Welcome to the website of Barnet TUC (Barnet trades council)
Next Barnet trades council meeting: Wednesday 8 September, 7.30-9pm, venue tbc. For more details email info@barnettuc.org.uk.
No to cuts, no to easyCouncil!
Lobby of the council, 6-6.45pm, Tuesday 14 September
Hendon Town Hall, the Burroughs, London NW4 4GB.
Public launch meeting of Barnet Alliance for Public Services
Thursday 23 September, Emerald Suite, North London Business Park, Oakleigh Road South, London N11 1GN
Meeting starts at 7pm, but there will be refreshments available from 6.30pm for people coming from work.
Residents and people working in Barnet welcome. Plenty of time to discuss plans.
Guest speakers include: Paul Mason, Newsnight journalist (personal capacity), Alasdair Smith, Anti Academies Alliance
We will be publicising this meeting and the campaign at street stalls throughout the borough on Saturdays 4, 11 and 18 September. If you would like to help with stalls or would like more information about the meeting please email info@barnettuc.org.uk
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 demand that Barnet council reverses its recent decision to pay the council leader and cabinet members higher allowances.
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.
Support the British Airways cabin crew!
This Unite leaflet front and back explains the issues in the dispute.
Middlesex University Philosophy department update
Details of the campaign below. The current situation is that the graduate (research) school - the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy - has been taken on by Kingston University. 4 of the 6 Middlesex philosophy staff and postgraduate students that want to go will move to Kingston University.
There are no more admissions to the philosophy department at Middlesex, although two staff might remain to "teach out" the remaining undergraduates.
There's no question that this has been an important campaign against education cuts and the marketisation of education. It won't be the last...
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The management at Middlesex University decided to axe their world-renowned philosophy department. While the department is very successful - philosophy is the highest research-rated subject in the university - it just doesn't make quite as much money as other departments. The staff and students were told the shocking news on 26 April.
The staff and students set up an online petition, which you can sign here.
The students were due to have a meeting with the Arts Dean Edward Esche on Tuesday 4 May in the morning, and assembled in the boadroom. He did not turn up. Angry at this, the students occupied the boardroom and resolved to wait for him. He did not come. The students settled in for an occupation of the boardroom and then took over the entire admin block at the Trent Park campus.
The students issued an open letter to staff and other students at the university. It ends:
Our protest and occupation is peaceful. The administration has called the police out to Trent Park twice; both times they left within a half hour, having decided that no laws were being broken and their presence was not necessary. The occupation has not interrupted the studies of any students and we encourage you, whether you are officially tied to Middlesex or not, to join or visit us here. This is an open, safe space and everyone will be warmly welcomed. We are organizing various cultural, political and academic events over the weekend. You are all invited to participate. Information about this can be found at: savemdxphil.com.
Universities are not businesses, and education is not a commodity – it is a human right and a public service. Education did not cause this crisis, and must not be sacrificed to pay for it. Anonymous messages of support continue to come in from staff and we stand united against management’s program of slash and burn.
The occupation continued for nine days before the university got an injunction against it. The students and staff continued and are continuing their campaign. The UCU branch at the university is now officially in dispute with management over the college suspending 3 members of staff. Four students have also been suspended.
Visit the campaign website here. Please support the campaign and help defend education! Save Middlesex Philosophy!
Faculty staff and students at Hendon Campus on 5 May:
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REPORT: Defend public services demonstration
The National Pensioners Convention (NPC) organised a march on Saturday 10 April to defend public services. Elderly people are feeling the pain already, with attacks on sheltered housing. Barnet TUC and Barnet residents joined the march. The march was backed by many national trade unions.
Picture below:
REPORT: Barnet trades council annual general meeting
Barnet trades council met at Hendon Town Hall on Thursday 25 March for its annual general meeting. Guest speakers included Mick Shaw, President of the Fire Brigades Union. We voted to support the BA cabin crew in their dispute, the civil servants fighting the abolition of the Civil Service Compensation Scheme, and to join Unite Against Fascism and step up our anti-fascist work.
There is a report of the meeting in the Hendon Times. See website here.
Below: 1. civil servants discuss their dispute; 2. Mick Shaw, FBU president (centre), Austin Harney, Barnet TUC secretary (left), Helen Davies, Barnet TUC chair (right)
Defend Barnet College - no to the planned cuts!
