NIPSANEWSAPRIL/MAY 2014 Tel: 028 90661831 www.nipsa.org.ukTHE NEWSPAPER OF THE LEADING PUBLIC SERVICE TRADE UNION

NJC pay: Strikeballot planned

NIPSA membersworking in PrimaryCare and Older Peo-ple at the WesternHealth and SocialCare Trust took partin strike action, onFriday, May 16.The strike follows

months of talks withmanagement overincreased work lev-els and unmanage-able caseloads. NIPSA has been

pressing PCOPmanagement on theurgent need to intro-duce an agreedcaseload manage-ment tool and to re-view the excessivecaseloads that so-cial workers and so-cial work assistantscontinue to workunder. A union source

told NIPSA News:“Despite attempts toresolve this, man-agement have re-fused to give anycommitments aboutthe introduction ofcaseload weightingor to recognise theneed for additionalstaff to deal with thecaseload pres-sures.”Further report andpictures - see page4.

WesternHealth social workers in strikeaction

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NIPSA is to join all other NationalJoint Council (NJC) unions in ballot-ing members working in local gov-ernment, housing, education, furthereducation, libraries and some volun-tary sector organisations over therejection of the NJC Employers’ Sidepay offer of 1% on all pay points.A slightly higher increase for those at

the bottom on the pay scales was alsotabled. NJC Employers’ Side were only

forced to offer the lowest paid a littleover 1% because not to do so wouldhave meant that they would be payingbelow the National Minimum Wage.It has been decided that after three

years of no increases in the rate of payand a meagre 1% last year that NJCworkers have had enough and that theywish to send a strong signal to the Em-ployers’ Side that they want and expecta decent pay rise.Deputy General Secretary Alison Mil-

lar told NIPSA News: “Members in localgovernment, housing, education, li-braries, FE sectors and some voluntaryorganisations are struggling to pay theirhousehold bills.

“While their pay has effectively stoodstill for four years, the cost of day today expenditure on household ex-penses has risen by more than 17%.This means that these workers havesuffered a 16%-17% pay cut. “In addition, we have seen cuts to

jobs in many of these sectors. Ourmembers are facing unprecedentedchanges in their work – with many re-porting having to do more and morewith no additional reward.”Union officials have acknowledged

that taking industrial action is not easybut underline that NIPSA members willbe joining over a million workers acrossEngland, Wales and Northern Ireland infighting for a just outcome and a realand meaningful increase in their pay.NIPSA will be communicating with

members in the sector directly over thenext short period through circulars andby directly meeting with members toexplain the reason for the ballot andwhy NIPSA are recommending a strongYES vote for strike action in the daysahead.Stand strong and united for a decent

pay increase.

Industrial action ballot over Council outsourcing ‘insult’NIPSA is to ballot members workingin leisure and recreation centres inBelfast over whether to take indus-trial action following Belfast CityCouncil’s decision to forge aheadwith plans to outsource leisureservices in the city.The union has been involved in a

continuing dispute with Belfast CityCouncil over the plan. This was done despite counter pro-

posals contained in an Association forPublic Service Excellence reportwhich, in NIPSA’s view, met all the re-quirements laid down by the Council interms of savings and governance is-sues.However, Council still decided to

proceed with proposals to outsourceleisure services.General Secretary Brian Campfield

told NIPSA News: “This represents agross insult to all staff currently em-ployed in leisure services in the Coun-cil. The senior leisure officers in theCouncil have clearly had for someconsiderable time, the objective of theoutsourcing leisure services. “It is obvious that no matter what

proposals or concessions the tradeunions agreed to, senior officials in theCouncil had their minds made up thatoutsourcing was the only option to bepursued.”The union believes strongly that de-

spite the outsourcing decision taken atthe Council’s meeting in May, this canbe reversed providing NIPSA contin-ues to campaign vigorously to have itoverturned. According to NIPSA, the election of

the new shadow Council on May 22will provide an opportunity to intensifyits campaign as the new Council can-not be bound by previous Council de-cision. NIPSA is not prepared to concede

that the matter of leisure services out-sourcing is a done deal.The union served notice on the

Council on May 9 that it intends to initi-ate a statutory ballot for industrial ac-tion of NIPSA members employed inleisure and recreation centres includ-ing the Indoor Tennis Arena andOzone Complex.

Gerry ‘getsstick’ for 40 years ofunion service– See page 2

NIPSA to bringDVA Campaign to heart of government– See page 3

Union marksWorkers’MemorialDay –See page 4

Hate crime inNorthern Irelandon the rise – aspecial report – See page 6

Privatisation ofresidential care still on agenda –See page 10

May Day celebrations in Derry –more pictures covering this and the Belfast event on pages 8 and 9

NIPSA Health and Safety stalwart Gerry Mc-Grath has been praised for his “humour,quick-wittedness and gentle nature” over 40years of service in the public sector.The kind words came from Gerry’s line man-

ager at a special presentation to mark his recentretirement.Stating that it had been a pleasure to work

with, his line manager added that “polite andcourteous” Gerry was always a “stickler for doingthings the right way”.A former member of the NIPSA Civil Service

Executive, Gerry – a dad of four and a grandfa-ther of four – had worked in many departmentsover more than four decades. His first job, in 1974, was with the Roads Serv-

ice before moving on to stints at Historic Monu-ments and Buildings, Land Registry, PersonnelFinance and Salaries, Water Charges Branchand the Rates Collection Agency.In recent years, he worked in NIEA Corporate

Communications before moving to DOE Commu-nications.Gerry had a special interest in Health and

Safety stretching back to the mid-1980s.Along with his TUS work, Gerry was a Chair-

person at Local Whitley Level, chaired theDOE/DRD Departmental Committee as well asvarious Health and Safety committees. For a number of years, he was elected to the

NIPSA H&S Committee and in that role held

meetings with government ministers on Healthand Safety issues.The presentation heard that sports-mad Gerry

had a long involvement with the Civil ServiceSports Council and NICSSA and had been in-volved with the North/South Games which pro-moted good relations between the two CivilServices on the island.Gerry – who played hurling for Down, including

at Croke Park – had once commented that hehad been “born with a hurling stick in hand”. It was fitting then that one of leaving gifts pre-

sented to him on the day was a hurling stick.NIPSA NEWS

NIPSA Harkin House, 54 Wellington Park, Belfast BT9 6DP, Tel: 028 90661831 Fax 028 90665847

or email: alison.millar@nipsa.org.uk Editorial contact details: Bob Milleremail: bob.miller@nipsa.org.uk

Correspondence should be sent to the above address.

Unless otherwise stated, the views contained inNIPSA NEWS do not necessarily reflect the

policy of trade union NIPSA.

Page 2 NIPSA NEWS News www.nipsa.org.uk

There are no limits to the privatisation agendaEditorial

Consultative ballot over Derry City Council dealAFTER several months of talks an agree-ment in principle has been adopted byDerry City Council. As a result, NIPSA has launched a con-

sultative ballot with its members overwhether to accept or reject the agreement.The new deal introduces GLPC job evalu-

ation, harmonisation of working hours aswell as a number of other terms and condi-tions. If accepted, it will be retrospectively im-

plemented from April 1, 2010, with somestaff receiving arrears of pay from thatdate.

AS exam time ap-proaches, those in-volved in theassessment andmarking of papershave “had enough”,according to NIPSA,having been dealt ablow in their pock-ets by employers. For many years

staff had agreed towork additional hoursand, in return, weregiven Time Off inLieu (TOIL) at time-and-a-half. However, NIPSA

was advised earlierthis year that theCouncil for the Cur-riculum, Examina-tions andAssessment (CCEA)had decided tochange this to plaintime. This move angered

members and theemployer has refused

to budge on the issuedespite negotiationslasting a number ofmonths.NIPSA Official

Kevin Kelly said:“Members have hadenough. For yearsthey have worked ad-ditional hours to en-sure pupils’ examswere assessed,marked and resultsissued in a timelyfashion and, in re-turn, staff were givena slight enhancementfor this. He added: “NIPSA

members have beenforced into taking thisstand against an in-transigent employer.”Members are cur-

rently being ballotedfor industrial actionwith the likelihood ofindustrial action start-ing in mid-June.

NOTHING is sacred tothose who wish to openup public services tocommercial exploitationby creating additionalprofit centres for privatebusiness. In a report carried on

the front page of theGuardian on Saturday,May 17, a group of socialwork academics de-nounced the plans bythe UK Coalition Govern-ment to outsource chil-dren’s protection toprivate firms. This could well add

child protection to pris-ons, probationary serv-ices and healthprovision as activitiesthat are open to privateprofiteering. In condemning this

plan, which would oper-

ate in Britain, ProfessorEileen Munro said estab-lishing a market in childprotection would createperverse incentives forprivate companies to ei-ther take more childreninto care or leave toomany languishing withdangerous families.The 37 senior academ-

ics, who signed the let-ter, warned that childprotection was too im-portant to be left to thefickleness and failings ofthe market. They ex-pressed considerableconcern if private sectororganisations, such asG4S, Serco and ATOS,were allowed to runchild protection serv-ices.The move towards pri-

vatisation of all public

services is evident inNorthern Ireland. Theaward of the DSD softservices contract toG4S, the planned dis-mantling of the NorthernIreland Housing Execu-tive and the increasingoutsourcing of leisureservices to so-calledcharitable leisure trustsand private sector con-cerns all provide ampleevidence of this trend.Some politicians have

argued that outsourcingservices such as hous-ing and leisure to volun-tary non-profitorganisations is not pri-vatisation and repre-sents a means ofsecuring community in-volvement together withefficiencies. The reality is that

these initiatives are thefirst steps in the Statewashing its hands of re-sponsibility for vital pub-lic services which willlead us on a backwardsjourney to embrace Vic-torian practices wherebycharitable organisationswill once again bear themain responsibility forthe welfare of the lesswell-off in our society. Yes, the State may well

continue – for a periodat least – to provide fi-nance for these servicesbut the inevitable desti-nation is the charitableapproach to meeting theneeds of individuals,families and communi-ties. Those who receive this

charity will be stigma-tised, the very concept

of the State having a re-sponsibility for meetingthe needs of people willbe undermined and ifchild protection can bedelivered by privatecompanies, includinglarge self-serving corpo-rations such as Serco,ATOS and G4S, thenevery aspect of publicprovision as we know itis threatened.This is the battlefield

of the present and thefuture and the tradeunion movement muststep up to the challengeand robustly opposeoutsourcing of publicservices whether to pri-vate firms or to charita-ble-type bodies.

