Over the past year, members of the CYWU section of Unite have been fighting and campaigning to defend Youth Services provision in Coventry. The Tory-controlled City Council had employed Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC) as its partner consultants and the Youth Service is the first in line to feel the axe at a cost of £67,000. PWC will examine all areas of the Council’s operations and advise on “savings”, that is cuts...

The PWC review meant cuts of £360,000 resulting in cuts to front line youth services, deletion of three fulltime posts and unilateral changes to contracts with part time workers being forced to sign up to new contracts involving fewer hours, reduced progression scales, reduced training and development opportunities. The imposed changes will also mean salary cuts of 25 to 50% affecting mainly PT and women workers.   Youth workers are being forced to sign these contracts or make themselves unemployed. Youth workers on £11,000 a year will be now be on £7,000. Workers who are single parents will because of cuts to working hours lose Working Tax Credits and many are finding it hard to pay mortgages.

SALAMI STYLE CUTS.

The Youth Services Review is the first of many. Over the next year the Council has announced cuts of more than £10m and over the next three years they aim to cut £74m from spending. This could mean a reduction from 6,000 to 4,000 workers on the Council payroll. The exact figures are not known as details of the proposed cuts are being kept hidden. All the Council will say is that there will be no deviation from the PWC recommendations. So no discussions, no talks, no consultation, meaningful or otherwise. The effect of these cuts on the service workers is of no consequence to the Tory Council. In a salami type tactic Youth services will be hit first, followed by street cleansing and so on through all the services.

There is an urgent need for all sections of the city council’s workforce to join together in action to protect services and jobs. If this is not done, workers will be isolated in different departments, weakened through isolation, picked off and a sense of defeat and demoralisation could set in. This could embolden the Council to carry out the tasks wholesale and not piecemeal.

"So early intervention projects in areas of the city that suffer from multiple deprivation have been cut. The need in the communities is great but the city council believes that the job must be done by schools. Yet this is a social work role that needs to be done by a qualified social worker. The CAFES has been cut and now the attacks on the Youth Service are under way."

"The ABC (A Better Council [sic]) review talks about efficiencies, doing things differently, experimenting – but in reality it is all about cost cutting. PWC does a review, makes recommendations and these are implemented by the Council without meaningful consultation. A pilot review report into youth services indicated that front-line staff were doing a great job and management and backroom staff should be looked at, but when the review was published it was front-line staff for the chop and management were left intact leaving three managers on about £60k per year who deliver nothing and manage nobody."

"We are now at a stalemate where cuts are being implemented without any meaningful consultation having taken place. Poorly paid workers are being hit hard and the Council is not concerned. Our members are in tears not knowing how to feed their children on such low money or how to pay the mortgage. In these circumstances workers will be forced to look elsewhere for jobs and we would lose valuable experience. Workers who remain have been forced to sign new contracts under duress or risk losing their jobs."

"Perhaps the worst aspect of all of this is the loss of a service that carried out invaluable work with young people, helping them through the difficult transition from youth to adulthood. It is very short sighted to cull a service, to cull a workforce at a time when young people are being hit hardest by the crisis with high unemployment and social tension in inner cities is on the increase."

"In addition, in order to save money the Council decided to put some of the provision out to private tender, to private contractors, despite the fact that the Council provision was meeting needs, but the private sector could not see sufficient profit levels in tendering, so the exercise was a failure. Yet the basis of the exercise was to save money and this has still to be done. The whole process in commissioning bids was very expensive and time consuming."

"What is also galling is that as part of the ABC review the Council has set up in each area of work review committees where council workers have been involved in workshops, work mapping, analyses of job roles and responsibilities, not in order to provide a leaner and fitter service to the public or make job areas less stressful, but merely to rationalise provision to cut costs and get rid of jobs. Workers have therefore been involved in an exercise that could potentially lead to the same workers losing their jobs and the potential savings have been identified by the workers themselves. It is like turkeys voting for Christmas as many workers believe that by taking part in such reviews their jobs will be safe."

"The cuts are being implemented by an uncaring Tory council. They are not interested in dialogue or consultation. When the general election comes, the choice will be between Labour and Tory. We know what Labour has done. We don’t have any illusions. We are not stupid but we can’t let the Tories in. We know what they represent. “

THE REALITY OF THE CUTS

The interview with Pat Seaman was an eye opener in that the reality of cuts, the translation of financial figures into service provision, social need, job cuts and the effects on individual lives, hits home hard. The claims of the Labour government, our government, that front line services will not be hit, are nothing but lies and we know that. Local authority workers know the reality that they live through daily in their working lives.

  Coventry Council was the first in the country to pilot single status agreements. It was claimed that such agreements would bring about a more equitable wage/salary system and people would be rewarded appropriately. The reality was it was a cost cutting exercise where many low paid workers lost £1000s in their annual salary. The same system, having been completed in Coventry, is now being rolled out across the country.

UNITED TRADE UNION ACTION TO DEFEND PUBLIC SERVICES

We must learn the lessons from that. If the attacks on the Youth Service are not defeated, every other department will be in turn under attack. No section of workers will be immune. All council workers should realise that all jobs are under threat. They should not participate in reviews that cut their jobs or the jobs of fellow workers. The reality of what is happening to the youth service should be hammered home as they will face the same if the council is successful in its plans.

The main unions in the council are Unison, Unite and the GMB. At a minimum there should be joint meetings at all levels of all the union members so that any feeling of isolation and therefore vulnerability can be dispelled. Defence of services and jobs must involve all trade union members in the first instance and through united action the non-unionised workers can be drawn into the movement.  Trade union councils at a departmental or service provision level should be set up. Delegates should be elected to a whole city council level to coordinate the fight back against the cuts. The same should happen regionally and nationally where projections are that local authorities will face cuts of up to 30% in funding over the next three years. If this is not fought, it will be devastating for service and jobs. All trade unions in the public sector should be working out a national strategy and programme to fight the cuts. Such a fight must involve the muscle of the TUC. A NATIONAL CAMPAIGN NEEDED. The National Pensioners Convention should be congratulated for organising the march and rally on April 10th in London against cuts in public services. It was supported by 21 national trade unions. The rally should be the beginning of a campaign to fight the cuts, a campaign that must be extended to all corners on the UK.

IT MUST ALSO BE A CAMPAIGN THAT IS LED AND ORGANISED BY THE TUC UNITING IN ACTION WORKERS FROM THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTORS OF THE ECONOMY.

Public sector workers lose their jobs or suffer cuts in wages or hours. Private sector workers lose services or must pay more for them AND SO DO PUBLIC SECTOR WORKERS AS CONSUMERS. WE ARE ALL IN THIS BATTLE TOGETHER.

FIGHT THE CUTS. FIGHT CAPITALISM.