05 January 2001
Staff at the London Borough of Hackney are to escalate their industrial action against the drastic cuts the council has drawn up to tackle its financial crisis.
The three main local government unions, Unison, the TGWU and the GMB, will meet on January 9 to agree a three-day walkout at the end of the month. The strike will coincide with a council meeting on January 31, when changes to workers' terms and conditions, involving reductions in salaries and benefits, are expected to be confirmed.
Union representatives have been incensed by the recovery plan adopted in December, which will mean implementing a further £30m of savings over the next three financial years, in addition to the £22.5m cuts already approved by the council in November.
All council directorates have been ordered to draw up plans to help meet the new target of £9m savings in 2001/02, £10m in 02/03 and £11m in 03/04. These will be presented to a meeting of the policy committee on February 5.
Brian Debus, chair of Unison's Hackney branch, condemned the recovery plan. 'Over the next three years they are talking about a 25% cut in services,' he said. 'That will mean significant cuts to the workforce, and in our terms and conditions, and in turn cuts to services. It will be devastating.'
Debus added that staff were solid in their support for strikes against the proposals, and said 90% of Hackney's non-teaching workforce had stayed at home on the first day of action on December 20. He predicted the next would be just as successful. 'The officers are concentrating their energy on making the workforce pay for a problem that is not of their making,' Debus added.
Andrew Bridgwater, finance spokesman for the Liberal Democrat group, expressed his doubts that the proposed measures would be enough to balance the budget in this or subsequent years. 'Nobody really knows how the figures will balance this year. Changes to staff terms and conditions, which are one of the main areas of savings, won't happen until February at the earliest – we're running out of time.'
He also predicted services would be badly affected by the cuts. 'We will look at the proposals when they come through and see what we can and can't support, but I think the plan relies too heavily on savings that will inevitably affect frontline services.'
Joint council leaders Eric Ollerenshaw and Jules Pipe admitted it would be a 'painful process', but insisted the savings were necessary to safeguard Hackney's future. 'Our programme of measures will protect frontline services as far as possible,' they said in a joint statement. 'We need to have our finance on a stable footing and this package will do that.'
PFjan2001