Brian Campfield,General Secretary

NICCEA membersballoted for industrial action

Retiring Gerry ‘gets stick’for 40 years of service!

NIPSA veteran Gerry McGrath (centre, bluetie) surrounded by friends and colleagues athis retirement presentation

NIPSA has been seeking theintroduction of a flexibleworking hours scheme forfront-line staff in LibrariesNI for a number of years.When Libraries NI was set

up in 2009, an anomaly wascreated which meant thatmembers working in librariesin Belfast had access to a flexischeme, while those workingon the front line in librariesoutside of the city had noscope to work in a more flexi-ble way outside of their normalwork pattern.Assistant Secretary Paddy

Mackel, who has responsibilityfor members in libraries, said:“NIPSA has spent some timeencouraging management inLibraries NI that it is in their in-terest as an organisation, aswell as in the interest of staffto introduce a flexible workinghours scheme across all li-braries. “Trade Union Side acknowl-

edged throughout the discus-sions that the review ofopening hours created somedifficulties due to the introduc-

tion of different working pat-terns to protect members’ con-tracted hours. “However, TUS also indi-

cated that family-friendly poli-cies – including flexibleworking – were a sign of aprogressive employer.”After a protracted series of

talks, a final draft scheme isnow being considered byNIPSA’s Library Committee. It is anticipated that once

the draft has been finalisedmembers will be consulted inthe next few weeks before afinal response is issued to Li-braries NI.Paddy Mackel added:

“NIPSA recognise that thedraft scheme presented will bea fairly limited one, but it will –if agreed – enable staff acrossLibraries NI to avail of flexibleworking, if they wish. “That would certainly be an

advantage to most membersworking in libraries. This maynot be the biggest gain evermade, but for many it will as-sist in improving that importantwork-life balance.”

Page 3 NIPSA NEWSNewswww.nipsa.org.uk

Bringing DVA Campaign to heart of governmentNIPSA is bringing the DVA Campaign to theheart of government by staging a speciallobby of Stormont on Tuesday, June 3.Assistant Secretary Ryan McKinney told

NIPSA News: “It is critical that we maximise theturnout at this lobby. NIPSA will be encourag-ing all members from across Belfast to supportthe lobby but staff in the Coleraine area in par-ticular are asked to attend and encourage oth-ers to do so.”It is understood DVA management will be

asked to help facilitate this.Mr McKinney said: “At this stage it is clear

that many staff are disheartened – justifiably so.“However, I do believe it is crucial that we

continue to keep the campaign in the spotlightand maintain the pressure on Executive Minis-

ters to deliver.”The announcement of the lobby came as

members of the DVA Campaign Steering Com-mittee met with Head of the Civil Service DrMalcolm McKibben on May 13.DVA chief Paul Duffy and Corporate HR Di-

rector Colin Lewis were also at the meeting.Dr McKibbin stressed that the Northern Ire-

land Executive had been given “political direc-tion” on the issue and vowed to do everythingthat could be done to identify functions or proj-ects which could be carried out by DVA staff. Mr McKinney commented: “All Government

Ministers have been contacted and each Per-manent Secretary asked to give full co-opera-tion. Meetings are continuing to take place withseveral departments in order to fully explore

every avenue and exhaust every possible op-tion.”The Steering Committee were also assured

that as DVLA have committed to a level of fund-ing until December 21, “it is not impossible thatwork can be found and funded”.Mr McKinney pointed out that a number of is-

sues around identifying current vacancies andposts currently filled by temporary staff wereraised at the May 13 meeting.“Corporate HR outlined the control measures

which they have put in place in order that theneeds of DVA staff are prioritised. The filling ofany post in the relevant grades in the NorthernIreland Civil Service is now only possible withtheir approval.”

NIPSA and Unite branches at Cityof Derry Airport have unani-mously voted to commence a bal-lot for industrial action overcontroversial restructuring pro-posals put forward by manage-ment.Unions have called for halting of

the plan – which they claim amountsto the continued managed decline ofthe airport.NIPSA Organiser Alan Law said:

“Representatives of both NIPSA andUnite attended a joint meeting of

members which unanimously backeda call for a ballot for industrial action.“The action will oppose recently

announced redundancies at the air-port, the failure of management toconsult trade unions on the propos-als and what we feel is the ongoingmanaged decline of the airport.“Our members are concerned that

the City of Derry Airport will continuetheir existing management contractwith RCAM (Regional & City AirportsManagement) Ltd. “Ratepayers currently pay the

management company £360,000every year – the equivalent of £14for every ratepayer in the city – butin the last four years of the contract,there has been no increase in flightnumbers or volumes to sustain theairport.”He added: “We are particularly

concerned that the plans for restruc-turing will oust the current local air-port director from the ManagementBoard and leave the airport com-pletely reliant on RCAM Ltd, who willbecome increasingly indispensable.”

DCAL Minister declinesNIPSA meeting requestA NIPSA official has expressed shockafter Department for Culture, Arts andLeisure Minister Carál Ní Chuilín de-clined a request to meet with unionsrepresenting staff at Library NI.The request to meet the Minister fol-

lowed an indication that budgets at Li-braries NI would come under pressure inthe coming financial year, impacting bothon members and the provision of libraryservices to the general public.Assistant Secretary for Libraries NI,

Paddy Mackel told NIPSA News: “Thisrefusal to meet with the unions came asa complete shock to myself and ourmembers. A reply has now been issuedto the Minister asking her to urgently re-consider the matter. “There is an important issue at stake in

terms of access to Government Minis-ters. Libraries NI is the largest ‘armslength body’ in DCAL and our membersquite rightly expect to be able to have di-rect access to the Minister on occasion.”He added: “I could possibly understand

if Trade Union Side was seeking meet-ings on a constant basis. However, ithas been some considerable time sinceMinister Ní Chuilín last met with NIPSA.”

Libraries NI staff have had to deal withsignificant changes since it was set up in2009, with restructuring in many areas,including a review of libraries in Belfast,then a review of rural libraries, followedvery quickly by a fundamental review ofopening hours following budget cuts an-nounced in 2012.Paddy Mackel said: “Given the degree

of change and impact on members overthe last few years, members are justifi-ably concerned that further cuts in thebudget may be imposed next year. “In the circumstances it is extremely

appropriate for the Minister to meet withthe unions to hear those concerns at firsthand. We expect nothing less.”

Derry City Airport: Unions opposedto its continuing managed decline

Belfast Central Library

AIRPORT ROW IS TAKING OFF

Flexi scheme proposed forfront line Libraries NI staff

AT THE end of March, MinisterPoots attended his first NIPSAHSC Annual Delegate Confer-ence and was tackled in no un-certain terms on the direction oftravel his Department was takingover the TYC initiative.Among other things, NIPSA high-

lighted how companies, such as352, had received £45m out of theBelfast budget with the consent ofthe Northern Ireland Assembly andpointed out that if this was repli-cated across the five Trusts, thatfigure would rise to £100m.NIPSA roundly condemned the

fact that public money was beingused to fund private sector firms indelivering health services when ad-equate funding was needed to pro-vide public services that metcommunity needs.The union also queried where

and how the private sector shouldbe involved in delivering HSC serv-ices, reiterating that a previous As-sembly question on this pointshould be debated seriously withinthe Assembly and the Northern Ire-land Executive.We highlighted that NIPSA would

oppose further privatisation. The

Page 4 NIPSA NEWS News www.nipsa.org.uk

A NIPSA official, who claims social workersand assistants in the Western Trust are hav-ing to manage a “crisis point” of danger-ously high workloads, has formallycomplained to the Regulation and QualityImprovement Authority (RQIA) and theNorthern Ireland Social Care Council(NISCC).Alan Law made the comments as health

workers from Londonderry and Limavadytook part in a one-day strike on Friday, May16.Workers from across the Primary Care and

Older People’s Directorate took to the picketline outside the Waterside Health Centre in abid to highlight what they see as excessivecaseloads.Mr Law told NIPSA News: “The crisis has

reached this point because we’ve been try-ing to get management to acknowledge thatthere’s a problem and they are refusing to doanything about it.“The staff here are professionally-qualified

social workers. They’re all expected to regis-ter with the NISCC and follow their guide-lines. And what their guidelines say is thatyou should only practise safely and manage

caseloads, which they are able to do safely.”He said he believed the situation had

reached the stage “where it’s not safe, whereit’s unsafe work – and we want the Trust todo something about it.”Mr Law continued: “We’ve been asking the

Trust to help develop a caseload weightingmodel and they’re refusing to do that with-out all the other Trusts in Northern Irelandgoing together on the same issue.“Now, we feel that’s a very irresponsible

way to go ahead because if the crisis hasreached this point where people are takingindustrial action, we believe it needs re-solved now without waiting for some majorissue to occur and an inquiry needing totake place.”May 16 protests also took place across the

