Suffolk County Council has announced plans to make £65 million in spending cuts, including lopping £11m off the staffing budget, it revealed today. Responding to the news, UNISON Suffolk County branch secretary Neil Bland said: “Councils have spent the last decade slashing spending to the bone, cuts on this scale will take services in Suffolk past […]
suffolk
Redundancy-threatened Suffolk school staff have voted to strike to save their jobs, UNISON reveals today. The teaching assistants and midday supervisors at Pot Kiln Primary School in Sudbury voted 90% in favour of strikes. Pot Kiln wants to cut classroom assistant and midday supervisor numbers after running up a £75,000 deficit. School bosses say student […]
Suffolk care workers and their supporters will protest outside Thursday’s full council meeting demanding more is done to support social care. The union is ringing the alarm bell about the numbers of staff leaving the sector. A Skills for Care report last month showed that staff turnover rates for social care in England were at […]
UNISON has blocked a bid to drive down workers’ mileage claims at Suffolk County Council. The new policy took money from some of the council’s lowest-paid staff, said UNISON. Staff complained to their reps that the council was building a fictional commute in to their mileage allowance not allowing workers to claim until they had […]
Suffolk County Council workers rallied outside Endeavour House today for a UNISON protest against a new mileage policy that will take money from some of the lowest paid staff. Local Labour councillors and representatives of Ipswich TUC and Unite braved the wind and rain to join the demonstration outside Suffolk County Council HQ. Protesters held […]
UNISON Suffolk County has helped launch the Music Matters Coalition today to campaign to make music a priority for children and young people. The six-union coalition is conducting a survey asking school staff, music educators, parents, carers, pupils and the wider Suffolk community about which aspects of music education are important to them, particularly in […]
Closing Ipswich’s Tourist Information Centre would send the message that the town is “closed for business,” UNISON warns today. Ipswich Borough Council’s executive will consider a report tomorrow, giving the chief operating officer permission to close the centre, and lay off six workers, after a consultation. The Council is facing a £10m deficit because of […]
Council workers from the East of England lobbied local government chiefs in Bury St Edmunds today, calling for a real pay rise after a decade of austerity. Since 2009, council and school workers’ real-terms pay has dropped by 22%. UNISON, GMB and Unite submitted a pay claim last summer, asking for a 10% rise and […]
Preventing compulsory redundancies will be a priority Plans to axe more than half of Suffolk’s police community support officers (PCSOs) would put public safety at risk UNISON has told Suffolk Constabulary. The proposed cuts would see a 78% reduction in the number of PCSOs in the county since 2010. The number of PCSO posts will […]
26 October 2017 UNISON has condemned the appointment a private company, E-ZEC Medical, to run NHS patient transport service in Suffolk, Great Yarmouth and Waveney. The decision comes just weeks after a private ambulance company (Private Ambulance Service Ltd) operating in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire went bust leaving patients stranded and staff unpaid. The decision to […]