The council’s frontline workers must not be made scapegoats for the errors of highly paid executive directors and the council’s leadership, trades union Unite has warned.
Unite says it will not accept a reduction in their staff’s employment terms
Unite represents staff in parks, social services and CCTV.
The union also has hundreds more members operating for Croydon’s sub-contractors including waste services, leisure, education and housing, who are all potentially affected by the council’s financial crisis following this week’s issuing of the Section 114 notice, effectively admitting the borough has run out of money.
“Any attempt to reduce workers’ terms and conditions and or cut hours will be fully resisted by Unite,” Clare Keogh, the union’s regional officer, said.
“Council workers must not be forced to pay for the government’s and the local authorities financial mismanagement with their jobs.”
Clare Keogh: four-day weeks not acceptable to her union
Since May, the council has been going through a process of making 15 per cent of its staff redundant, with some departments losing a quarter of their job roles. More than 400 posts at the council have been “deleted” as a result.
In a statement issued by the union, they say that they are alarmed at suggestions that the council could move to a four-day week, as first exclusively revealed by Inside Croydon.
“It is not in the interests of the workforce or local residents for such cuts to be made,” Keogh said. “Council workers who are dedicated to providing a first-class service to local residents have seen their pay fall by over 20 per cent in real terms in a decade due to the politics of austerity.
“Further cuts are totally unacceptable.
“The real villains of the piece are successive Conservative governments which have starved local government of funding and then appear puzzled when a once-in-a-century pandemic pushes councils over the financial precipice.”
Read more: Council forced to declare itself bankrupt
Read more: What is a S114 notice? What will it mean for the council?
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A “Negrini” needs to be a unit of measurement in this conversation.
Tony Newman, Alison Butler and Paul Scott are members of Unite and were part of the administration that drove Croydon’s finances off a cliff; they should do the honourable thing and resign as councillors.