The first is an Organising Conference on the fight for decent pensions organsed by PCS Left Unity on Saturday 7th January 2012 at Friends Meeting House, Euston Road, London NW1 (opposite Euston Station). The conference, chaired by PCS President Janice Godrich, “will be an organising conference, not just a debating forum. It is intended to arm activists with the issues so they can go back to their workplaces and into their unions in order to build a campaign that will secure justice on pensions.”

There will be a small registration fee of £5 for waged delegates to cover costs.

More information can be found on the PCS Left Unity website.

In Surrey, we will be organising a similar meeting on Thursday 26th January 2012 in Leatherhead (exact venue TBC). Further information will be put out very soon.

Well done for N30

You can find photos from the day on our Flickr.

To those of you who went over and above, who piled in the extra hours leafletting, convincing colleagues, building solidarity and came down on the rallies – a massive thank you just don’t cover the appreciation we have for your hard work and effort.

It’s clear that N30 won’t be the first such action if the Government doesn’t back down, either. Many union activists are asking the question of our leaderships – what next? We have to keep up the pressure to ensure a fair deal for public sector workers. The best place to discuss that is at…

Next SOSiS Steering Committee Meeting
… where we’ll be discussing what next for the pensions campaign in Surrey.

Monday 12th December, 7.00pm
Trinity Methodist Church
Brewery Road, Woking

Please do come along and have your say in where we take the campaign next. If there are other things you’d like on the agenda, please let us know. We suspect that this might also be on the agenda:

Royal Holloway is Occupied – a critical time for the occupation
Royal Holloway students have been in occupation of the Management Corridor of the Founders’ Building for over a week. In that time, they have been in dialogue with the College Principal, Paul Layzell; as well as Professor Graham Smith of Royal Holloway UCU and Father Vlad, the college chaplain who talked about his time as a Soviet dissident, as well as Chris Leary from SOSiS talking about the value of trade unions and what the RHACA could do next.

The occupation – which has involved a broad layer of students – has been served with notice to leave. Layzell claims he’s been campaigning against “aspects” of the Government White Paper on Higher Education – we believe that he’s been pioneering a new type of “silent campaign” where he says nothing publicly and hopes that his ardent, passionate public silence will somehow convince the Government to climb down. The occupiers, less than impressed with this tactic, are demanding more visible action from their college leaders.

It’s vital that we support the occupation – for students, it’s their form of strike action. Find out more by visiting http://occupyrhul.blogspot.com

ACADEMIES MEETING TOMORROW
Don’t forget about the academies meeting tomorrow:

Should YOUR school become an “academy”?
Thursday 8th December, 7.00pm
Main Hall, Guildford College, Stoke Park Campus
Speakers from NUT, NASUWT, UNISON
Sponsored by Surrey County Council Trade Unions and Save Our Services in Surrey

And if we don’t see you before…
… have a very good Christmas break and we’ll see you refreshed (if slightly well fed!) in 2012.

Solidarity,

Save Our Services in Surrey

Picket lines on the day, organised by Surrey County UNISON and GMB members, will include all the main council offices:
• County Hall and Conquest House in Kingston
• Quadrant Court in Woking
• The Runnymede Centre in Addlestone
• Fairmount House in Leatherhead
• The Absolute Building in Frimley
• Omnibus (AO2) in Reigate
• St Francis Centre in Guildford
• The Council Depot in Merrow, Guildford

Schools being picketted on the day include:
• Clifton Hill School
• Jubilee High School
• Pond Meadow School
• Woodlands School
• Warwick School
• Christ’s College School
• Ridgeway School
• Starhurst School
• Limpsfield Grange School
• George Abbot School
• Reigate College School
• Linden Bridge School
• Hermitage School

Note: Where a school is closed our members will hold a token protest outside and take pictures. They will then travel on to one of the Surrey joint union rallies (see below).

There will be pickets at most of the FE Colleges.

Most picket lines will be active from around 7am till 10am (with local variations) and members will then travel to one of the Surrey rallies:

Woking (Meet behind BHS at 11.00am, rally 12.00 at Owen House, Heathside Crescent)
Leatherhead (Meet at the Red House Grounds, Station Road at 10.00am, rally 11.00am at Leatherhead Theatre, Church Street)
Kingston (Meet outside Kingston University, Penrhyn Road at 10.00am, rally 11.00am at Richard Mayo Centre, Eden Street)

Further details of the arrangements for the rallies can be found at: www.handsoffourpensions.org.uk

For press liaision on the day, contact Chris Leary 07851 303922 or email chris@surreycountyunison.org.uk (available on BlackBerry)

Picket lines will be manned from 7am onwards and a full list will be published here once unions have let us know.

There will also be rallies in the following places – more are planned and will be published here:

KINGSTON: March from outside Kingston University on Penrhyn Road – assemble at 9.30am for 10.00am start – rally at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Eden Street (opposite Kaatchi), 11.00am
LEATHERHEAD: Assemble for march outside Red House Grounds Park at 10.00am, rally at Leatherhead Theatre, 7 Church Street at 11.00am
WOKING: Assemble in the town centre at 10.00am – stay tuned for further information

Zena Dodgson (pictured left), UNISON Branch Secretary and Trade Union Facilitator in Surrey and Sussex NHS Trust, is facing attack from the management of the NHS Trust where she works – again.