Western Trust with pickets in Omagh and theSouth West Hospital. Mr Law said: “The Trust’s position is they

feel there’s nothing they can do... our view isthat there are vacancies and posts, they’rethe ones that need to start recruiting peopleto the posts.“These two teams here and the team in Li-

mavady have had no manager to supervisetheir work for nearly six months and they’resupposed to get monthly supervision tomake sure that everything’s going accordingto plan.” He added: “To me, that’s even irre-sponsible.”Asked if the current situation was danger-

ous, he replied: “Very dangerous. I todayhave made a formal complaint to the RQIAand also the NISCC asking them to investi-gate this chaos.”May 16 strike will be followed up by work-

ers refusing to cover vacancies and ab-sences as well as working to rule if there isno resolution.“We cannot continue with people working

unsafely,” he added.Source: Londondery Sentinel

Worker is mark

Challenging TY

Trust social workers strikeover ‘crisis’ workloads

PCOP strikers on picketline duty at (picturedtop) Irvinestown HealthCentre; (left) ColeshillCommunity ServicesCentre in Enniskillenand (bottom), theprotest in Waterside, in Londonderry

With Transforming Your Care continuingto feature heavily in the news, AssistantSecretary KEVIN McCABE highlights anumber of recent developments

union wanted to see the qualityand governance of public servicesmaintained as a priority and under-lined the high importance of job se-curity.NIPSA brought up the issue of

the loss of home care services aswell as the failure to monitor orsafeguard vulnerable people. The Minister, his Department and

others were also condemned forthe A&E crisis, which the unionclaimed, had resulted in a numberof premature deaths. NIPSA alsosought an immediate review of dis-charge procedures.The Minister was left in no doubt

that NIPSA viewed with great sus-picion the ideological context ofTYC with its promotion of anagenda of privatisation and out-sourcing with no legislative base,no political accountability and nopolitical scrutiny.We concluded that NIPSA would

be using its recent research publi-

cation which highlighted the creep-ing privatisation of the Health Serv-ice and would be lobbying otherunions, community organisationsas well as major stakeholders todemonstrate how TYC had been astrategic failure and that it repre-sents nothing but cuts, privatisa-tion, outsourcing and private sectorcapital to build new Health and So-cial Care centres.While Minister Poots was left in

no doubt of NIPSA’s position in re-lation to TYC, there were two otherrecent developments – one posi-tive the other negative. Firstly, on April 17, Minister Poots

announced that all 18 NHS carehomes in Northern Ireland that hadbeen ear-marked for closure wereto remain open while residentswanted to stay in them. The Health Minister confirmed

that the homes would stay open ina letter to the Stormont HealthCommittee, later published in the

media. The closures had been an-

nounced last year as part of theTYC Health Review but it is un-clear if the homes will be allowedto take new admissions which isone issue that unions will be seek-ing further clarity on.However, on April 25, NIPSA was

informed that the number of pa-tients waiting more than 12 hoursto be seen at Belfast Trust’s mainA&E Department more thanquadrupled between January andMarch. Official figures released bythe Department of Health showedthat the embattled RVH CasualtyUnit had the worst decline in quar-terly performance in relation to thekey target.At the same time it was an-

nounced that £75m for private hipand knee operations to tackle theNHS backlog were going to be pro-vided by private clinics. Top health officials admitted that

they were to pay private clinics£75m to tackle a backlog of kneeand hip operations after admittingthat the NHS can meet little morethan two-thirds of current demand. Although reliance on the more

costly “independent sector” has in-creased over the past decade, thelatest spend raises concerns abouthow senior managers commissionand plan services in Northern Ire-land. Questions have also been asked

about whether private clinics willprovide “complete care” – includingpost-operative assessments – fol-lowing complaints that past blun-ders had left patients high and dry.In conclusion, TYC remains an

evolving challenge. It is on thesecritical issues that NIPSA will beadvancing its position to try andensure that TYC is at the very leastreviewed or a fundamental under-taking given to look at its futureand strategic direction.

Page 5 NIPSA NEWSNewswww.nipsa.org.uk

ON April 28, NIPSA marked Interna-tional Workers’ Memorial Day, re-membering the many thousands ofworkers who are killed and injured atwork year, by attending a specialevent at Stormont.Assistant Secretary Geraldine Alexan-

der told NIPSA News: “InternationalWorkers’ Memorial reminds us why weneed to continue our fight for workers’safety.“Just over a year ago, more than

1,100 workers were killed in the RanaPlaza factory collapse in Bangladesh(see picture, left). Added to that thereare reports of hundreds of Nepaleseand Indian construction workers dyingon building sites in Qatar since 2012. “These figures are horrific. And the

stories of 2,500 Rana Plaza garmentworkers still waiting for compensationare vivid. “They are stories to make the blood

boil as workers across the world aresubject to unsafe, inhumane and ex-ploitative treatment.“It is statistics like these that we re-

member on Workers’ Memorial Day –and so we should.”So what does that have to do with

workers here in Northern Ireland? According to NIPSA, quite a lot actu-

ally. Ms Alexander continued: “Every time

we hear ‘health and safety’ beingmocked we should remember that thisplays into the hands of those that want

to weaken regulations and diminish thehard fought for rights of workers.”In a recent TUC report, aptly titled

‘Toxic, Corrosive and Hazardous’, it wasargued that Government health andsafety policies were based on a pro-business, anti-regulation ideology thatsees such protection as a ‘burden’.NIPSA has expressed concern that

this same mind-set could be emergingin Northern Ireland and point to pro-posed changes to RIDDOR (Reportingof Injuries, Diseases and DangerousOccurrences Regulations) as well as ageneral deregulation agenda.Each year the HSENI publishes a tally

of work-related deaths – in 2011/12there were 17 fatal injuries while in2012/13 there were eight. Ms Alexander said: “While this latest

figure is one of the lowest ever, onedeath is still one too many.” She alsopointed out that the HSENI figures “donot represent reality” and did not in-clude those who had died as a result ofoccupational cancers, lung and cardio-vascular diseases as well as thosekilled on the roads while on work busi-ness.Ms Alexander said: “On International

Workers’ Memorial Day, NIPSA pledgedto continue to fight for the living by en-suring our workplaces are safer andhealthier. If we don’t continue to fightagainst this Government’s assault onbasic workplace protections then morelives will be unnecessarily put at risk.”

s’ Memorial Day ked by NIPSA

YC’s privatisation agenda

NIPSA has been in-formed that a numberof staff based in RoeValley CommunityServices (RVCS) in Li-mavady are at risk ofredundancy.It follows a meeting

between managementand union officials inApril.NIPSA made clear

its view that the Dow-land Road-based so-cial enterprise, whichprovides gardeningand furniture refur-bishment services tothe public, was a “vi-able business”.It is understood

management disagreewith this assessmentand advised the unionthat DEL MinisterStephen Farry’s re-cent decision to endthe Steps to Successprogramme would im-pact significantly onRVCS “making it im-possible to sustainthe employment ofthe five staff basedthere”. NIPSA was also ad-

vised that a further 18jobs based in thecharity's office in Li-mavady may be atrisk of redundancy.

Oppositionto RVCSjobs threat

Page 6 NIPSA NEWS News www.nipsa.org.uk

RECENTLY it was announcedthat the Police Service of North-ern Ireland would begin arrestingthose responsible for a spate ofhate attacks in East Belfast, oneof several areas across Belfastthat seem to be experiencing arise in hate attacks.While this may help the commu-

nity there feel safer, it is importantto note that the police are only oneaspect of the fight against hatecrime, and a deeper understandingof the causes and impacts of thishorrific crime are necessary inorder to effectively combat it.Over the last decade, Northern

Ireland has become more diversein terms of language, culture andreligion. The recently-released 2011census data reveals nearly 1.8 percent Northern Ireland residents arefrom an ethnic minority back-ground, more than double the pro-portion in 2011 (0.8 per cent). However, these statistics do not

reflect members of minority com-munities who would identify aswhite – for example Polish andLithuanian communities – as thereis no disaggregation under the‘white’ category in the census. Thismeans that the ethnic minority pro-portion of the population is likely tobe even higher than 1.8 per cent.At the same time, hate crime has

been rising. Politicians, academics,statutory, voluntary and communitysector organisations and the media,are all keen to look at the causesand impacts of hate crime, and tocondemn it. But most of the time there is a

failure to look at the experiences ofvictims, and particularly the specialneeds of victims of racist hatecrime. Media coverage of hate crime,

while nearly always seeking tospeak to the victim, is often sensa-tionalist, risks jeopardising thesafety of victims by putting them infront of cameras, and does little toenhance the public’s deeper under-standing of hate crime, or to com-bat it. Reporting of hate crime is also

imprecise, and the crime itself isoften under-reported, so it is diffi-cult to obtain trustworthy figures.Couple this with the tone of mostmedia coverage, and there is a realdanger that media coverage of hatecrime strays towards scaremonger-ing, and contributing to the problemrather than combating it. Whether the abuse is verbal,

physical, financial or otherwise, theexperience of hate crime leaves anindelible mark not just the individ-

ual(s) who are the target, but on thecommunity to which they belong.Hate crime is often a process

rather than an event, and it can es-calate in frequency and serious-ness. The attack that gets reportedis often not the first incident. Tauntsin the street or a broken windowmay go unreported, or if they arereported, are sometimes brushedoff as being “just kids” or “not a bigdeal”. There is often the added trauma

of knowing that the perpetrator’smotivation is an impersonal grouphatred, relating to some feature thatthe victims shares with others.This factor is greatest where the

hatred is directed against a visiblefeature such as skin colour or phys-ical disability, or relating to corepersonal values or traits such as re-ligion or being lesbian, gay, bisex-ual or transgender. A crime that might normally have

a minor impact becomes, with thehate element, an intimate and hurt-ful attack that can undermine thevictim’s quality of life and self-es-teem.By its nature, hate crime is com-

mitted not merely against the im-mediate victim or their property, but against the en-

tire community or group he or shebelongs to. This raises feelings of insecurity within

the group. As a consequence, hate crime re-

vives old, or serves to create new,bias, prejudice and negative stereo-typing of others. It also creates cy-cles of mistrust and tension withinsociety.Evidence from the Belfast Migrant

Centre’s Bilingual Hate Crime Ad-vocacy Project shows that while re-porting of hate crime hasincreased, it is still estimated thatapproximately 80 per cent of hatecrime goes unreported. Many victims fear retaliation if

they report incidents. Many havealso had negative experiences withthe police, or have reported inci-dents that have been ignored. Theyrefer to low prosecution rates whenit comes to hate crime (the chargeof aggravated hate crime has neverbeen used in Northern Ireland) asreasons not to report to the police.It is widely recognised, however,

that hate crime is not the sole pre-rogative of the police, and requiresboth broader and deeper effortsfrom various sectors of society.

