A UNISON seminar of members working in social care and home care has called for dignity for service users and dignity for the staff who serve them.
The call came 24 hours before UNISON warned that the home care system is in crisis following a Care Quality Commission Report into homecare services in England which found that as many as a quarter are failing to meet quality and safety standards.
Members from across the UK attending the seminar in Birmingham on 12 February heard harrowing stories of service users condemned to brief 15 minute visits to provide care, Alzheimer’s sufferers subjected to regular changes of carer and welfare cuts taking away the independence of disabled people.
They heard of the widespread exploitation of outsourced home care workers on zero hours contracts, paid on or less than the minimum wage, not paid or reimbursed for travelling between service users and having to do the job with precious little training.
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| Stephanie Herd |
Organising to break the pay freeze, organising to protect our NHS and our public
services and organising to turn back the vicious impact of ConDem policies on
our members, on the poorest in society, on the disabled, elderly and our
children. A daunting list of tasks but one UNISON’s National Conference was up
for.
This year's conference was all about equality and social justice. It was about communicating, organising, campaigning to get our message to our members, prospective members and to the public at large. There is an alternative!
That’s what this week was and rightly should have been about. Consensus on the need to defend the founding principles of our NHS. As Bevan said, it will be there so long as we have the faith to defend it.
Consensus on the need to defend care of the most vulnerable; the welfare state; education for all, not just the few; a voluntary and community sector that enhances rather than competes, underpinned by properly resourced public services.
Trade unionists, community groups and members of the public were lobbying council meetings across Scotland today to urge their elected members to put the needs of their communities first when setting their budgets.
There must be something that has half of the Scotland delegation at UNISON Conference 20101 unashamedly in tears. What is it?
Is it the straightforward honesty we treasure in Scotland, although we tend to approach it with a tad more bluntness?
Is it the knowledge that you are listening to someone who has given more to the cause than any of us will ever know?
A quiet and serious resolve characterised the contributions and responses as almost 3,000 delegates set out a range of strategies to prepare for the biggest attacks we have ever seen on our services, our pensions, our pay, our health and safety and our hard won rights and equalities.
It was time to get down to work and organising is the key.
Detailed and practical strategies to defend public services and invest in them to lift us out of the recession took centre stage.
An inspiring call to take the movement forward from American trade unionist Tom Woodruff enthused Conference as we went on to launch a programme for action around ‘a million voices for change’.
As SiU went to print, last minute talks were being held to avert further action, with the branch demanding assurances that there would be no compulsory redundancies and no extra pressures on staff due to budget cuts of over £10 million.
UNISON Conference 2006: Consensus and a common purpose was the theme of this year's Conference. A good thing when we have huge fights ahead of us on pensions and defending public services. 
Thabitha
Khumalo
However it does make for a bit of a dull Conference.
Lively debate broke out on the public services, pensions and international debates but the defining point in the week was the moving and inspirational speech by Thabitha Khumalo of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.
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The council has responded positively by accepting all the recommendations and immediately pumping new money into buildings and IT support.
John Stevenson, Edinburgh UNISON branch secretary, said, "We welcome this action but it has been a long haul. We took a grievance to councillors as long ago as 2001 about this, and we argued that the O'Brien report into the death of Caleb Ness was flawed and had missed this point.
However, the passion of Stephen Lewis' contribution as UN special envoy on HIV/AIDS will live with many of us for a long time.
As usual Scotland played a major part in all the big debates. Jane Carolan, Mike Kirby and Pat Rowland to name just a few. Karie Murphy and David Connor played major roles on opposite sides of the political fund debate.
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| John McFadden |
Grave concerns about the international situation were heightened at the STUC as continuing reports of the attacks on Palestine came through first hand from trade unionists. http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/siu/siumay02.html#5
A few weeks ago, John McFadden, Scottish NEC member, and union President Veronica Dunn, were on a UNISON delegation to the Middle East where they met both Palestinian and Israeli trade unionists.
We stand on giants' shoulders, said Rodney Bickerstaffe as he spoke of how the trade union movement had got to where it stands today.
