Dear member
This is a very difficult, maybe even the most difficult, letter that UNISON Yorkshire Ambulance Branch have had to write. As a branch we acknowledge the many concerns that our members have around the workforce plan and fully understand and share your frustrations.
The government, despite stating that there would be no cuts in NHS budgets, have cut the funding to Yorkshire Ambulance Service forcing reductions of £50 million over the next five years. With the sheer size of these cuts, on top of ‘savings’ that have been made year on year, it was always going to be extremely difficult and challenging times.
Initially there was a real prospect of hundreds of redundancies to meet the Government’s forced cuts but after extensive negotiations by UNISON these have been avoided.
The workforce plan is far from perfect but it gives:
- job security for all members over the next 5 years
- 5 years protection on AfC terms and conditions
- 5 years protection for all affected band 4 members
- funded and structured training programme for all levels from Assistant Practitioner to Paramedic.
If the workforce plan had been rejected, the monies secured this financial year for the 5 year enhanced protection for band 4s and the funding for training Assistant Practitioners to become paramedics would have been lost. In all probability the monies would be used instead to fund redundancies, that, as stated in previous correspondence, is the only reason UNISON could not recommend rejection.
Our responsibility is to you, our members, and to ensure that we act in such a manner as to tackle your main concerns. UNISON regularly surveys it’s members and survey after survey tells us that members’ main concern is their job security. As the main union for ambulance and health service members we are very much aware of the detrimental changes many employers across the NHS have been making across the country.
In these negotiations we did everything possible to protect your jobs, your pay and your Agenda for Change terms and conditions. At the end of the process we conducted an indicative ballot of our members and you decided reluctantly to accept the workforce proposals.
However, since then our Branch and our negotiators have been subjected to a campaign of vilification and untruthful claims by individuals purporting to represent Unite. The false and malicious postings on various social media sites and their attempts to mislead UNISON members into joining Unite deserve to be condemned. Individuals making them should be held accountable for their defamatory actions and we intend to make sure that we use whatever legal process we feel appropriate to address this.
There are still difficult times ahead and due to the Trust recently de-recognising the other trade union, Unite, UNISON members are now the only people with a voice within Yorkshire Ambulance service and will be for the length of the 5 year recognition agreement.
It is not easy to represent and defend the jobs and services of public service staff in the current climate of attacks on public services, not least the NHS by the Coalition Government, the press and media. The least we would expect is that Trade Union colleagues behave responsibly and honestly, regrettably the individuals locally representing Unite seem incapable of acting in such a manner.
In order that everyone is clear about UNISON’s actions on this matter we feel it appropriate to inform you what happened.
Relations between YAS and Unite have been strained for some time. Although attempts had been made by YAS, including mediation to improve partnership working nothing seemed to work. Unite have sat through and been a part of all of the negotiations around the 5 year plan and have made few objections and actually agreed too many parts of the proposals. It is only since UNISONs acceptance of the proposal that Unite the union have changed their view on many parts of the final offer.
YAS rightly or wrongly felt that they could no longer work with, or negotiate with, Unite and they were formally derecognised.
When this happened Unite turned to UNISON for help in this matter. UNISON’s Regional Secretary immediately wrote to the Trust asking them to re-recognise Unite. He also instructed our Regional Organiser to meet with the Trust management and press the case for the re-recognition of Unite which our Regional Organiser, Ray Gray and our Branch Secretary, Bryn Webster, did.
Despite all of our approaches the YAS management were not prepared to re-recognise Unite and confirmed this to our Regional Secretary in a letter. It is the fact that UNISON representatives were making such efforts to try and get Unite re-recognised which makes us even more angry at the deceitful and underhand actions of the individuals referred to above. We felt that you should be aware of the full information not just the select, twisted and untrue statements of a few individuals.
Whilst we accept that it is an individual choice as to what, if any, trade union people choose to belong to, it would be remiss of us not to point out the pitfalls of belonging to one which is not recognised by your employer. As a member of a non-recognised trade union/organisation you can be represented on an individual issues like grievance or disciplinary, however, as they are not recognised for collective matters such as bargaining, they are not able to attend any committees such as the JSG and have no way of influencing the employer or shaping the future for their members.
The UNISON Branch Committee urge all Ambulance Service staff to join UNISON, to help us continue to defend the NHS, fight to save jobs and build on what is already the best terms and conditions of any ambulance service. We can only do that from a position of strength and that means we need to join together in one organisation which will represent members’ best interests. We therefore urge all non-UNISON members to join us now.
You can join UNISON online at www.unison.org.uk/join or phone UNISON Direct on 0845
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