Efforts to tackle hate crime mustbe placed at all levels of society,from individuals to the community,from voluntary sector organisationsto social partners. Interagency working is absolutely

crucial – otherwise work is done inisolation and the impacts won’t beshared. Over the last 10 months, NICEM

and its partners in East Belfasthave been working together on theground to tackle these difficult is-sues, but it cannot be assumed thatone approach will fit all situations. Among other things, attitudinal

changes are necessary, and workon the ground, with victims andcommunities, is required to makethese changes.It is a long-term investment, re-

quiring dedicated resources to di-rect engagement initiatives withinlocal communities to find local solu-tions. The Bilingual Hate Crime Ad-vocacy Program, for example,though incredibly successful in sup-porting communities and victims aswell as facilitating the increase inthe reporting of hate crime, is ex-tremely under-resourced. Grassroots work in general is rel-

atively scarce, and needs to be fur-ther developed in partnership withvictims, and invested in.This also requires parallel policy

responses and community-level re-sponses. Policies like ‘Together:Building a United Community’ andthe soon to be published ‘RacialEquality Strategy for Northern Ire-land’, must be grounded in theneeds and experiences of commu-nities who work day-to-day withthese issues, and with its perpetra-tors and its victims. These issues are not new. In fact,

there are disturbing similarities be-tween the current situation and the

previous spikes in hate crime in theVillage area of South Belfast in2003-2004, and then again in 2009. Then, as now, there were specu-

lation that Belfast in particular andNorthern Ireland in general wereexceptionally bad areas regardingracist hate attacks.However, the attacks in Belfast

must be seen in the wider Euro-pean context, and indeed in thecontext of an increasingly xenopho-bic atmosphere in the United King-dom as a whole. The Institute for Race Relations

in London has been collating hateattacks across the UK for a numberof years, and its evidence showsthat Belfast is part of a wider trendof increasing attacks, impacted bya societal discourse that has be-come increasing anti-immigrant,xenophobic and openly racist.Condemning hate crime is one

thing – and it is important – but it isnot enough. There must be solidcommitment from all parties, alongwith resources and high-level strat-egy, to support the work alreadybeing done and connect it strategi-cally. Through the success of the Advo-

cacy scheme, we know that tar-geted initiatives can make animpact. Without this, the difficultthings like attitudinal shifts will nothave the space to occur. Communities must take the lead

in identifying and implementing so-lutions for their areas, otherwisethey will be seen as another far-away, imposed, tokenistic gesturethat people will reject.

Elizabeth Nelson is Parliamen-tary and Campaigns Officer forthe Northern Ireland Council forEthnic Minorities

Hate crime: more thancondemnation needed

Racist attack on a home in BelfastPicture: By Andy Luke

By Elizabeth Nelson,NICEM

HEALTH Minister Edwin Poots has written to thechair of the Stormont Health Committee over anumber of statutory (i.e. public sector) residentialcare homes for the elderly that had been threat-ened with closure. This threat came last summer from the Trusts, over

which Mr Poots, as minister, as overall control. Themove was in fulfilment of his own Department’s ‘Trans-forming Your Care’ policy that had recommended mak-ing private sector care the default position. In what has been seen as a reaction public opposi-

tion to the closures, Poots informed the Health Com-mittee of his "intention” to move quickly “to reassurepermanent residents within those homes”. He added: “I am clear that existing residents will be

allowed to remain in their home for as long as theywish and so long as their needs can continue to bemet there."In March, NIPSA’s research on Transforming Your

Care predicted what might happen in relation to thehomes. In the context of the review into the closure deci-

sions, we stated: “The public sector homes will ‘outlive’

the last residents in them, but not by much. In short,the rejection of this policy by the general public hashad no longer-term effect on the overall privatised pol-icy direction.”The recent announcement confirms this analysis in

that while Ministerial assurances are welcome for par-ticular residents, their families and the staff who carefor them, they offer no reassurance to the general pub-lic over the direction of travel for health policy in thisarea. The reason for this is that without an explicit state-

ment that admissions policy in relation to statutory pro-vision for the elderly will change – i.e. that the newadmissions that guarantee a future for the homes willhappen – it is clear that the model of public sector clo-sure and privatisation will continue. This makes our opposition to privatisation in this and

all other areas of our healthcare all the more essentialas a core part of the general fight to save the NHS.Only pressure from below stalled the closure of thehomes, only the same pressure will reverse the privati-sation agenda.

ADULT Learners' Week will takeplace from June 14 to June 20with this year’s theme being‘Festival of Learning’ULF Project Coordinator

Roisin Graham told NIPSA News:“Adult Learners’ Week is a cele-bration of lifelong learning. Weknow that adults who continueto learn throughout their livesare healthier, happier and havegreater self-confidence and self-esteem. “In short, Adult Learners’ Week

is the best time to show howadult learning improves and en-hances social cohesion, eco-nomic vitality and socialmobility.”There are lots of ways that you

can get involved in Adult Learn-ers’ Week. To find out more, contact Roisinby email at:roisin.graham@nipsa.org.uk You can also visithttp://www.alw.org.uk/festival-learning for some ideas forLearning at Work days orhttp://www.wea-ni.com/ to findout what else is going on inNorthern Ireland.

Page 7 NIPSA NEWSNewswww.nipsa.org.uk

Calling all ULRs: get set for Festival of Learning

Privatisation still on residential care agenda despite PR gloss

STRESS is a taboo word but it af-fects us all at some point in ourlives whether from personal cir-cumstances or in the work envi-ronment.Stress cases in the area of em-ployment fall into two distinct cat-egories:(A) The stress at work case; and(B) Harassment cases.Stress at work:Firstly, in relation to stress at work

an employer is entitled to assumethat an employee is robust and ableto cope with the normal pressures ofthe job unless the employer be-comes aware of some particularproblem or vulnerability pertaining tothat particular employee. Stress at work cases have been

considered by the Court of Appeal inthe case of Hatton –v- Sutherland[EWCA Civ 76) which has deter-mined that a breach of duty for astress at work case to be viable, in-volves answering two simple ques-tions in the affirmative:(1) That the employer knew orought to have known of the risk, and(2) In light of the magnitude of therisk, which they should have hadand did appreciate, they failed totake reasonable steps to avert it.In summary, the question – and

really the only question for a stressat work case – is whether the em-ployer had the knowledge of therisk. To put it another way foresee-ability of injury is the “thresholdquestion” which must be answeredin the affirmative for a stress at workcase to be viable.However, mere foreseeability

does not determine liability and ref-erencing Hatton again:“The size and scope of the em-

ployer’s operation, its resources andthe demands it faces are relevant indeciding what is reasonable; theseinclude the interests of other em-ployees and the need to treat themfairly, for example in any redistribu-tion of duties.”Hatton went on to say:“An employer who offers a confi-

dential advice service, with referralto appropriate counselling or treat-ment services, is unlikely to befound in breach of duty.”Following on from the above it can

be recognised, that the main issuefor stress at work cases is foresee-ability, foreseeability and foresee-ability.Harassment:The alternative cause of action of

harassment (or bullying as it is morecolloquially known) is prohibitedunder the Protection from Harass-ment (NI) Order 1997. This legisla-tion prohibits an individual harassing

another which the individual knows,or ought to know amounts to ha-rassment of the other. Harassmentcontrary to the Order is renderedboth a criminal offence and a matterwhich exposes the perpetrator tocivil liability. The House of Lordsheld in Majroski v Guys & St.Thomas’s NHS Trust 2007 (1 AC224) that an employer will be vicari-ously liable for its employee commit-ting bullying acts. It is, therefore,possible to fix liability upon an em-ployer for the acts of a fellow em-ployee.To be able to “sue”, the conduct

complained of must be capable ofamounting to a crime and thereforemust be sufficiently serious. In Ham-mond v INTC Network Services Ltd(2007) ALL ER (3) 19(Nov) HHJCoulson sitting as a Deputy HighCourt Judge, observed that “irritat-ing, annoying and even upsettingconduct will not necessarily be abreach of the [Order].” The Ordertherefore prescribes a course ofconduct which causes alarm or dis-

tress and a course of conduct in-volves acts on more than one occa-sion. It is very difficult, from myexperience, to satisfy the necessarylegal requirements.The vast amount of harassment

cases that I deal with, while theymay be regarded as acts of bullying,fail to amount to harassment pre-scribed by the Order because, whilethe acts of bullying may have af-fected the individual from a psychi-atric point of view, the acts ofbullying are not serious enough tofall into the meaning of harassmentas defined by the Protection fromHarassment (NI) Order 1997.Following on from the above it can

be recognised, that the main issuefor harassment cases to be viable isserious conduct.Conclusion:If you believe the above circum-

stances are applicable to you thenyou should contact NIPSA to re-quest a LS2 Form to allow an as-sessment of your case which is freeunder the Legal Assistance Schemefor personal injuries. Equally this scheme covers all

types of personal injury cases fromroad traffic injuries to medical negli-gence and is also open to familymembers of individuals with NIPSAmembership.The above article does not purport

to be a comprehensive statement ofthe law which would take consider-ably more space than this article al-lows to explain but is my attempt tooutline some of the main factors thatare needed in order to “sue” for psy-chiatric injury caused by stress.

