News Archive

MORE than 150,000 men and women are working part-time in the North West – because they can’t find full-time work, according to a TUC survey.

The number has increased by 65 per cent in the last four years, as the number of full-time jobs has fallen.

The TUC findings – published ahead of the latest unemployment figures tomorrow – show that there are 62,000 men and 90,000 women doing part-time jobs in our region because they can’t find full-time work.

This new phenomenen – under-employment – is a direct result of the Coalition’s recession and the economy flat-lining.

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THOUSANDS of public sector workers were today on strike in the North West as part of a national stoppage over pension changes.

Union members say they are being “robbed” and will have to pay more and work longer for lower pensions.

Among the public sector workers taking part in the 24-hour strike are civil servants, NHS workers and lecturers.

Around 32,000 police officers, many from the North West,  were also taking part in a protest march against cuts in London.

According to the Rail Maritime and Transport union, strike action in the North West included work being halted on Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships in port in Birkenhead. PCS said national museums such as the Tate Gallery were closed in Liverpool.

The Government is demanding substantially increased employee contributions, raising the retirement age and less generous career-average schemes.

Unions taking part are: the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), the largest civil service trade union; Unite, representing NHS workers, Ministry of Defence firefighters and others; the University and College Union; the Immigration Services Union; Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union members in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, and the Northern Ireland Public Services Alliance.

SIX hundred front line police have been taken off the streets of Greater Manchester in the last two years.

Government spending cuts have reduced the number of officers from 8,148 in 2010, to 7,490 now.

Worst hit is the city’s Metropolitan police division, which covers Moss Side, Hulme and Rusholme, the University and parts of south Manchester, which has lost more than 100 police officers.

Salford has lost 89 front line officers and Bolton 82, while Tory Trafford has lost just 55 police – one of the smallest reductions in police numbers.

The cuts represent an 8.1 per cent reduction in total police numbers in the last two years.

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Reacting to the announcement that the UK economy is now officially back in recession, North West TUC Secretary Alan Manning said today:

“The Coalition must turn away from its austerity programme immediately and instead promote policies which will create real growth, new jobs and boost consumer confidence.

“The Government’s austerity policies are simply not working. They are hitting working people in our region with more than 35,000 jobs destroyed in the public sector in the last year, thousands of young people thrown on the scrapheap and untold damage being done to local communities.

“It’s time to call a halt before the damage becomes irreversible and lasts for generations to come.

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UNISON members in West Cheshire are taking industrial action over imposed new contracts on staff by Cheshire West and Chester Council.

The new contracts considerably worsen the terms and conditions of staff at the council.

Low paid front-line workers, car users and staff who work evenings, weekends, shifts and nights, are particularly hard hit by the changes.

The flagship Tory Council is determined to create the template for other local councils to slash terms and conditions.

UNISON are organising a regional lobby of the council on Thursday when it meets to consider the cuts.

The union is calling for the largest possible turn-out from members and supporters who are urged to bring UNISON flags, banners, placards and vuvuzelas to send a clear message to the Tory Council from all UNISON members in the North West.

The full Council meeting will be held at the Council Chamber, Wyvern House, The Drumber, Winsford, CW7 1AH.

For more information and transport arrangements contact Judith Holt at the regional office @ j.holt@unison.co.uk or tel: 0161 661 6712

UNION campaigners are to stage  ‘pasty protests’ outside bakeries in two Coalition-held seats in the North West over Chancellor George Osborne’s VAT rise.

They are backing bakery companies such as Greggs and the Poundbakery, as well as family firm Oddies, who have all been hit by the Coalition’s ‘pasty tax’.

Placard-carrying protesters, wearing George Osborne masks, will descend on Burnley and Warrington to hand out leaflets highlighting the VAT rise.

Burnley is currently held by Lib Dem MP Gordon Birtwistle, while David Mowat is the Conservative MP for Warrington South.

Both are strong supporters of the pasty tax on hot food which was imposed after Mr Osborne cut taxes for the rich.

The protests, which are being supported by the Bakers Union, are part of the North West TUC’s campaign to promote alternatives to the Coalition’s austerity measures.

