Oxford's best-performing trade union, supporting workers at Oxford City Council, Oxford Direct Services, Proudly working in partnership with NHS and University branches across Oxford for the benefit of all members and a greater UNISON for all.
Friday 25 April 2014
Monday 31 March 2014
Fair Pay Fortnight
|
|
|
|
Protest
on pay this week
UNISON will be holding two days of pay protest this week as part of Fair Pay Fortnight. Tuesday 1 April will see local government workers throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland stage their latest day of protest on the day their pay settlement was due. We are consulting our relevant local government workers, including those in schools, with a recommendation to reject the employers' 1% offer, and preparing for potential industrial action. Thursday 3 April will see health workers staging protests over the government's refusal to give them even a 1% pay award recommended by the independent pay review body. |
Wednesday 26 March 2014
£20 Voucher Gift When You Recruit a Member
If you are a UNISON member and you recruit a UNISON member for the Oxford City Branch you will received £20 in vouchers.
All you have to do is give someone who is not a member an application form; write your name at the top of it. And when they submit that form with your name on it and become a paying member you will be contacted to receive the vouchers.
The vouchers will be from any high street brand of your choice.
You can pick up Application Forms from kitchens or contact our Recruitment Officer Pól Ó Ceallaigh via email or telephone 01865 252013.
All you have to do is give someone who is not a member an application form; write your name at the top of it. And when they submit that form with your name on it and become a paying member you will be contacted to receive the vouchers.
The vouchers will be from any high street brand of your choice.
You can pick up Application Forms from kitchens or contact our Recruitment Officer Pól Ó Ceallaigh via email or telephone 01865 252013.
Monday 24 February 2014
Lump Sum offer to buy out of enhancement rights
Following a ballot; UNISON and UNITE opted into a five year
pay deal with Oxford City Council employers for their members.
One of the aspects of this pay deal involved the possibility
of selling your rights of enhancements you receive such as overtime and weekend
working.
What this means, if you accept a lump sum payment you will
forfeit your right to enhanced payments and any subsequent weekend work or
overtime will result in only basic pay, not at the enhanced rate.
This is your
individual decision to make.
UNISON members AGREED with the decision to give members this
opportunity: whether you decide to or not is a decision that can only be made
by you.
You will receive a letter from Human Resources that outlines
how much lump sum they are willing to offer you if you wish to take up the
opportunity.
Advantages of choosing lump sum:
Ø
Cash lump sum, based on the average amounts of
what you have been paid in the past.
Ø
Future payments of enhancements and overtime
will be pensionable meaning you will be paying more into your Pension.
Disadvantages of choosing lump sum:
Ø
You lose future benefit of enhanced payments
Ø
If you are in the Pension Scheme and you
do not continue to be paid enhanced payments that become pensionable; then, you will not
benefit from these additional contributions when you retire.
Ø
Lump sum is subject to tax and national
insurance just like the enhanced payments.
The offer is available to you until 7th March
2014 – if you choose to accept the Lump Sum you will need to return the slip at
the bottom of the letter that Human Resources will send you.
If you have any questions, please speak to your UNISON representative or contact the Branch Office
on 01865 252522
Monday 17 February 2014
PENSIONS URGENT UPDATE
URGENT
UPDATE
Local Government
Pension Scheme (LGPS)
2014 England and Wales
The Regulations changing the LGPS in England and Wales will come into force with effect from 1 April
2014.
A final
reminder that anyone who has currently opted out of the LGPS (England and Wales) but wants to ensure the
earnings link protection on any final salary benefits they have earned up to
April 2014 (there may be some protection for those who opt back in within 5
years of opting out) MUST rejoin immediately. If the cost of the
contributions is a problem then they should be reminded that from April there
will be an option to pay half their normal contribution rate for half the
pension. They should approach their employer’s pension department and ensure
that the forms to rejoin have been returned and received by the pensions
department before the end of this month. If they are not actively contributing
to the scheme then any benefits they earned before they opted out, that fall outside the proposed five year
window protection to opt back in, will go up in line with prices (currently
Consumer Price Index) not earnings.