I’m stressed, can I sue?

By John McShaneChancery House, 88 Victoria Street, Belfast BT1 3GN

Tel: 028 9032 9801 www.mtb-law.co.uk

Page 8 NIPSA NEWS News www.nipsa.org.uk

A STROLL DOWN T

Page 9 NIPSA NEWSNewswww.nipsa.org.uk

THE AVENUE

BELFASTMAY DAYRALLYNIPSA

members taketo the streetsof Belfast inthe annualworkers’ DayparadePictures:

Kevin Cooper

Smiles shine in Derry’sMay Day get-together

THE privatisation of the RoyalMail is widely considered to havecost the taxpayer £750m aftershares in the company surgedwhen trading in the companybegan on October 11.The shares rose 50% in its first

week making investors luckyenough to have been allocatedshares tens of millions of pounds.At the end of April the govern-

ment was forced to disclose theidentities of 16 priority investorswho benefited from receiving thelargest allocation of shares after theBureau published the names ofnine of the companies.The list included Lazard Asset

Management, part of Lazard & Cowhich was the government’s princi-pal flotation adviser.Members of the Public Accounts

Committee last Wednesday di-gested the news of Lazard’s inclu-sion as a priority investor minutesbefore they grilled members of theShareholder Executive, which man-ages Royal Mail on behalf of thegovernment, Lazard & Co, togetherwith UBS and Goldman Sachs whoco-ordinated the placement ofshares.

PropertyIt emerged at the hearing that

government officials and banks ad-visers working on the controversialfloat failed to negotiate an agree-ment that would have allowed thetaxpayer a share in higher than an-ticipated profits from the RoyalMail’s valuable property portfolio.Earlier this month it emerged that

analysts working for UBS, the bankwhich was Royal Mail’s corporateadviser until its privatisation, sug-gested Royal Mail’s property couldbe worth £600m more than its es-tate was valued in the company’sInitial Public Offering prospectus.The UBS valuation was sent to

potential investors in the companytwo weeks before the prospectuswas published on September 27.“Did you not think it appropriate to

put in place some way in which thetaxpayers could get some benefit ifthese assets were worth way abovethe £230m?” asked Labour PublicAccounts Committee member,Anne McGuire to senior civil ser-vants and bank advisers who man-aged the float.But Martin Donnelly, permanent

secretary at the Department ofBusiness Innovation & Skills (BIS)argued that inserting such a mech-anism may have damaged theshare price.“If we had had to explain the

complexity of a claw back clause tothe large number of investors whowere already struggling with thecomplexity of the sale, then it wouldhave put them off,” he said.

ShockedMPs appeared shocked that an

independent property valuationcommissioned by Royal Mail beforeits sale had not been shared withthe government, their advisers orthe National Audit Office.“I’m struggling to understand why

this information should have beenkept from the National Audit Office,”said Richard Bacon, the Conserva-tive MP and deputy chairman of thePAC.Alan Custis, a Managing Director

at LAM confirmed that they hadbought six million shares as a prior-ity investor and sold them over thefirst days of trading at a £8m profit.William Rucker, Lazard & Co

chief executive, stated that LAMhad been in talks with the RoyalMail before his company was hiredas advisers and that they were dif-ferent companies, separated by

Chinese walls. He told the commit-tee: “When we became aware, hav-ing been hired, that LAM were on alist of investors the Royal Mail wastalking to, we made it quite clear,that we should have no input what-soever into any discussion aboutallocations to LAM.”Margaret Hodge, the PAC’s chair-

man, queried this relationship, ask-ing: “Even if we were to accept thatthose Chinese walls rules were ad-hered to. Do you really think thatit’s appropriate that in those circum-stances, that another arm of yourcompany picked up nearly half ofthe shares that went to clients withan interest there?”Richard Bacon MP told the com-

mittee: “It seems to me that themost obvious criterion of independ-ence is that you are disinterested.”He then asked Martin Donnelly,

permanent secretary of BIS: “Wasyour adviser acting completely in-dependently? Or did it have an in-terest at a financial group level inthe success of one of its sub-sidiaries?”

Low valuationRucker was asked to justify why

Lazard & Co gave among the low-est of the valuations made to thegovernment. He said: “Our valua-tion had some different assump-tions to other people. We had some

more bearish assumptions aboutthe threat of industrial relations andthe consequences of that.”They faced questions about

whether the process they adoptedallowed them to capitalise on theimproved interest from investors inthe weeks leading up to the sale.Rucker defended Lazard’s role in

the float: “We were as agile as wecould have been given the situa-tion.”Donnelly, BIS permanent secre-

tary, pointed to the threat of strikeaction and the fiscal uncertainty inthe US as reasons behind contin-ued caution on the share price.In concluding the session, Hodge

returned to the relationship be-tween the two Lazard Group com-panies. She acknowledged thatthere was no proof of wrongdoingbut concluded: “If I were the regula-tor I would be looking at this ingreater detail than he has chosento do.”Richard Cormack, Goldman

Sachs managing director, wasasked how his team could repre-sent the government, given the in-vestment division of Goldman’sacted for many of the priority in-vestors. He underlined the separa-tion of the businesses: “Our loyaltyis to our client which was the gov-ernment. If we were not working forour IPO issuing clients and wewere seen always to be acting in

Page 10 NIPSA NEWS News www.nipsa.org.uk

ROYAL MA Taxpayer won’t benefit from RoyalMail’s treasure trove of property

Corporate Watch blows the lid on the shady

By Richard Moran

Taxpayers taken for a ride in post office sell-off

Page 11 NIPSA NEWSNewswww.nipsa.org.uk

IL RIP-OFFLAZARD Asset Management (LAM), the in-vestment arm of the government’s independ-ent adviser on the controversial privatisationof Royal Mail, was one of the 16 priority in-vestors who received preferential treatmentin the allocation of shares in the business.Shares in Royal Mail have risen by 57% since

October when the firm was floated. The NationalAudit Office (NAO) concluded the taxpayer lostout by as much as £750m because the businesswas undervalued.Lazard & Co, the corporate advisory part of

the business, advised the government againstraising the price of Royal Mail shares to in-vestors and helped oversee the allocation ofshares which was more than 23 times oversub-scribed.The asset management arm of Lazard’s re-

ceived six millions shares worth £19.8m whentrading began on October 11. LAM sold theshares within days securing an £8m profit.Lazard & Co also received a £1.5m fee for ad-

vising on sale of Royal Mail.Lazard’s chief executive, William Rucker de-

nied any suggestion of a conflict of interest. Hesaid the asset management arm of Lazard’s wasin talks to receive Royal Mail shares well beforeLazard’s was appointed as the government’s in-dependent adviser and that “Chinese walls” be-tween the corporate advisory and assetmanagement divisions were rigorously main-tained.But the revelation that Lazard’s was one of the

16 priority investors has sparked concern amongsenior MPs. It will also heap further pressure onVince Cable, the Business Secretary, andMichael Fallon, the business minister who haveconsistently defended the flotation as a success.Reacting to LAM’s inclusion as a priority in-

vestor, Adrian Bailey, chair of the business selectcommittee, said businesses linked to govern-ment advisers should not receive shares in pri-vatisations. “The government’s advisers shouldbe there to represent the interests of the govern-ment pure and simple,” he argued.Lazard’s valuation of Royal Mail was lower

than members of the banking syndicate workingon the float, according to NAO figures publishedearlier this month.Equity analyst notes from banks working on

the float also gave Royal Mail much higher valu-ations than Lazard’s.The NAO’s report earlier last month said of the

seven banks advising the government on the

float “at least five of them were allocated shareson behalf of their asset management arms fordistribution to their clients”. The total received bysyndicate banks was 13 million shares worth£42.9m – they are now worth £68.25m.The NAO report stated that the Department for

Business, Innovation and Skill’s contract withLazard & Co specified that the information bar-rier between Lazard & Co and LAM must becomplied with in order to prevent the LAM teamobtaining confidential information. There is nosuggestion that Lazard’s breached any conflictof interest codes or laws.News of Lazard Asset Management’s inclusion

in the select group of 16 institutions that initiallydominated Royal Mail’s shareholder registercomes as the government has been forced todisclose other Royal Mail cornerstone investors.

‘Speculation’The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

(TBIJ), which publishes Corporate Watch, alsonamed Blackrock, Capital Research, Fidelity,Government of Singapore, Kuwait InvestmentOffice, Lansdowne Partners, Ozz Ziff, StandardLife and Threadneedle as likely priority in-vestors.