Below is some information she has sent. She is asking anyone who can to email / write to the CEO of Surrey and Sussex NHS Trust, expressing our concerns.

Zena writes:

“The Trust intends to withdraw my elected Trade Union Facilitator (TUF) seconded post on 16th October.

This is an outrageous attack on union democracy, and on me personally.

The effect will be to weaken the Trade Unions Stewards’ Committee (TUSC) by curtailing its efficiency & effectiveness.

It will also deprive reps & staff of vital support at a time of unprecedented attack on NHS workers & the NHS itself.

The Trust has unilaterally moved outside the current process with ACAS which was agreed between all parties.

This is the 3rd attempt by the Trust to remove me from my elected post since 2008. (I was elected as TUF at its inception since 2005 & have been re-elected annually by TUSC colleagues ever since)

The Trust states this will not effect my Unison roles, but they have repeatedly refused to give me dedicated Unison facility time.

They intend to move me back to my original full time role which I left in 2005. I have 2 degenerative conditions covered by the DDA (Equality Act) which would preclude this now; 1 of these is work-related.

The Trust has discussed none of the above with either the TUSC or myself- all correspondence has taken place by email.”

Please express suitable outrage to the CEO – michael.wilson@sash.nhs.uk

Michael Wilson, Chief Executive Officer
Surrey & Sussex NHS Trust
Maple House
East Surrey Hospital
Canada Avenue
Redhill RH1 5RH
01737 768511, ext 6830

Members of the Surrey Library Action Movement, who have brought together library users and campaigners, trade unionists and students to save Surrey’s libraries from being turned into “volunteer-run” services, were lobbying the Cabinet to urge them to reconsider their proposals and start a meaningful consultation with the community over the future of Surrey’s library service.

Below is the video from GetSurrey.co.uk of the lively lobby, including Lee Godfrey from SLAM:

However, this does not mean that the campaign is over.

On October 1st, library activists across the county will be staging actions at local libraries, and converging on Woking Library at 2pm for a rally.

Local actions on the day, starting at 10:30am, include:

Bagshot Library
Music, food, paint your librarian, posters, banners and school children – and don’t forget the T-shirts, petition and questionnaire.

Byfleet Library
Posters are on display thoughout the village and West Byfleet village, there will be placards and banners – and children from both village schools will be presenting poems and postcodes to the librarians – and don’t forget the petition and questionnaire

Ewell Court Library
Banners, butting, music, the petition, questionnaire and craft activities – maybe even T-shirts.

Lingfield
There will be a protesters outside the library collecting signatures for the petition and the questionnaire – the local Observer has been advised.

And on October 11th, outside of the full County Council meeting which will make the final decision on the fate of the libraries, there will be a mass lobby and rally outside of County Hall in Kingston upon Thames, starting at 11:00am.

The number of threatened libraries has now risen from 11 to 19.

To build for and prepare for a number of planned rallies and demonstrations, a major public meeting has been called:

The GRAND SLAM Meeting
Tuesday 20th September
8pm
St Mary’s Centre for the Community, Byfleet, KT14 7LZ

For a full list of threatened libraries, more information about the campaign and to sign the petition click here.

The below was taken from the SLAM Update website – subscribe for updates on the campaign:

Surrey County Council have now made it clear that their “Public Value Review” study was a sham designed to hide their real intent of abandoning most of the small libraries in Surrey to the whim of volunteers.

They have finally declared that they will only properly support 33 libraries and the remaining 19 libraries will have their staff funding removed. The additional libraries are: Ash, Caterham Hill, Frimley Green, Hersham, Horsley, Knaphill, Lightwater, Shepperton & West Byfleet.

The recent audit into the PVR study said there were 22 “quartiling errors” which apparently gives an error rate of 2.82% – and then goes on to list 29 other errors out of their “sample tests” on 91 calculations but fails to mention that this gives a 31% error rate. They consider that this level of error means ”Some Improvement Needed”.

They also state that the errors do not significantly affect the results, but fail to mention that 3 out of the 13 libraries which should be selected are now excused – 23% are excluded but the PVR study fails to account for these exclusions.

Finally we discover that 19 libraries are threatened, but they bear almost no relationship at all to the bottom libraries “calculated” by the PVR study – which is clearly a deeply flawed farce. What almost all these libraries have in common is that they have the smallest number of borrowers – we didn’t need a “PVR” study to work that out.

Surrey County Council wish to wash their hands of almost all the small libraries in Surrey and this is their third attempt. Their first two attempts failed because there was a public outcry by the people of Surrey, so this time they invented a cheap and error ridden “number cruncher” to fool us into believing they were doing it mathematically.

We – and they – know their plans will not make any significant savings and the inevitable closures will cause serious harm to the economic and social life of the affected villages. We need to let Surrey County Council understand that their attempts to deliberately mislead the councillors and residents of Surrey are unacceptable and undemocratic – their constant claims to be “world class” are looking increasing sad.

