UNISON Branch delegates recently attended an election hustings meeting called by the Civil Service union PCS at the NUM Hall in Barnsley. Candidates standing for election in the Central Ward were invited to attend and respond to a number of pledges put to them by the PCS who are seeking to defend their member’s jobs, pensions and terms & conditions against savage cuts.Eric Illsley (Labour) Piers Tempest (Conservative) and John Brown (Liberal Democrat candidate for Barnsley East) attended the meeting, responded to the PCS unions pledges, and answered questions from the floor.
There were interesting comments on public sector pensions with the Lib. Dem. Candidate seeming to suggest that because private sector pensions had been reduced because of the banking crisis and a falling stock market that public sector workers should face the same pain. It sounded like ‘sour grapes’ to us and the unions made clear that in our view every worker should receive a fair pension and have a reasonable standard of living in their retirement.
UNISON delegates asked the candidates about their views on protecting ‘front-line services’ which are normally thought of as health, schools and police as compared with the thousands of local government employees, many of who are low paid part time women workers, carrying out caring, cleaning and support work jobs, who could be facing redundancy through public spending cuts.
All three candidates agreed that front line services in their view were any service being provided to the public and they recognised the need for the ‘front-line’ services to adequately supported by ‘back office’ staff.
I asked the candidates who in their view should pay for the banking crisis. I pointed out that UNISON members had not caused the £152 billion budget deficit and that we have had no significant pay increases over the last two years, in fact our pay has fallen against inflation and yet our members have delivered millions of pounds of efficiency savings.
Again all three candidates were very clear that in their views the cost of the banking crisis should be borne by the banks. Eric Illsley said that we should make sure we got every penny back and pointed out that despite Labour imposing a tax on bankers bonus payments, the banks continued to pay out massive amounts to some of their employees.
The PCS union raised concerns that because of the massive staffing cuts in Revenues & Customs over £125 billion of unpaid tax was going uncollected and if the government provided adequate resources rather than cutting jobs this could go a long way in reducing the country’s budget deficit.
Unfortunately attendance at the meeting was low, but those there found it very interesting and we thank the candidates for attending and the PCS for arranging the event.