Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
By a local government member of Unison Cymru
Councils facing a cliff edge
It was two years ago that Northamptonshire Tory Council invoked a Section 114 notice- under this measure they were indicating they could only afford to spend money on essential services – in other words they had run out of money and were in effect declaring themselves bankrupt. Given that the financial situation of most councils in England, Wales and Scotland is considerably worse than in pre-pandemic 2018, Northamptonshire may have been the first (for twenty years) to declare themselves bankrupt but they certainly will not be the last if mass opposition is not built to oppose council cuts.
Unison estimates that there is a current shortfall in funding of councils of £10billion for 2020/21 and this figure is growing day by day as councils have to fund shortfalls in income such as loss of charges and taxes and increased expenditure due to Covid-19 but are not fully reimbursed for this by central government or by the Welsh and Scottish devolved governments.
It is calculated by Unison that if £10 billion of cuts were made equally to all council services £1.9b would be slashed from children services, £1.1b from Environmental Services (which includes cleansing and refuse collection), £3.5b from adult social care (that is already in crisis). The devastating reality of these cuts could be a loss of 51,000 children’s social workers, 141,000 adult care workers and 46,000 refuse workers. If the funding of social care (as has been the case in the past) and public health was protected other services such as housing, planning and environmental services would face cuts of 54%!
Unison not putting pressure on councils to fight cuts
The above devastating shortfall in funding to councils coming as it does after ten years of Tory cuts passed on by SNP in Scotland and Labour Welsh government to councils will be a potential extinction event for many councils.
While the dinosaurs could not be blamed for not seeing the asteroid coming and of not understanding the impact it would have and even if they did they could not do anything about it that is not the case with Labour, Plaid or SNP councillors they were fully aware of the consequences of administering Tory cuts for council services and the working class communities they were elected to serve.
The Tories to date have successfully used Labour, Plaid and SNP councillors to do their dirty work for them. Labour councillors have been compliant in assisting the Tories in reducing council budgets to line the pockets of their super-rich friends. They also by disillusioning working class and middle-class voters contributed towards the Tory general election victory last year.
However despite their protestations to the contrary there is something councillors can do to stop council cuts but unfortunately to date Unison which is affiliated to the Labour Party and the biggest local authority trade union has not called on Labour councillors to refuse to implement Tory cuts and has not even attempted to organise national action to defend council jobs and services.
Motions to Unison’s National Conference or Local Government conference calling for national action against council cuts or even to contemplate national action are ruled out of order (and never debated by conference) on grounds of legal jeopardy. If Unison’s bureaucracy spent as much effort defending council services as they do try to prevent the union discussing it, we would be in a far better place. The reality is the current national leadership have not put any pressure on Labour councillors to refuse to implement cuts.
Unison currently has no strategy to defeat the cuts other than to ask Tory Ministers and lobby tory MP’s to find the additional resources to fund the shortfall. The evidence is clear good arguments about the merits of local government will not win the day, the Tories want to dismantle and reduce the cost of local government as much as they can get away with. With no threat of national industrial action there is no pressure on this Tory government to make a U-turn as they have on many other issues.
Unison needs a leadership that has a strategy to defeat the cuts
Unison needs a strategy to defeat Tory cuts and of the candidates standing to be the new General Secretary of Unison only Hugo Pierre has the programme that can achieve this.
Hugo would ensure that the union’s energies were focused on how to organise national action to defeat the cuts rather than the current leadership who spend their time finding a way to stop it happening.
He also calls for Labour, SNP and Plaid councils to implement needs-led No Cuts budgets and for councils to join with Unison and the other local authority unions and other councils to build a mass campaign of opposition to Tory cuts. If Labour councillors and MP’s and MS’s in Wales backed cuts, then Hugo says Unison should withdraw funding from these individuals. Very importantly if Labour councillors etc wont implement Unison policy then Hugo calls for branches to have the right to decide democratically to support other labour movement candidates who will – even if they are not in the Labour Party.
At present little pressure is put on these Labour Blairite and other councillors to defend council services by Unison with some notable exceptions at branch level particularly where Socialist Party Unison members have an influence. This would not change if one of the other candidates was successful because even if they wished to put pressure on councillors (they don’t mention that they want to do this) they don’t have the programme to do it. It would be business as usual for Labour councillors doing the Tories bidding.
Only Hugo has the programme to fight and defeat Tory cuts. The Tories have found an orchard of money trees to bail out big business a fraction of this cost would fully fund councils but if they won’t feed hungry children at the cost of £20m in England they won’t fully fund councils without mass coordinated national action. Vote for the only candidate that will lead that fight. Vote for Hugo Pierre
- Rules introduced by Unison to clamp down on democratic debate in the union mean that candidates for union elections cannot ‘invite or accept’ support ‘in money or kind’ from any entity which ‘is not provided for in Unison rules’. These articles are produced without the authorisation of Hugo Pierre, in order to comply with these requirements.