The following motion was passed by the SOSiS Steering Committee at it’s meeting on Wednesday 10th August.

• 1 in 5 young people are unemployed
• 50% of black youth are unemployed
• There are only 0.5 million jobs for 2.5 million unemployed
• Young people face daily police harassment, stop and search
• Peaceful protests face kettling and police attacks
• Councils are cutting services for young people
• Tuition Fees hiked, Education Maintenance Allowance slashed

It is not surprising that young people are angry.

In Tottenham alone, 8 out of 13 youth clubs have closed. This government, with their friends in the city, is to blame.

But we will not defeat the government by rioting.

The destruction of homes and services only makes worse the problems our community faces. Rioting also impacts upon ordinary working class people working in public services such as firefighters and health workers. Many young people are alienated. Years of the neo-liberal agenda have eroded local communities.

Up and down the country the government and local councils are closing our libraries, cutting jobs, cutting education, cutting welfare benefits for the poor and cutting hospitals. If they are allowed to keep this up we will be worse off than our parent’s generation! But Britain isn’t a poor country. While we suffer massive cuts the bankers that caused this crisis have been given £7bn bonuses and the wealth of the richest 1% of the country has gone up 50% in the past 30 years!

Young people need to link with workers who are fighting back. The trade unions must offer a lead to Britain’s youth. 750,000 people demonstrated on the 26 March against the cuts. They were joined by hundreds of thousands of teachers, lecturers, jobcentre workers and other civil servants who took strike action on the 30 June against attacks on their pensions.

The unions, community and youth groups and anti-cuts alliances must join together to force this government out of office. Trade unions have to open their doors to young people and become relevant to them. A first step towards this would be if the TUC were to call a one-day general strike against the cuts to jobs, services, pay, conditions and pensions. This would be a rallying call to all those alienated and disenfranchised young people looking for a way to fight for their future.

• Defend services for young people
• Solidarity with those who lost their homes or were injured in the rioting.
• Solidarity with public sector workers, such as those in the fire service, the NHS and transport workers affected by these events.
• We call on trade unions to reach out to young people.

We call on trade unionists and young people to support the lobby of the TUC on Sept 11th – for the TUC to organise a one-day general strike to link up and channel the anger against the cuts

from Surrey County UNISON

You will be well aware of the current threat to existing library services in Surrey. The mobile library service is being axed and eleven local libraries threatened with closure if the local community does not take them over.

UNISON have been working extremely hard to raise public awareness of these issues and we have teamed up with library action groups and friends groups at most of the threatened libraries towards this aim. UNISON have been central to the publicity, including the very successful lobby of the council attended by over 100 library users and staff on 26th July. We have enlisted the famous childrens author, Alan Gibbons and are working alongside the Campaign for the Book, Voices for the Library and the Love Your Libraries campaigns. We have also enlisted the support of the Surrey Federation of Womens Institutes.

At the last action group meeting (involving representatives of 5 of the threatened libraries and UNISON), a motion was passed unanimously and all the interested parties (friends groups, action groups etc.) are being asked to pass the same motion to prove that the council is misleading people by saying there is ‘enthusiasm’ for the proposals. Please pass on to friends groups in your area.

UNISON are key players locally in the newly launched ‘Surrey Libraries Action Movement (SLAM)’ which brings together local library groups and other stakeholders and which will have its first meeting next Tuesday hosted by the Byfleet Library Action Group.

We are all clear that these eleven libraries will just be the start. If SCC get away with closing or farming out these libraries they will come for the rest. We want to broaden this campaign out further than just the eleven currently threatened libraries.

Please rush messages of solidarity to unison.sysxhealth@gmail.com

On Friday 8th July 2011, UNISON, along with 4 other Unions, lodged a formal Notice of Dispute against Surrey and Sussex NHS Trust.

This dispute relates, although not exclusively, to issues arising from the Trust’s failure to adhere to agreed policies and procedures.

These include:
• the Trust Recognition Agreement, Pay Protection Policy, and Grievance Procedure;
• failure to respond to Union queries regarding policies and procedures;
• failure to adhere to employment law, e.g. the Employment Relations Act and the Employment Rights Act;
• failure to adhere to Health and Safety legislation e.g. the Health and Safety At Work Act and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations;
• failure to consult with, and disclose information to, recognised Trade Unions, a breach of the Trade Unions and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act

This list is not exhaustive.

In particular, this dispute has been precipitated by the unilateral decision announced by the Trust to impose car parking charges on staff, amounting to a pay cut, which has highlighted the deficiencies in the Trust’s consultation and other processes. The Trust’s obdurate refusal to consult with recognised Trade Unions on this matter has left us no option but to lodge this dispute, and to seek the views of our members.

UNISON will therefore shortly be holding a consultative ballot of our members about charges for staff parking.

Additionally, the Unions have invited the Chief Executive and Trust Board Chair of Surrey and Sussex NHS Trust to a meeting to discuss this issue with Union representatives and our members. We hope to receive a positive response to this invitation.