These have been confirmed. In addition thegovernment disclosed Abu Dhabi Investment Au-thority, Henderson, JP Morgan, Soros,Schroders, Third Point as well as Lazard AssetManagement were priority investors.Business secretary, Vince Cable said: “I told

the BIS Select Committee yesterday I wanted tobe as helpful and transparent as possible. In thatspirit I had already provided the names to theNational Audit Office and I provided the list inconfidence to the chairs of the BIS Select Com-mittee and the Public Accounts Committee.“I had been advised that the investors ex-

pected confidentiality around their share acquisi-tions, but there has been strong interest in whothe investors are and speculation around thenames, some of it inaccurate. I have decided thepublic has an interest in an accurate list beingavailable.”Visit TBIJ website at www.thebureauinvesti-

gates.com for more in-depth coverage of thisissue.Royal Mail: did the government andbankers short-change Britain by £750m?Unmasked: The city institutions given privi-leged status in the controversial Royal Mailflotation

Lazard Asset Management was a Royal Mail priority investor and made £8m profit in one week

dealings done in the sale of a national asset

By Nick Mathiason and Tom Warren

Investment arm of the government’s adviser in controversial float of Royal Mail was given priority status

Page 12 NIPSA NEWS News www.nipsa.org.uk

CAPITAL IN CRTHAT capitalism is unfair has been said be-fore. But it is the way Thomas Piketty says it– subtly but with relentless logic – that hassent rightwing economics into a frenzy, bothhere and in the US.His book, Capital in the Twenty-First Cen-tury, has shot to the top of the Amazon best-seller list. Carrying it under your arm has, incertain latitudes of Manhattan, become thenewest tool for making a social connectionamong young progressives. Meanwhile, he isbeen condemned as neo-Marxist by rightwingcommentators. So why the fuss?Piketty's argument is that, in an economy

where the rate of return on capital outstrips therate of growth, inherited wealth will always growfaster than earned wealth. So the fact that richkids can swan aimlessly from gap year to in-ternship to a job at father's bank/ministry/TVnetwork – while the poor kids sweat into theirbarista uniforms – is not an accident: it is thesystem working normally.If you get slow growth alongside better finan-

cial returns, then inherited wealth will, on aver-age, "dominate wealth amassed from alifetime's labour by a wide margin", says Piketty.Wealth will concentrate to levels incompatiblewith democracy, let alone social justice. Capital-ism, in short, automatically creates levels of in-equality that are unsustainable. The risingwealth of the 1% is neither a blip, nor rhetoric.To understand why the mainstream finds this

proposition so annoying, you have to under-stand that "distribution" – the polite name for in-equality – was thought to be a closed subject.Simon Kuznets, the Belarussian émigré whobecame a major figure in American economics,used the available data to show that, while soci-eties become more unequal in the first stages ofindustrialisation, inequality subsides as theyachieve maturity. This "Kuznets Curve" hadbeen accepted by most parts of the economicsprofession until Piketty and his collaboratorsproduced the evidence that it is false.In fact, the curve goes in exactly the opposite

direction: capitalism started out unequal, flat-tened inequality for much of the 20th century,but is now headed back towards Dickensianlevels of inequality worldwide.Piketty accepts that the fruits of economic

maturity – skills, training and education of theworkforce – do promote greater equality. Butthey can be offset by a more fundamental ten-dency towards inequality, which is unleashed

wherever demographics or low taxation or weaklabour organisation allows it. Many of the book's700 pages are spent marshalling the evidencethat 21st-century capitalism is on a one-wayjourney towards inequality – unless we dosomething.If Piketty is right, there are big political impli-

cations, and the beauty of the book is that henever refrains from drawing them. Piketty's callfor a "confiscatory" global tax on inheritedwealth makes other supposedly radical econo-mists look positively house-trained. He calls foran 80% tax on incomes above $500,000 a yearin the US, assuring his readers there would beneither a flight of top execs to Canada nor aslowdown in growth, since the outcome wouldsimply be to suppress such incomes.While bestriding the macro-economic agenda,

the book's sideswipes against trendy micro-eco-nomics, often in footnotes, read like a sustainedin-joke against the generation for whom allproblems seemed solved, except the streetprice of cocaine in Georgetown.The book has, in addition, mesmerised the

economics profession because of the wayPiketty creates his own world, theoretically. Hedefines the two basic categories, wealth and in-come, broadly and confidently but in a way no-body had really bothered to before. The book'sterms and explanations are utterly simple; witha myriad of historical data, Piketty reduces thestory of capitalism to a clear narrative arc. Tochallenge his argument you have to reject thepremises of it, not the working out.From page one he illustrates with visceral re-

minders of the unfair world we live in: he beginswith the Marikana mining massacre and henever lets up. He marshals not just 18th-centuryinterest rates as evidence but also the work ofJane Austen and Honoré de Balzac. He usesboth authors to illustrate how, by the early 19thcentury, it was logical to disdain work in favourof marrying into wealth. That it has become soagain busts the central myth of, and moral justi-fication for, capitalism: that wealth is generatedby effort, ingenuity, work, wise investment, risktaking etc.For Piketty, the long, mid-20th century period

of rising equality was a blip, produced by theexigencies of war, the power of organisedlabour, the need for high taxation, and by demo-graphics and technical innovation.Put crudely, if growth is high and the returns

on capital can be suppressed, you can have a

more equal capitalism. But, says Piketty, a re-peat of the Keynesian era is unlikely: labour istoo weak, technological innovation too slow, theglobal power of capital too great. In addition, thelegitimacy of this unequal system is high: be-cause it has found ways to spread the wealthdown to the managerial class in a way the early19th century did not.If he is right, the implications for capitalism

are utterly negative: we face a low-growth capi-talism, combined with high levels of inequalityand low levels of social mobility. If you are notborn into wealth to start with, life, for even forthe best educated, will be like Jane Eyre withoutMr Rochester.Is Piketty the new Karl Marx? Anybody who

has read the latter will know he is not. Marx'scritique of capitalism was not about distributionbut production: for Marx it was not rising in-equality but a breakdown in the profit mecha-nism that drove the system towards its end.Where Marx saw social relationships – betweenlabour and managers, factory owners and thelanded aristocracy – Piketty sees only socialcategories: wealth and income. Marxist eco-nomics lives in a world where the inner tenden-cies of capitalism are belied by its surfaceexperience. Piketty's world is of concrete histor-ical data only. So the charges of soft Marxismare completely misplaced.Piketty has, more accurately, placed an unex-

ploded bomb within mainstream, classical eco-nomics. If the underlying cause of the 2008bank catastrophe was falling incomes alongsiderising financial wealth then, says Piketty, thesewere no accident: no product of lax regulationor simple greed. The crisis is the product of thesystem working normally, and we should expectmore.One of the most compelling chapters is

Radical economist Thomas Picketty's bookCapital in the Twenty-First Century has angered the right with its powerful argumentabout wealth, democracy and why capitalismwill always create inequality. Not read it yet?Here's what it means, writes Paul Mason

BOOKS

City of London...an immensely powerful institu

THERE seemed to be a be-lief in my parents' genera-tion that things inevitablygot better: people got betteroff, working conditions be-came less brutal, each gen-eration had moreopportunities than the last,and technological advancemade our lives easier.I was born in 1979. That was

the year when things changed.People didn't know it at thetime, but some long-runningtrends went into reverse. Un-employment across the wholeof the UK had not risen aboveone million between 1945 and1978. Since the election of theThatcher government in 1979it has never been below 1.5million. For years, since the 1920s

on some measures, the UKhad been becoming a moreequal society. That changed,and inequality shot up in the1980s and 1990s, with the rateof growing inequality onlyslowed, not reversed, by theNew Labour years. Since thecoalition was elected morethan an extra million peoplelive in poverty – and last yearthe number of families usingfood banks trebled.The beliefs have been

crushed that each generationwould be better off than thelast, and that technological ad-vance would benefit us all. Idon't believe this was a delu-sion of the baby-boomer gen-eration, but there had becomea delusion that such social ad-vance was natural and in-evitable.In an economy captured by

corporate interests, the im-mense technological advancesin our lifetimes have beenused to cut wages and lay offworkers, rather than increasepay and reduce hours. But at the same time, politi-

cians handed over vastswathes of our economy to beexploited for profit. Growingup, the phrase 'fuel poverty'had not been coined but en-ergy companies have beenmaking a mint from jacking up

prices. Since privatisation,water bills and rail fares havealso risen way above inflation.And the tax system has

been transferred. High taxeson big earners were cut, whilethe VAT consumer tax hasdoubled for us all. Corporationtax was 52% when I was born,next year it will be cut again to20%. Taxes on petrol, alcoholand cigarettes have hit thepoorest hardest. What was atax system that redressed in-equality is now a tax systemthat reinforces inequality.I don't blame you if you don't

pay much attention to theeconomy. The hourly updatesfrom BBC News 24 on the per-formance of the FTSE index,that GDP rose by 0.8% in thelast quarter, the annual profitstatement of a multinationalcorporation, and the besuitedmen who tell us these figureswith great reverence – it allseems rather remote, a bit ir-relevant to our everyday lives.It is. But that isn't the econ-

omy – in fact both are prettyuseless measures of thethings that matter to us, ourfriends, family and our com-munity. I expect that, like me,you are more concerned aboutwhether there are enough jobsfor you and yours than theprices of shares on the Lon-don stock exchange. Likewiseif the pound in your pocket is

no longer meeting yourmonthly costs then GeorgeOsborne crowing over 0.8%growth feels rather like yourneighbour telling you howsunny it is as the bailiffs evictyou.So our first job in building an

economy that works for us hasgot to be to define what mat-ters in the economy: improvingaverage living standards; re-ducing poverty and inequality;providing work for all whoneed it; reducing tax avoid-ance and evasion; and ensur-ing our economy is stable andenvironmentally sustainable The reality is that economics

is politics (OK, politics with abit of maths). If you hand overresponsibility for the economyto bankers, city traders, andbig business, then you get aneconomy that, unsurprisingly,operates in the interests ofbankers, city traders, and bigbusiness.We need to democratise our

economy so that we have aneconomy where people, notshare dividends, matter most.How do we do it? As tradeunionists we should know theanswer better than anyone: wehave to organise, campaignand cause trouble until it'seasier for those in power togive us what we want than todeny us. Every democratic gain,

every freedom from exploita-tion that has been won hasbeen won through organisedcollective action. In the besttraditions of our movement weshould educate, agitate andorganise!

n Andrew's book The FailedExperiment... and how tobuild an economy thatworks is published on May20. RRP £9.95. It is availableto members of NIPSA at aspecial discount price of£8.95. Purchase fromwww.radicalread.co.uk andclaim your discount by typ-ing CLUB into the promotionbox.

