Welcome to the website of Barnet TUC (Barnet trades council)
Next meeting: tbc. For info email info@barnettuc.org.uk.
Barnet Alliance for Public Services: visit the anti-cuts campaign website
Support Tindle newspapers strike!
Visit the NUJ journalists' blog here.
Message of support sent from Barnet trades council:
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Dear brothers and sisters,
We are writing with a heartfelt expression of support for your industrial action beginning on 19 April.
We understand that you are striking to protest against non-filling of posts. All trade unionists can relate to the intolerable pressures that are being put on staff to work harder in order to cover for colleagues made redundant and not replaced.
Your refusal not to accept this state of affairs is impressive and courageous, and we will do whatever we can to promote awareness of your dispute and the ways that fellow trade unionists in Barnet and wider can support you.
We particularly want to put on record our support for the journalists at the Barnet Press. For many years they have covered many of our campaigns and events involving local trade unionists, always with a desire to understand and fairly represent our concerns. They have shown an impressive feel for the real political currents in the borough. We feel this has been invaluable in upholding standards of local democracy and scrutiny of elected representatives.
If the number of journalists covering stories continues to be low that vital function of the local press will be lost and Barnet will become a far poorer place to live in as a result.
We are proud to offer you our solidarity.
Barnet TUC (trades council)
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BARNET ON THE MARCH... Saturday 26 March...
Defend public services! No to cuts and privatisation!
Trade union members, friends, work colleagues, families, community groups and residents from Barnet marched together as a community. Pictures here and here.
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No to cuts, no to privatisation, no to easyCouncil!
Barnet Alliance for Public Services
Sign the statement (individuals, campaigns, organisations):
Barnet Alliance for Public Services statement
We champion democratically accountable, high quality public services. We reject the idea that public services should be cut in order to bail out the banks.
We reject Barnet council’s plans for mass outsourcing of its services – no to easyCouncil!
We oppose privatisation and cuts to public services, whether NHS, education, or local authority, and will resist them.
We oppose free schools and the extension of academies.
We note that the council reversed its unpopular decision to pay the council leader and cabinet members higher allowances. This shows that public pressure works!
URGENT: No new academies!
Barnet council is pushing its schools to become academies. We want to defend an integrated, publicly accountable school system in Barnet, and oppose the drive to academy status. If you want to help the campaign, please email barnet@antiacademies.org.uk. Visit the Barnet Anti Academies Alliance website for more on the campaign to keep Barnet schools democratically accountable and in the Local Education Authority.
The council unions have issued a statement on the issue. Read it here.
No to privatisation - including by the back door! Defend public services!
Barnet Unison branch secretary John Burgess and Lambeth Unison branch secretary Jon Rogers have an article in the Guardian newspaper.
It is a reply to recent articles about the choice voters are supposed to make between Barnet council's 'easyCouncil model' and Lambeth council's 'John Lewis model' of delivering local services.
The article poses a third alternative to Tory privatisation and New Labour pseudo-mutualism: good public services, retained in-house!
Barnet council's Future Shape plans - anything but easy
You can download the Future Shape report and other documents, passed at Barnet Council's cabinet meeting on 21st October, from the council website here. Other items on the agenda were the Brent Cross regeneration scheme and the council's response to the recession.
Barnet council joint trade unions respond to Guardian reports of the administration's plans for Barnet "easyCouncil"
Barnet Joint Trade Unions Press Release: 28 Aug 2009
“Tories adopt budget airline service model”(Guardian 28 Aug 2009)
The Joint Trade unions would like to express our extreme concerns that any decisions about the future of public services in Barnet have been already made.
Consultation on the Future Shape project has been going on for the past 14 months. In December last year, Cabinet agreed a model which proposed to transfer most of the council’s services to another employer leaving a small core of staff to carry out a commissioning function.
On the 6th July 09 Barnet Council Cabinet Committee rejected the mass outsourcing model.
It is therefore disappointing to read a substantial article in a national newspaper which states the Council is suggesting public services could be run as effectively as the “easyJet/Ryanair model”.
This is the same Ryanair who are “looking at the possibility of installing a coin slot on the lavatory door so that people might actually have to spend a pound to spend a penny.”
Public services are accountable to the tax payer and those requiring public services. It is important that those providing services are providing quality and delivering efficiencies which are then reinvested back into frontline services such as schools and social care services.
It is disappointing to read on the front page of today’s Guardian that the “council plans to make savings by outsourcing services and reducing the size of its 3,500 strong workforce.”
We have previously been told that Future Shape is not a return to the 1980s (‘Life on Mars’) of CCT which saw the mass sell-off of council services, which subsequently failed to deliver quality or value for money and had to be brought back in-house, all at the expense of the local tax payers.
The Trade Unions believe that directly employed staff are best able to provide high quality and accountable public services to residents. We would add that central government needs to allow councils greater financial freedoms to be able to deliver public services.
Contact: john.burgess@barnetunison.org.uk
APPEAL: Trade unions raising funds to pay for expert advice on Future Shape
When Future Shape was first proposed, Barnet council accepted that the council trade unions would need expert advice to help them prepare their response. The council agreed to fund work by the unions’ chosen expert: Professor Dexter Whitfield. Then the council decided that it didn't like the advice that Professor Whitfield has been giving the unions, and decided to cut the funding.
The unions have decided to raise the money themselves to pay for Professor Whitfield’s services, and have launched a fundraising drive. In contrast to the staggering £130,000 that the council paid PricewaterhouseCoopers for work on the initial Future Shape report [as at September, the amount the council has spent on preparing Future Shape stands at £2.5 million and that figure is set to rise], Professor Whitfield’s services in the next period will cost just £8,025. We have already had pledges for some of that money. If you have any fundraising ideas, please get in touch — we are organising a local band night, among other events.
Anyone wishing to make a donation please email FutureShape@barnettuc.org.uk for our postal address and/or bank details. Thank you.
 Future Shape - it IS pear-shaped!
The administration in London Borough of Barnet is planning wholesale changes to the way services are delivered (in short, they would like to privatise a large proportion, with the council itself reduced to a so-called 'strategic hub' looking at 'big picture' issues such as obesity and climate change - or so the rhetoric goes!). They have embarked on discussions about this, called 'Future Shape'.
Check Barnet Unison website www.barnetunison.me.uk for details of the council unions' response to 'Future Shape'.
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