Anyone in the LGPS (England and Wales) thinking
of paying Additional Voluntary Contributions to maximise tax free lump sum
payment when they retire (so they don’t have to exchange so much of their
pension for cash at the relatively poor exchange rate of £12 cash £1 pension) should
elect to pay the contributions BEFORE April 2014. Members should also
ensure that the election form is in the hands of their employer or their
Pension Fund Administering Authority before 1 April 2014.
If members elect to pay after April (or if their forms are received late)
then when they retire they are likely only to be able to take part of their AVC
fund as a cash sum (currently 25% of the value). They will have to buy extra
pension from the LGPS, or at whatever the
annuity rates will be in the future, from a
pension provider such as an insurance company. Members, especially those near
retirement, should consider paying AVC’s if they can afford it and approach
their employer pensions department for details of the AVC arrangement operated
by their employer/LGPS fund. They can as an alternative buy extra pension in
the LGPS.
LGPS transitional
regulations update
These
Regulations have been delayed due to the Government debating whether
Councillors should continue to be allowed to join the LGPS. However, as far as we are aware, the
protections that were agreed as part of the negotiations on the new LGPS scheme
are all included. UNISON has been involved in drafting the regulations.
As drafted
the regulations would mean the 'rule of 85' protection will go over into the LGPS
2014 unchanged. So any part of a person's service currently covered by the rule
of 85 would not be reduced for early payment if s/he decides to retire at 60,
unless they have not completed enough service by that time to satisfy the rule,
or the member has tapered protection.
Those who
voluntarily decide to retire between the age of 55 and 60 with full or part protection
for the rule of 85, would have an early retirement reduction unless the
employer agreed to pay to remove it. There is still fine tuning to be done
about the level of the reduction in such cases. We think that UNISON has been
successful in arguing that the reduction will only count back from age 60, not
65, (or from the date the member attains the 85 year rule if after age 60), but
this will be confirmed when the regulations are laid.
We also
expect that the current definition of final pay and protections on pay will
remain the same for all service up to April 2014. Underpinning protection for
those who were within 10 years of their normal retirement age at April 2012 is
also in the current draft.
UNISON is
pushing for the transitional regulations to be laid as soon as possible, to
remove uncertainty. We are concerned that, because of the delay in bringing the
transitional regulations into law, some members are considering leaving the
scheme or even resigning their jobs - under the false impression that the
protections will not be implemented and the equally false impression that
leaving the scheme would somehow protect their past service rights in the LGPS.
All those
who want to ensure the final earnings protection on their LGPS service to April
2014, should make sure they are contributing to the LGPS when the regulations
change in April.
Local Government Pension Scheme
(Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2014
These
regulations were finally were laid before Parliament on Friday, 17 January; to
come into force on 10 February. They make a number of technical amendments
including clarifying the employer duties for automatic enrolment and
re-enrolment of staff into the LGPS. The Explanatory Memorandum carries further
detail and this is available to download along with the Statutory Instrument
(SI 2014/44) from the OPSI website - www.opsi.gov.uk .
LGPS Shadow Scheme Advisory Board
The LGPS Shadow
Scheme Advisory Board has issued a report on the call for evidence on fund
mergers and methods to increase efficiency this can be found at: http://www.lgpsboard.org. UNISON was
the only union to submit a response and this helped influence the shape of the
report and recommendations. We expect the government to produce and options
paper on fund mergers and other options in the coming months.
The board is
seeking a legal opinion on a range of issues such as who is responsible for
paying benefits should a fund go bust and in whose interests are funds
invested? We expect the opinion to inform the forthcoming governance
regulations, which will set procedures for running the scheme at national and
fund level in the future.
Monday 20 January 2014
Petition to oppose cuts to Support Fund to local Advice Centres
You
may already be aware that the County Council is proposing to cut its Support
Fund with effect from April 2014 and to end advice centre funding from April
2015. The Support Fund provides emergency help to those in dire need,
using money which was delegated by the Department of Works and Pensions last
year. Advice Centres in Oxfordshire provide in-depth advice, support and
advocacy for those living in the most deprived areas of the county, in order to
maximise their income, claim any benefits and credits to which they are
entitled and reduce their debts.