More news as we get it of the planned cuts at Barnet FE college that could mean as many as 100 members of staff losing their jobs.
Picture courtesy of Barnet Unison: UCU college lecturers' union in London called a demonstration to protest against education cuts, Saturday 20 March. Barnet trade unionists attended.
Support the civil service strikes against the plan for sackings - next strike: Weds 24 March
The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) will take another day's strike action on Wednesday 24 March, budget day, to protest against the government's unilateral decision to downgrade their redundancy scheme (CSCS).
165 MPs, from all parties, but including 112 from the governing Labour Party, have signed an Early Day Motion (no. 251) opposing the ending of the CSCS.
Here is a report from the Barnet Press of the successful strike on 8-9 March. Below: picture of the march from the Imperial War Museum to Westminster.
Successful two-day national strike, Monday 8 and Tuesday 9 March; the background:
On Monday 8 and Tuesday 9 March up to 250,000 PCS members will be taking strike action in defence of the Civil Service Compensation Scheme, which is our redundancy scheme. These are expected to be followed by further action during March, and an overtime ban will also commence at this time.
The cuts in the compensation scheme are a thinly veiled move to make it much cheaper to cut tens of thousands of jobs and privatise huge sections of the civil service - this would also mean the decimation of essential public services.
DWP North London PCS Branch members will be picketing from 7.30am on the strike days outside Jobcentres in Wood Green, Tottenham, Edmonton, Enfield, Palmers Green, Finchley, Barnet, Hendon and Edgware; with a national demonstration taking place in Central London on Tuesday 9 March. Assemble 11.30am at Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, next to the Imperial War Museum, St George's Road, SE1; march to Westminster Cathedral Hall for a rally at 1pm. Please come down and support us.
Messages of support can be sent to dwpnorthlondonpcs@googlemail.com. As the majority of our members are very low-paid, and many are part-time, donations to our hardship fund are welcomed - please bring these to our picket lines or send cheques payable to 'DWP North London PCS Branch' to PCS Branch Treasurer, Hendon Jobcentre Plus, Crown Building, 10 Finchley Lane, London NW4 1DP.
Download Barnet trades council press release supporting the strikes here.
Download a leaflet for the demonstration on 9 March 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 a new 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!
Sheltered housing campaign...
Sheltered housing residents from Barnet won their legal case against Barnet council, who were found not to have complied with the Disability Discrimination Act when they decided to cut the wardens from sheltered housing. Barnet decided not to appeal, but is planning to run its consultation again to comply with the law. While Barnet's sheltered housing is safe this year, therefore, it will be under threat again - as soon as the elections are out of the way. Keep checking back for campaign dates. Thank you.
Email wardens@barnettuc.org.uk for details. David Young, Barnet resident and a key organiser of the campaign, says:
“We have got to save our Wardens and sheltered housing for the elderly now, and for our children in the future. The alternative will be to stay at home with your family if you have one, or move into a care home. The party leaders must give us a yes or no answer.”
Kingsley Court residents say to all the main parties: No warden, no vote!
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.
Council unions, Barnet trades council, and residents opposed to the Future Shape privatisation lobbied outside Hendon Town Hall, the Burroughs, and several questions were tabled by the public. We also launched the manifesto for the public services. For more details email manifesto@barnettuc.org.uk.
 
A manifesto for the public services
Barnet council trade unions, Barnet trades council, and a number of residents have launched a manifesto for the public services to serve two purposes in the coming period:
- as a benchmark against which we can judge the policies of politicians seeking our votes
- as a set of principles to guide our own actions. To summarise its contents at the moment: we will defend public services!
We are inviting residents' and other organisations in Barnet to join the process of discussing the manifesto, the issues raised in it, and proposing amendments. The manifesto will be finalised, taking on board people's suggestions, in the spring at which point organisations/individuals can decide whether they want to put their names to it or not.
If you would like more information about this, email Barnet trades council - manifesto@barnettuc.org.uk - as they will be playing a coordinating role. Thank you.
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 Barnet UNISON on 07738 389569 or email 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. Now the council has decided that it doesn’t like the advice that Professor Whitfield has been giving the unions, and it has 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 Future Shape report, 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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