A world turned upside down

Page 13 NIPSA NEWSNewswww.nipsa.org.uk

ISIS

Piketty's discussion of the near-universal rise ofwhat he calls the "social state". The relentlessgrowth in the proportion of national income con-sumed by the state, spent on universal serv-ices, pensions and benefits, he argues, is anirreversible feature of modern capitalism. Henotes that redistribution has become a questionof "rights to" things – healthcare and pensions –rather than simply a problem of taxation rates.His solution is a specific, progressive tax on pri-vate wealth: an exceptional tax on capital, pos-sibly combined with the overt use of inflation.The policy logic for the left is clear. For much

of the 20th century, redistribution was handledthrough taxes on income. In the 21st century,any party that wants to redistribute would haveto confiscate wealth, not just income.You would expect the Wall Street Journal to

dissent, but the power of Piketty's work is that italso challenges the narrative of the centre-leftunder globalisation, which believed upskillingthe workforce, combined with mild redistribu-tion, would promote social justice. This, Pikettydemonstrates, is mistaken. All that socialdemocracy and liberalism can produce, withtheir current policies, is the oligarch's yacht co-existing with the food bank for ever.Piketty's Capital, unlike Marx's Capital, con-

tains solutions possible on the terrain of capital-ism itself: the 15% tax on capital, the 80% taxon high incomes, enforced transparency for allbank transactions, overt use of inflation to redis-tribute wealth downwards. He calls some ofthem "utopian" and he is right. It is easier toimagine capitalism collapsing than the elite con-senting to them.

Paul Mason is culture and digital editor ofChannel 4 News. His book Postcapitalismwill be published by Penguin in early 2015.

ANDREW FISHER, author of a new book The Failed Experiment... and How to Build an Economy that Works, argues it's time to challenge our economic model

ution

European and world affairsPage 14 NIPSA NEWS News www.nipsa.org.uk

On my wall in London is my favourite photo-graph from South Africa. Always thrilling tobehold, it is Paul Weinberg’s image of a lonewoman standing between two armoured ve-hicles, the infamous “hippos”, as they rolledinto Soweto. Her arms are raised, fistsclenched, her thin body both beckoning anddefiant of the enemy.It was May Day 1985; the last great uprising

against apartheid had begun. Twelve yearslater, with my thirty-year banning from SouthAfrica lifted, there was a pinch-me moment as Iflew into Jan Smuts and handed my passport toa black immigration officer. “Welcome to ourcountry,” she said.I quickly discovered that much of the spirit of

resistance embodied in the courageous womanin Soweto had survived, together with a vibrantubuntu that drew together African humanity,generosity and political ingenuity — for exam-ple, in the dignified resolve of those I watchedform a human wall around the house of a widowthreatened with disconnection of her electricity,and in people’s rejection of demeaning “RDPhouses” they called “kennels”; and in the pulsat-ing mass demonstrations of social movementsthat are among the most sophisticated and dy-namic in the world.On the twentieth anniversary of the first demo-

cratic vote on 27 April 1994, it is this resistance,this force for justice and real democraticprogress, that should be celebrated, while itsbetrayal and squandering should be understoodand acted upon.On 11 February, 1990, Nelson Mandela

stepped out on the balcony of Cape Town CityHall with the miners’ leader Cyril Ramaphosasupporting him. Free at last, he spoke to mil-lions in South Africa and around the world. Thiswas the moment, an historic split-second asrare and potent as any in the universal strugglefor freedom. Moral power and the power for jus-tice could triumph over anything, any orthodoxy,it seemed. “Now is the time to intensify thestruggle,” said Mandela in a proud and angryspeech, perhaps his best, or the last of his best.The next day he appeared to correct himself.

Majority rule would not make blacks “dominant”.The retreat quickened. There would be no publicownership of the mines, banks and rapaciousmonopoly industries, no economic democracy,

as he had pledged with the words: “a change ormodification of our views in this regard is incon-ceivable”. Reassuring the white establishmentand its foreign business allies — the very ortho-doxy and cronyism that had built, maintainedand reinforced fascist apartheid — became thepolitical agenda of the “new” South Africa.Secret deals facilitated this. In 1985,

apartheid had suffered two disasters: the Johan-nesburg stock market crashed and the regimedefaulted on its mounting foreign debt. In Sep-tember that year, a group led by Gavin Relly,chairman of the Anglo-American Corporation,met Oliver Tambo, the ANC president, and otherliberation officials in Mfuwe, Zambia.The Relly message was that a “transition”

from apartheid to a black-governed electoraldemocracy was possible only if “order” and “sta-bility” were guaranteed. These was liberal codefor a capitalist state in which social and eco-nomic democracy would never be a priority. Theaim was to split the ANC between the “moder-ates” they could “do business with” (Tambo,Mandela and Thabo Mbeki) and the majoritywho made up the United Democratic Front andwere fighting in the streets.The betrayal of the UDF and its most effective

components, such as the National Civic Organi-sation, is today poignant, secret history.In 1987 and 1990, ANC officials led by Mbeki

met twenty prominent members of the Afrikanerelite at a stately home near Bath, in England.Around the fireplace at Mells Park House, theydrank vintage wine and malt whisky. They jokedabout eating “illegal” South African grapes, thensubject to a worldwide boycott, “It’s a civilisedworld there,” recalled Mof Terreblanche, a stock-broker and pal of FW De Klerk. “If you have adrink with somebody … and have another drink,it brings understanding. Really, we becamefriends.”So secret were these convivial meetings that

none but a select few in the ANC knew aboutthem. The prime movers were those who hadprofited from apartheid , such as the British min-ing giant Consolidated Goldfields, which pickedup the tab at Mells Park House. The most im-portant item around the fireplace was who

would control the economic system behind thefacade of “democracy”.At the same time, Mandela was conducting

his own secret negotiations in Pollsmoor Prison.His principal contact was Neil Barnard, anapartheid true believer who headed the NationalIntelligence Service. Confidences were ex-changed; reassurances were sought. Mandelaphoned P.W. Botha on the his birthday; theGroot Krokodil invited him to tea and, as Man-dela noted, even poured the tea for his prisoner.“I came out feeling,” said Mandela, “that I hadmet a creative, warm head of state who treatedme with all the respect and dignity I could ex-pect.”This was the man who, like Verwoerd and

Vorster before him, had sent a whole African na-tion to a vicious gulag that was hidden from therest of the world. Most of the victims were de-nied justice and restitution for this epic crime ofapartheid. Almost all the verkramptes — extrem-ists like the “creative, warm” Botha — escapedjustice.How ironic that it was Botha in the 1980s —

well ahead of the ANC a decade later — whodismantled the scaffolding of racial apartheidand, crucially, promoted a rich black class thatwould play the role of which Frantz Fanon hadwarned — as a “transmission line between thenation and a capitalism, rampant though camou-flaged”.In the 1980s, magazines like Ebony, Tribute

and Enterprise celebrated the “aspirations” of ablack bourgeoisie whose two-garage Sowetohomes were included on tours for foreigners theregime sought to impress. “This is our blackmiddle class,” the guides would say; but therewas no middle: merely a buffer class being pre-pared, as Fanon wrote, for “its historic mission”.This is unchanged today.The Botha regime even offered black busi-

nessmen generous loans from the Industrial De-velopment Corporation. This allowed them to setup companies outside the “bantustans”. In thisway, a black company such as New Africa In-vestments could buy part of Metropolitan Life.Within a decade, Cyril Ramaphosa was deputychairman of what was effectively a creation ofapartheid. He is today one of the richest men inthe world.The transition was, in a sense, seamless. “You

By John Pilger

South Africa tod another name

ANC victorymarred byminers’ strike

A BITTER labour dispute be-tween miners and the SouthAfrican government has cast ashadow over the country’s gen-eral election, 20 years on fromthe fall of apartheid.As the African National Con-gress (ANC) gears up to cele-brate the re-election ofPresident Jacob Zuma, more

than 80,000 miners continuedtheir three-month strike overpay and labour conditions.The strike - one of the longest inSouth Africa’s recent history -comes less than two years afterthe massacre at Marikana plat-inum mine where 34 workerswere killed following a violentconfrontation between security

forces and striking miners in2012.Happiness Mathenjwa, a 40-year-old miner at Marikana andemployee of Lonmin, theworld’s third biggest platinumproducer, lives in a makeshifthut close to the site where manyof his colleagues were killed 18months ago.

European and world affairsPage 15 NIPSA NEWSNewswww.nipsa.org.uk

can put any label on it you like,” President Man-dela told me at Groote Schur. “You can call itThatcherite, but for this country, privatisation isthe fundamental policy.”“That’s the opposite of what you said before

the first elections, in 1994,” I said.“There is a process,” was his uncertain reply,

“and every process incorporates change.”Mandela was merely reflecting the ANC’s

mantra — which seemed to take on the obses-sions of a supercult. There were all those ANCpilgrimages to the World Bank and the IMF inWashington, all those “presentations” at Davos,all those ingratiations at the G-8, all those for-eign advisers and consultants coming andgoing, all those pseudo-academic reports withtheir “neo-liberal” jargon and acronyms. To bor-row from the comic writer Larry David, “a bab-bling brook of bullshit” engulfed the first ANCgovernments, especially its finance ministries.Putting aside for a moment the well-docu-

mented self-enrichment of ANC notables andsuckering of arms deals, the Africa analyst PeterRobbins had an interesting view on this. “I thinkthe ANC leadership [was] ashamed that most oftheir people live in the third world,” he wrote.“They don’t like to think of themselves as beingmostly an African-style economy. So economicapartheid has replaced legal apartheid with the

same consequences for the same people, yet itis greeted as one of the greatest achievementsin world history.”Desmond Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation

Commission brushed this reality, ever so briefly,when business corporations were called to theconfessional. These “institutional” hearings wereamong the most important, yet were all but dis-missed. Representing the most voracious, ruth-less, profitable and lethal industry in the world,the South African Chamber of Mines summedup a century of exploitation in six and a half de-risory pages. There was no apology for theswathes of South Africa turned into the equiva-lent of Chernobyl. There was no pledge of com-pensation for the countless men and theirfamilies stricken with occupational diseasessuch as silicosis and mesothelioma. Many couldnot afford an oxygen tank; many families couldnot afford a funeral.In an accent from the era of pith helmets, Ju-

lian Ogilvie-Thompson, the former chairman ofAnglo-American, told the TRC: “Surely, no onewants to penalise success.” Listening to himwere ex miners who could barely breathe.Liberation governments can point to real and

enduring achievements since 1994. But themost basic freedom, to survive and to survivedecently, has been withheld from the majority of

South Africans, who are aware that had theANC invested in them and in their “informaleconomy”, it could have actually transformedthe lives of millions. Land could have been pur-chased and reclaimed for small-scale farmingby the dispossessed, run in the co-operativespirit of African agriculture. Millions of housescould have been built, better health and educa-tion would have been possible. A small-scalecredit system could have opened the way for af-fordable goods and services for the majority.None of this would have required the import ofequipment or raw materials, and the investmentwould have created millions of jobs. As theygrew more prosperous, communities wouldhave developed their own industries and an in-dependent national economy.A pipe dream? The violent inequality that now

stalks South Africa is no dream. It was Mandela,after all, who said, “If the ANC does not deliverthe goods, the people must do what they havedone to the apartheid regime.”

