplace where there’s a union will now benefit from greater protection at work.

“The message to bosses is they will have to treat their staff more fairly over pay and working conditions. If they fail to consult unions then they will be acting unlawfully and could be taken to court.”

Notes to editors:
– UNISON brought an appeal relating to two of its members who were local authority parks police – UNISON, Vining & Ors v LB Wandsworth & the Secretary of State.
– The case related to UNISON’s claim that two of Wandsworth’s parks police had been unfairly dismissed.
– On 23 January 2013, an employment tribunal (ET) ruled that the two men could bring unfair dismissal claims. The ET also decided that their union (UNISON) could bring a claim for an alleged failure in collective consultation under section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992.
– On 21 December 2015, the employment appeal tribunal ruled that neither the parks police nor UNISON could bring these claims. This was on the grounds that domestic law excluded employees in ‘police service’ and their unions from those rights.
– UNISON appealed, arguing that the domestic law was incompatible with Articles 8, 11 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
– The parks police lost their claim. However, the Court of Appeal found that UNISON could not be stopped from bringing a claim in the ET over Wandsworth’s failure to consult over collective redundancies, and generally, where the terms and conditions or rights at work of those they represent are affected.
– It also ruled that UNISON had the right to be consulted under Article 11 of the ECHR and that right had been breached.
– Article 11 of the ECHR protects the right to freedom of assembly including forming trade unions. The Court of Appeal judgment confirms that those rights apply to unions, not just to individuals.
– The Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employment regulations (TUPE) ensure employees’ terms and conditions are protected when a business is transferred to a new employer.

Media contacts:
Sophie Goodchild T: 0207 121 5546 M: 07767 325595 E: s.goodchild@unison.co.uk
Liz Chinchen T: 0207 121 5463 M: 07778 158175 E: l.chinchen@unison.co.uk

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Pay cap: the numbers behind public sector pay

Public sector pay is in the news and it has been the subject of some of the most heated exchanges between Theresa May and Jeremey Corbyn since the election.

But what exactly are the numbers behind the pay cap? Here we take a look at what the data tells us about the cap on public sector pay and the rising cost of living.

For seven years now, public sector workers – people who work in the NHS, for councils, schools, colleges, universities, the police, and more – have not had a pay rise. Their pay has either increased by 0% or 1%.

The problem is, while it may seem that the 1% pay increase was a pay rise, it wasn’t. And the reason is inflation. Inflation – when the cost of goods go up – means that, effectively, public sector workers’ pay is worth less. And prices have been rising by a lot.

We all know that the price of things go up, but when you look at how much they have gone up, and compare that with people’s pay, the difference is shocking.

Between 2010 and 2016 the cost of rent went up by 17%; the cost of electricity went up by 28%; the cost of sending a child to nursery school went up by 21% and the cost of holidays in the UK went up by 27%. Suddenly, you can’t get as much for your money.

In the chart below you can see how much the cost of everything has increased, compared to how much public sector pay has increased.

(This data was taken from the RPI indices from Office of National Statistics Consumer Prices Inflation data, except house price data which is taken from ONS House Price Index and childcare costs which is from the Family & Childcare Trust Surveys, with the costs based on 25 hours of care).

So, what does this mean for public sector workers? It means that they’ve lost money.

In 2010 the average – median – wage of a public sector worker was £28,339.

In the table below you can see what the average public sector worker has been earning over the last seven years, compared to what they would be earning if their pay had increased at the same rate as inflation.

We can see from the table above that in 2011, this average worker would have been £1,474 worse off. Even though their salary was exactly the same as the year before, everything they needed cost more. Which could be the cost of, say, a family holiday.

In 2016, they would have lost £3,875. The cost of a nice car perhaps. Or food for a large family for a year.

But if you count their losses from 2010 to 2016, they are £17,962 worse off. Which is the cost of a deposit on a house in some areas of the country, or a car and some money towards a child’s university education.

And what about people in specific roles? The two tables below show how much different public sector workers would have earned in 2016 if they had received pay increases that matched the rise in inflation, compared to what they actually received.

And some more jobs…

As you can see, public sector workers’ pay has been falling in value year on year, which means each year money is getting tighter and tighter for the people who run our public services. That’s why UNISON is campaigning to raise the pay of all public sector workers.

Find out about our Pay up Now! campaign.

The article Pay cap: the numbers behind public sector pay first appeared on the UNISON National site.

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