Anneliese
Dodds, who chairs Rose Hill & Donnington Advice Centre has
set up an on-line petition to oppose these cuts: we would be very grateful if
you would sign it and forward it to others who you think might sign it
too. The link is as follows:
Thursday 28 November 2013
Chief Executive talks to the Guardian
Bit of a late "news" story we know but we would like to welcome the comments in the article especially the quotes attributed towards UNISON.
The article was released in the Guardian on 02/10/2013 and includes many direct quotations from Peter Sloman http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/02/peter-sloman-oxford-city-council-houses
"We have demonstrated that you don't need to privatise services. We've also proved that you can motivate people. We do not want to see our services externalised to a for-profit organisation. We should be an exemplar for running those services,"
"For me, if you want to get the best out of the public service workforce, you're not going to do it by privatising them, by handing them over to companies they can see are not as able to manage services locally as the council themselves,"
There were favourable references to our Pay Deal but with no attributable quote.
UNISON feels the attributable quotes about not needing to privatise services are a welcome assertion; however, UNISON does recognise that the sentence 'We do not want to see our services externalised to a for-profit organisation' does complicate the message.
Does this mean that we have demonstrated that we don't need to privatise services; but if we do, they can only be to non-profit organisations, like Fusion?
What does this say about "part-privatisation"? Using Capita as an ever increasing "overflow" for the Contact Centre or Mouchel for administration tasks. Are these "for profit organisations" and do they pay the Living Wage? How do we know they are "exemplar for running those services"?
UNISON does sympathise with the complexities of these issues and can see how newspapers can blur quotations and mis-represent particular key points. But, we would like to see some clarification regarding (what we can see as) the blurred message which can be in the form of a re-asserted rebuke and a re-affirmation that at Oxford City Council:
THERE WILL BE NO PRIVATISATION OF SERVICES.
The article was released in the Guardian on 02/10/2013 and includes many direct quotations from Peter Sloman http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/02/peter-sloman-oxford-city-council-houses
"We have demonstrated that you don't need to privatise services. We've also proved that you can motivate people. We do not want to see our services externalised to a for-profit organisation. We should be an exemplar for running those services,"
"For me, if you want to get the best out of the public service workforce, you're not going to do it by privatising them, by handing them over to companies they can see are not as able to manage services locally as the council themselves,"
There were favourable references to our Pay Deal but with no attributable quote.
UNISON feels the attributable quotes about not needing to privatise services are a welcome assertion; however, UNISON does recognise that the sentence 'We do not want to see our services externalised to a for-profit organisation' does complicate the message.
Does this mean that we have demonstrated that we don't need to privatise services; but if we do, they can only be to non-profit organisations, like Fusion?
What does this say about "part-privatisation"? Using Capita as an ever increasing "overflow" for the Contact Centre or Mouchel for administration tasks. Are these "for profit organisations" and do they pay the Living Wage? How do we know they are "exemplar for running those services"?
UNISON does sympathise with the complexities of these issues and can see how newspapers can blur quotations and mis-represent particular key points. But, we would like to see some clarification regarding (what we can see as) the blurred message which can be in the form of a re-asserted rebuke and a re-affirmation that at Oxford City Council:
THERE WILL BE NO PRIVATISATION OF SERVICES.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
2024 Annual General Meeting
2024 Annual General Meeting Thursday 28 March 2024 15:00 till 16:00 St Aldates Tavern, St Aldates or online via Teams One of the most ...
-
The team involved in negotiating over the 'new' Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) from 2014 has been considering whether to pro...
-
2024 Annual General Meeting Thursday 28 March 2024 15:00 till 16:00 St Aldates Tavern, St Aldates or online via Teams One of the most ...
-
Please note on Monday 30 October the UNISON office in the Town Hall will be closed to all for one week for essential maintenance work If you...