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ANOTHER 32,000 more people in the North West will lose their jobs before the end of the summer, according to new analysis by the think tank IPPR.

Our Region will be the worst hit of any place in the country – and its going to get even worse.

With more than 30,000 jobs already lost from public services in the Region since the Coalition came to power, the IPPR analysis of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecasts shows there is worse to come.

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MEMBERS of PCS in Lancashire who administer the NHS pension scheme are about to ballot for strike action over their poor wages.

Pay starts for the staff at just £12,500 per annum – while their bosses pocket between £300,000 and £1.3million a year.

Xafinity, the private company that employs the staff, has imposed a pay deal that works out at about £9 a week for the average employee.

The firm delayed for three months before paying, and say they will not talk about salaries again until 2013.

PCS is asking for a minimum wage on the contract of £15.500.

The workers, who are based in Fleetwood on the Lancashire coast, voted by more than 90% to reject the Xafinity deal.

The postal vote required to make a strike lawful will start on Tuesday, 10 April.

PCS members working on a Ministry of Defence contract for private contractors Babcock recently improved an imposed pay offer after threatening to strike.

Unemployment in the North West increased by 16,000 in the three months to January, the highest rise of all the English regions.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed a total of 317,000 people were unemployed between November 2011 and January 2012.

Across the region, 9.3% of the population is unemployed – a 5.3% rise during the period. This is the highest increase of all nine regions in England.

The unemployment rate nationally has increased to a near 17-year high after another rise in the jobless total to almost 2.7 million.

Public sector employment fell by 37,000 in the final quarter of 2011 to just under six million, while the numbers employed in private firms increased by 45,000 to 23 million.

Youth unemployment increased by 16,000 to reach 1.04 million, a jobless rate of 22.5%.

The unemployment rate is now 8.4%, up by 0.1% from the previous quarter, the highest for 17 years.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber today issued a ‘hands-off’ warning to the Government over the future of our National Health Service.

And he accused Prime Minister David Cameron of “deceiving” the British people with his pre-election promise of  ’no top-down reorganisation’ of the NHS.

Speaking at the Annual Conference of the North West TUC in Liverpool, Mr Barber pledged that saving our health service was a key priority for the trade union movement.

He said the Government’s driving philosophy was simple: “more competition, more privatisation, less state provision. “

“Before the election the Prime Minister said that the NHS would be safe in his hands, that there would be no more top-down reorganisations.

“He deceived the electorate – the Health and Social Care Bill represents the biggest upheaval in the history of the NHS.

“This is a Bill that is wrong for patients, wrong for staff, and wrong for Britain.

“Nobody voted for these reforms, nobody wants them, and nobody supports them.

“The only beneficiaries will be management consultants, private healthcare firms and big business.

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MORE than 260 Remploy staff in the North West are to lose their jobs in shock compulsory redundancies.

The North West TUC today condemned the Government’s decision to close the Remploy factories as “shameful” and said disabled people and the most vulnerable were paying the price for the Government’s incompetence.

The jobs are to go in Barrow, Birkenhead, Bolton, Manchester, Oldham, Preston and Wigan. Worst hit is Oldham where 107 disabled people will be sacked. Another 78 jobs at factories in Burnley, Blackburn and Heywood are now also threatened.

North West TUC Regional Secretary Alan Manning said: “Disabled people are now paying the price for the Government’s failure to properly support these Remploy factories and help make them a sustainable part of a growing economy.

“These factories enabled disabled people to play their full part in society – and make a proper and valuable contribution to our economy.

“The Government have smuggled out this shameful decision to shut down the factories in a cowardly manner through a written statement, without having the courage to make a proper ministerial statement to the House of Commons.

“It is a couldn’t-care-less Government, obsessed with cost cutting without a thought for the impact on the most vulnerable people in our communities.”

The job losses are part of more than 1700 Remploy redundancies nationwide.

Actor Chris Bisson has spoken of his fears that the NHS will be privatised if the government’s Health and Social Care Bill goes ahead.

Chris, who plays Jai Sharma in TV’s Emmerdale, is so concerned about the future of the service that he will be hosting the “Save the NHS” rally in Manchester on Saturday.

