Welcome to Wirral Unison
Wirral Unison local government branch represents and supports over 6,000 members within Wirral council and the private sector. We negotiate for better pay and conditions and help individual members that have problems and campaign for a fair society.
On this site you can look up the list of branch officers and their individual responsibilities. Check out our health and safety page for your latest health and safety news, you can also look at our news section to see what's happening in the branch and there is also a photo gallery. We hope this website will give you all the information you need about your branch.
For all newsletters please view the news page.
UNISON’s National Executive Council (NEC) Elections 2013. Click here for details.
Collective Agreement Click Here.
17 May 2013
Dear UNISON Member
As you will be aware, UNISON recently consulted with members via a ballot on the issue of the Council's proposed introduction of changes to terms and conditions.
The clear result of the ballot was that members were not prepared to take the significant industrial action that would be necessary to get the Council to withdraw or significantly amend their proposals.
The Council has made clear that if agreement cannot be reached they will introduce the changes without agreement by issuing letters of dismissal to all staff and asking them to agree to be re-engaged on new contracts.
UNISON believes that, in these circumstances, and given the result of the member consultation, the only course of action open to us to protect the interests of our members as far as is possible is to conclude discussions on a collective agreement introducing the changes to terms and conditions.
Consequently, UNISON has been engaged in detailed talks with the Council regarding the implementation of the proposed changes via the signing of a collective agreement.
During the discussions, your UNISON representatives were determined to ensure that members would be protected as far as possible, and we believe that even at such a late stage we have been able to secure a number of improvements in the wording of the proposed collective agreement. These are:
- A guarantee of no further changes to terms and conditions in 2014 and 2015, and none in 2016 unless the Council faces a cut of over 2% in the next Comprehensive Spending Review.
- A commitment that the Council will pay the national pay award in full if alternative savings of £1M can be identified was given previously, however the Council has agreed that the pay award will be implemented from Oct (rather than April) if the identified savings only total £500k.
This situation was reported to your UNISON Branch Committee on Wed 14th May, and the Committee endorsed the action of the Branch negotiating team in seeking to conclude talks on a collective agreement.
A copy of the draft Collective Agreement is attached.
As is required under UNISON protocols, we are now awaiting clearance of the terms of the Collective Agreement via UNISON North West Region. Once this has been concluded the agreement will be signed with the Council.
Your UNISON Branch is fully aware that the past few months have been very difficult for members and that the changes to terms and conditions are not desirable. However, we believe that we have concluded negotiations that provide the greatest level of protection for members possible.
Joe Taylor
Branch Secretary
Wirral UNISON
