Special General Meeting Called for Stoke-on-Trent City Council UNISON members

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There are reports coming from inside Stoke-on-Trent City Council that UNISON have called their members to 2 Special General Meetings on Thursday to discuss terms and conditions that they feel are under threat.

The leaflet being handed out to UNISON members states that

  • Essential Car Users Allowance
  • Reduced Mileage Allowance to .45p per mile
  • Charge for car parking
  • Removal of subsistence allowance
  • Removal / Rationalise shift / weekend/ unsocial allowances

are all under threat.

So if you are lucky enough to escape the on-going threat of redundancy then the City Council want to reduce your Terms & Conditions of the staff.

All this on the day that it was reported that the number of officers earning £50,000 or more at Stoke-on-Trent City Council had increased by 24 in 2010/11.

Have Your Say

  • Gary Elsby

    All true Mike.
    The council letter went up last week.
    This is why a 90 day notice of the sack is put out.
    It’s a Tory bullying tactic used by Tories to bully workers.
    The odd bit is that a Labour council falls for it after being sold the pup about cuts.

    “They are cutting too far-too fast”
    Ed Miliband on behalf of Labour.

  • Shaun Bennett

    Of course Gary, there is absolutely NO need for cuts at all. The economic crisis is all a big Tory trick made up to justify the cuts that they wanted to make anyway. Can’t people see that the streets are actually paved with gold???

    Anyway, back here on earth, looks like a strike then if UNISON have anything to do with it. And that will all be in protest at the Tory cuts as well won’t it, rather than the real reason-the trade unions selfishness as they try to feather their own nests!

    “They are cutting too far-too fast”
    Ed Miliband on behalf of Labour.

    “But we can’t say which cuts we can reverse nor what we would do differently if we were in power…and anyway, we’re not in power, its Labour’s job to oppose, not to say what we would do differently”.
    Ed Miliband on behalf of Labour.

    OK I admit it, I paraphrased that, it is Labour’s position though. As always, Labour has NO ALTERNATIVE TO OFFER. They just oppose everything because thats what they’re there for.

  • Gary Elsby

    Just to correct Shaun.

    This council intends to cut pay for work currently the council pays for.
    It also wishes to charge a car parking fee for workers.
    Petrol of course is cheap and war and tear on cars is too cheap to meter.

    Shaun I do know the big picture on National public debt and it has gone up since Cameron took over.
    Cutting too far to fast is therefore a stupid comment.

    This Council is different and is doing something vey odd and uneccessary.
    The idea is to balance the books, not cook them.

  • Shaun Bennett

    But again it shows the nonsense at the heart of Labour’s argument (I know that doesn’t include you Gary, but): They say that the national debt has gone up under Cameron-which it has. But then they say that if they were in power they would increase the debt even further and not make the savings which will see the debt reduced significantly by the end of the parliament.

    They say they know that cuts have to be made, but they oppose every single cut and then can’t say whether they’d reverse it or not.

    The council is indeed doing something very odd and unnecessary. But it isn’t the cuts and the savings that are odd and unnecesary, it is their weird decision to employ MORE managers at a time in which ordniary workers are being laid off.

    It isn’t the cuts and the savings that are odd and unnecessary, it is their weird decision to propose destroying the historic office of Lord Mayor like the constitutional vandals that we have always known Labour are, whilst also now apparantly wanting to REDUCE the council tax increase they say is necessary because they desperately want to stop the public from being given any say over the council tax as this Tory government is rightly proposing.

    It is odd and unnecessary to charge car parking fees for workers whilst councillors themselves continue to feather their own nests by getting free parking.

    But then, that was the choice the people of the city unwisely made last May. The opposition on the council is doing a fantastic job and making a good effort at holding them to account but the fact is that the numbers don’t allow it.

    And as I have said before, with the general election due on the same day as the city council elections in 2015, Labour councillors know that they can in fact make council workers pay THEM for the privilege of having a job if they want to, they will get back in next time because they will get in on the coat-tails of the MPs on general election day.

    Stoke-on-Trent democracy is closed for business for the next 7 years. Lets just hope Labour haven’t done too much damage at the end of it all.

  • Gary Elsby

    It is interesting Shaun that some of us have got it exactly right on the National economic debt for some time now and the figures just released prove it.
    We won’t get any credit for getting the basics right though and out projections based on getting it right from the outset appears to mean nothing.

    There is an anomoly though and I think you miss the point.

    The Nations debt is now £1T and it rises further.
    The Monthly borrowing goes down to £13bn.
    Cutting too far-too fast is the rally cry even though the debt goes up and punitive wasteful intrerest payments increase.
    The anomoly is the reverse of your argument that the Tories via Osborne allow the debt to rise in the National interest.
    Failure to do so invites public chaos.

    The thory that a rise in National spending makes the situation worse is the difference between Conservative and Labour.

    Unfortunately for me, this is not the Labour Party of sensible working class thinking and we shall see another four years of shouting the odds with no substance whatoever tp go on.

    Locally,this Council has no clue.
    Itnow wishes to balance a book that does not balance once they (their view) balance it.
    They wish to lend money out to create growth in employment while at the same time creating unemployment with their own hands.
    Economic and Social incompetence that no-one voted for.
    This is a wishlist from a Senior Officer who claims unjustifiable superiority over a weak Labour Party.
    There is no justification at all in the latest round of closure which is an attack upon the working classes and the weak.

  • MerryMaids TM

    Council workers in UNISON are the aristocracy of the employed. They don’t need to be given the run-around by some 20 year old little tyrant in an employment agency. UNISON employees don’t have short term, insecure and low paid agency work. They don’t get pay deductions or have the fear of god put in them by heartless goons at Pertemps. Yet they are the very same ones opressing the really poor, sending legal threats to people unable to pay their council tax. I have no sympathy, UNISON.