Chris, who was born in Wythenshawe, said: “All my family and friends have been treated on the NHS and it’s something that I feel really passionate about.

“Whatever the government say, they are going to allow profit-making private companies to come in to the NHS who will obviously want to make money out of the service.

“That can only mean that costs will spiral higher so that, in a few years time, the government will be telling us we can’t afford the NHS anymore.  That prospect really worries me.

“Privatising the NHS is bad – simple as that.”

Chris, who has starred in Coronation Street, as well as the cult series ‘Shameless’, believes that public satisfaction with the NHS is now at an all-time high.

He said: “I’ve been in and out of hospital over the years for minor ops and I’ve had to see my GP occasionally and the service I have had has always been absolutely first class. I have been really impressed – and I don’t want to see that service now undermined by unnecessary changes.

“The government are spending a fortune on making GPs commission health services, when most family doctors are against it! That £3.45 billion would be far better spent on creating jobs for people when everyone is struggling in the middle of a recession.

“I fundamentally disagree with what the government are trying to do – and they are wasting huge sums of money on it, when the country can’t afford it.”

Chris will be introducing Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham, Manchester Central MP Tony Lloyd and UNISON Health Committee Chair Debbie Turner at Saturday’s UNISON/North West TUC rally, which is expected to attract thousands of protesters.

The next day, Chris, who has helped raise thousands of pounds in charity for NHS hospitals, will be taking part in a Zip Slide charity event for Manchester’s Christie Hospital, which is a cause close to his heart.

Like Man Utd star Rio Ferdinand, he has already been using the social network Twitter to encourage more people to sign the petition demanding a Commons debate on Andrew Lansley’s bill.

Chris said: “More than 160,000 people have signed that petition and there should have been a debate once we got more than 100,000 signatures. But for some reason, the government don’t seem to want to discuss it any more.

“They told us that the whole point of their consultation exercise was to listen to people’s views.

“Well the surgeons, GPs, anaesthetists and nurses and lots of other organisations all say the bill is fundamentally flawed – yet the government are not listening to them.

“They seem intent on imposing it on the very people who will be responsible for implementing all the changes – and that’s a terrible starting point for the future of our NHS.

“We need to keep up the pressure so that the government understand how precious the NHS is to all of us.”

SHAMELESS – that’s the verdict of TV actor Chris Bisson on the Coalition’s NHS changes.

The star of the cult TV show, as well as soap operas Coronation Street and Emmerdale, will be the guest speaker at Saturday’s “Save the NHS” rally in Manchester.

Chris, who was born in Wythenshawe, Manchester, is a strong supporter of our National Health Service and is passionately opposed to Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s changes.

He will be joined at the rally by Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham, MP for Leigh, Manchester Central MP Tony Lloyd and Debbie Turner, Chair of the North West UNISON Health Committee.

The rally starts at 11am in Albert Square, Manchester when thousands of demonstrators are expected to show their opposition to the government’s NHS Bill, which is currently going through Parliament.

NW TUC Regional Secretary Alan Manning said: “No one wants this Bill – not even David Cameron, it now seems.

“But the Prime Minister won’t drop the bill because it would be too embarrassing for his pride. He should be thoroughly ashamed of himself – and the damage he is doing to our NHS.

“The NHS deserves better than this – it is still not too late for Cameron to listen to doctors, nurses, trade unions and patients and stop turning our NHS into a marketplace and privatising health services.

“We hope people from all over the North West – patients and staff – will turn out in their thousands on Saturday to show their opposition to the Government’s changes and demonstrate their support for our NHS.”

Paul Foley, UNISON North West Head of Health said: “This is a crucial time for the future of the NHS.

“The Government’s hugely unpopular NHS bill has returned to the House of Lords. We are calling on the people of Greater Manchester to show their support for our NHS by rallying in Albert Square on Saturday at 11am.

“Let’s give a clear message to the coalition that they must drop this destructive bill.”

THE North West TUC is officially supporting a Save Our NHS Rally in Manchester against the Coalition’s Health and Social Care Bill.

We are appealing for a massive show of opposition to the Bill in Manchester on Saturday March 3rd.

And we are urging all one million trade union members in the North West to support the campaign to Drop the Bill.

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