John Pilger is the author of Freedom NextTime. His 1998 film, Apartheid Did Not Die, ison his websiteThis article originally appeared in the Sun-day Times, Johannesburg.

ay: Apartheid by

Mathenjwa says miners like himlive in extreme poverty and theirworking conditions have not im-proved since the massacre, de-spite receiving widespreadinternational condemnation:Mathenjwa, who is married withfive children, earned 5000 rand(US$475) a month before thestrike but has not been paid

since the industrial actionbegan on January 23.The Association of Mineworkersand Construction Union (AMCU)is calling for a basic wage offerof R12,500 (approximatelyUS$1150) and has opposed anoffer of a 10 per cent salary in-crease extended last month byproducers Anglo American Plat-

inum, Impala Platinum and Lon-min.In a statement the union said:"Our members…resoundinglyrejected the current employeroffer and reiterated their originaldemand of R12,500 in fouryears."However, the producers havesought to bypass the union by

making their offer directly to theminers via phone message, andthreatening to sack them if theydon’t accept it.The mining companies say thestrikes have cost them aroundR14.5 billion (US$ 1.4 billion) inrevenue and the union’s de-mands have not been supportedby the ruling ANC party.

Massacre at Marikana platinum mine where 34workers were killed

www.nipsa.org.ukPage 16 NIPSA NEWS News

NIPSA has voiced concern over thecontinued waste of public money aftermore problems emerged over theshared services project within HSC.According to the union, Assembly Min-

isters have approved expensive computersystems that simply do not work as wellas backing the wholesale reconfigurationof services.Assistant Secretary Kevin McCabe

claimed this was happening despite evi-dence that this was not in the best inter-ests of public services. He told NIPSA News: “NIPSA con-

demns in particular the impact on thou-sands of ordinary workers of thecontinuing inability of the Human Re-sources Payroll and Travel Subsistencesystem (HRPTS) being implementedacross the Health Service to pay peopleaccurately and in a timely way. “Management Side accepted that there

had been a significant issue with HRPTSpayroll in April and believed that approxi-mately 7,000 staff were affected by thisissue.”Mr McCabe pointed out that the prob-

lem had affected employees with multipleemployment contracts and on differentpay cycles within Trusts. He said this hadcreated increased National Insurancecontributions being deducted fromsalaries. “The average over-deduction is £100.

This system ‘bug’ emerged at the start ofthe new tax year and BSO are workingurgently with the supplier to resolve theissue. “The cause of the problem has already

been identified and the fix is being de-signed for immediate implementation.”It is understood the BSO has claimed it

is unrelated to other issues recently expe-rienced by some employers.Employers are to communicate with

their staff on the issue and are working toensure employees have the balance inpayment paid into their accounts.Mr McCabe said: “Trade Union Side are

seeking assurances that there are parallelalternatives put in place to make thesepayments. They are also seeking writtenconfirmation from employers on this point.“This is further evidence of the whole

shared services initiative not working andNIPSA is appalled by the unnecessarystress caused to thousands of hard-pressed working families by this continu-ing saga of underpayments,overpayments, non-payments and extrapayments triggered by this flawed sys-tem.”Mr McCabe flagged up what he called

“the appalling irony” that the same HSCstaff the Minister “is so fond of laudingwhen he poses for photo ops” can nolonger count on being paid correctly “oreven receive pay slips to tell them of theerrors caused in their pay in a timelymanner”. He added: “NIPSA is committed to sus-

taining a campaign which will highlight theimpact and waste behind the HRPTS sys-tem and bring it into the wider public do-main. “NIPSA further believes that it is time

that this matter was brought to the atten-tion of the Public Accounts Committeeand consideration is being given to all ofthese options.”

More payroll failures highlighted

NIPSA funding call toMinister on ExplorisNIPSA have called on Envi-ronment Minister Mark H.Durkan to save the Explorisaquarium in advance ofArds Borough Councilmeeting on May 28 to de-cide its future.Some 18 staff at the Porta-

ferry-based facility are mem-bers of NIPSA and May 28marks a key date in the cam-paign to save their jobs. De-spite a number of reprieves –which NIPSA and othergroups have lobbied hard for –the Northern Ireland Executiveand Minister Durkan have notcome up with the hard cashneeded to save Exploris.Ards Borough Council did

commit £200,000 in their 2014budget for Exploris. However,this is not enough and an ad-ditional £120,000 is needed tokeep the facility open. While Minister Durkan has

said that he is committed tothis amount to fund the SealSanctuary, NIPSA has beenadvised by Ards BoroughCouncil that no letter or com-mitment has come from theMinister.Deputy General Secretary

Alison Millar told NIPSA News:“It is disappointing that yetagain politics is being playedwith a significant attractionand the only aquarium inNorthern Ireland.

“It is obvious from the sup-port which our members work-ing in Exploris and the widercommunity have received thatthe public wish Exploris tostay open. “Unfortunately, Tourism Min-

ister Arlene Foster announcedin the Assembly in response toan MLA question that the re-quested capital money of£900,000 was not forthcom-ing. “If the Environment Minister

does not commit financially to£120,000 per annum for thenext five years – which is adrop in the ocean out of theDOE budget – then I fear theCouncil will take the decision

on Wednesday, May 28 toclose Exploris. “NIPSA have written to the

Minister and have sought tomeet to press him to use hisinfluence and resources tosave this important regionalfacility. “If other Ministers refuse to

commit the finances, thenNIPSA calls on MinisterDurkan to rescue this facility –save Exploris, save the jobs of18 NIPSA members and savePortaferry as a community aswithout Exploris many of thesmall family businesses in thetown will struggle to surviveand may even close.”

ON May 7, the Northern Ireland Commit-tee of ICTU in discussing its campaignagainst welfare ‘reform’ agreed to con-vene a special meeting of shop stew-ards, union representatives, activistsand trades councils on the issue.The meeting will be held at the UNISON

offices at Galway House, York Street,Belfast on Saturday June 7. It will begin at10.30am and finish by 1pm.,ICTU Assistant General Secretary Peter

Bunting told NIPSA News: “We are alsoinviting community activists we haveworked with on the campaign against wel-fare ’reform’ to attend and participate inthis discussion.“As you will know, once the elections on

May 22 are over, the Stormont administra-tion will be forced to finalise its legislationimposing Welfare Reform on Northern Ire-

land’s most vulnerable citizens.“We are now seeing the impact of this

legislation in England, Wales and Scot-land, and how it is nothing but a pro-gramme of punishing the poor for thefinancial crimes of the wealthiest, affectingthe working poor as much as the unem-ployed.”He added: “NIC-ICTU believes that the

Welfare Reform Bill can be stopped atStormont and that those we have chosento elect can protect the most vulnerable inour society and extend our vision of socialsolidarity.“The meeting is designed to inform ac-

tivists and engage them in a strategy ofopposition to welfare ‘reform’.“I look forward to your assistance in en-

suring a positive outcome to this decisionof the Northern Ireland Committee.”

Campaign against Welfare Reform

NIPSA membersworking for theNorthern IrelandHospice have ex-pressed alarm afterreceiving a pro-posal which effec-tively removesthem from the NIL-GOSC pensionscheme and puttingthem into a DefinedContributionsscheme. The shock andanger felt by mem-bers was com-pounded becausethe proposalsstated that whilemost staff would beremoved from theNILGOSC pensionscheme, a smallnumber of seniormanagers would re-main in the scheme.It is understoodone reason for thisdifference is to pre-vent the NorthernIreland Hospicebeing penalised asa result of exitingthe scheme as theorganisation needsto keep this as atotal reward pack-age for senior staff.NIPSA met withthe Northern IrelandHospice Board onMay 8 and made arobust presentationon a number of er-rors and misrepre-sentationscontained in theconsultation docu-ment. NIPSA alsooutlined a numberof other options theunion claimedneeded to be exam-ined. In addressing theboard, Deputy Gen-eral Secretary Ali-son Millardescribed the pro-posals as totally un-acceptable andargued that no cur-rent member of thescheme should beforced to leave thescheme. Ms Millar toldNIPSA News:“NIPSA made itabundantly clearthat all memberswanted to resolvethis matter inter-nally and protectthe reputation ofthe hospice and thefamilies who usethe services. “However, mem-bers are refusing tobe made the sacrifi-cial lambs for thecase of expedi-ency.”She added: “It wasalso made clearthat members hadcontractual rightswhich could not beset aside and, ifnecessary, NIPSAwould seek to en-force those rights ifrequired.”

Draconianpensionchanges at Hospice opposed