ICT should focus on providing better services not cuts, says UNISON report

Date: Monday 30 November 2015

A UNISON Scotland report Disconnected, published today, 30 November 2015, claims that ICT services should focus on better services. The report highlights that ICT systems are all too often seen as a way of providing cheaper rather than improved public services.

This UNISON report is qualitative research of ICT staff across Scotland working across a range of public services. In local government, NHS, housing associations, universities, the police and elsewhere.

It finds that ICT systems are central to all our public services, ICT departments are feeling the brunt of cuts, and many ICT experts are leaving public sector either through redundancies or to find work elsewhere and they not being replaced.

ICT staff say they are not listened to. That morale is low. When they give warnings of problems coming down the line they are ignored. They see big opportunities to improve public services wasted in favour of short term savings to budgets. They feel ICT is too often seen as a way of delivering cuts rather than improving delivery of public services for us all. There is a lack of awareness of the potential of ICT

In common with other public services ICT staff say they are stressed by too much work and not enough people to deliver it. Staff talk of a ‘circle of decline’

Dave Watson, head of UNISON bargaining and campaigns said, ‘ICT is often thought of in terms of the hardware however its success is reliant on ICT staff and their understanding of public services and how we interact with technology. Public services must meet complex needs and ICT has a central role to play in that, it simply needs harnessed properly.’

Dave continued, ‘Public services ICT workers could make a real contribution to improving our public services, if we invested in them to develop their ideas. However employers tend to adapt private sector solutions with big promises to save budgets instead. In fact we are seeing big cuts in ICT staff and their departments, so it is no wonder we see big ICT projects going over budget or failing altogether.’

END

Notes

• Full UNISON report Disconnected:
  http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/publicworks/
  Disconnected_ICTStaffSurvey_Nov2015.pdf
• UNISON Scotland is the public services union and the biggest union in Scotland. We represent ICT workers in public and community based services across Scotland

Big increase in assaults on public service workers, says UNISON

Friday 23 October 2015

UNISON Scotland is publishing today Violence at Work: A Survey of UNISON employers and Staff in Scotland 2015. It shows an increase of 1,227 assaults compared with 2014.

The total recorded assaults on public sector workers in Scotland in 2015 was 38,279. This compares to 20,000 in 2006.

UNISON report included a survey, to ask what staff had suffered, how they had felt about it, and what action their managers had taken to try to make sure they were safer in the future. Nine out of ten people who responded to this survey were women, and well over half were age between 45 – 60 years old.

UNISON Members told us

• “patient was verbally abusive and looming over me ” 
• “Bitten, being threatened with 'weapons', head butted, kicked, things been thrown at me, verbal abuse, pushed and shoved, cornered with threatening behaviour”
• “Grabbed, attempted strangle, punched, slapped, glasses broken”
• “an irate male jumped onto myself while I was seated at a computer”
• “Screamed and swore at. Items thrown at me. Kicked punched bitten scratched nipped. Hair pulled. Strangled. Pushed, walking sticked wacked across me."
• “Too many incidents to describe.”

UNISON members also told us they felt undervalued, frightened, afraid, disrespected and sick. One summed it up as being “really upset and in tears most nights after work.”                                 

Worryingly many members accepted it as “Fine. It's my job”. Other said they were “mostly sad for the people that  have resorted to violence not great obviously but its my job and sometimes these things happen, we just have to deal with it”

Scott Donohoe chair of UNISON health and safety committee said, “The abuse of staff is intollerable and no one should have to experience it as part of their work.  This level of violence is simply unacceptable. There is no doubt the recording continues to improve, however the problem is clearly growing, rather than decreasing. 

Public service workers have a right to carry out their duties free from fear of attack. Whatever the difficulties faced by some of those who are assaulting staff we need to ensure special measures such as extra training, additional staffing or sanctions should be introduced by managers. We would urge employers to follow guidelines like the ones set out in the Centre for Healthy Working Lives Managing occupational violence in the workplace”.  

ENDS


Notes

• Report http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/safety/
  ViolentAssaultsonPublicServiceStaff_
  UNISONScotlandFollowUpSurvey_Oct2015.pdf
• UNISON is the biggest trade union in Scotland. We are the UK public services union
• Since 2006, UNISON Scotland has carried out an annual survey of assaults to public sector workers by issuing a Freedom of Information (FoI) request to all employers of UNISON members in the public sector.  This year we included a qualitative survey of members this 2015 survey was carried out from August to October 2015
• For the qualitative data we received responses from health service workers, council staff, education and social work, community and voluntary sector,  librarians and parking attendants. 88% of our respondents were female,  over 60% were aged between 45 and 65; 39% had experienced physical violence, 43% had been threatened with violence, 65% had been verbally assaulted.

Delivering leisure is no fun, says UNISON

Tuesday 9 June 2015

Staff delivering culture and leisure services across Scotland are coming under increasing pressure as job losses and lack of investment make their work increasingly difficult.

This is the finding of a report from UNISON, While wework you play - staff in Scotland’s leisure trusts speak out.

A survey of culture and leisure staff by UNISON found that over half regularly work more than their contracted hours and seventy one percent say that morale in their workplace has gone down in recent years. Staff say they are under increasing pressure as staff leave and are not replaced

The survey examines Sport Scotland figures on charging for services and discovers that prices for popular sporting activities have been increasing over the cost of inflation.

Large scale investment is needed to reverse Scotland’s housing crisis, warns UNISON

Wednesday 8 October 2014

A survey of Scotland’s housing staff has exposed the reality of frontline staff trying to cope with the huge scale of Scotland’s housing crisis.

Our report – Open the door: housing staff on the homes we have and the homes we need – looks at the real experiences of members involved in all aspects of providing housing services: housing officers, housing assistants and lettings officers.

The majority of those surveyed (68 per cent) said funding for their service had gone down, negatively impacting on the quality of service they can provide. Three quarters of respondents said changes in welfare and benefit legislation has contributed to the problem. At its bluntest, welfare changes have made life more difficult for tenants and this in turn has created problems for housing staff.

Some of the comments included:

• “I work with homeless people. The pressure is increasing relentlessly. Demand is increasing as resources dwindle.”

• “[Benefit changes] have impacted massively and it will only get worse. Rent arrears have risen and you cannot take what people don’t have.”

• “Due to bedroom tax and direct payments of housing benefit to tenants we are seeing an increase in rent arrears and homeless rising due to more evictions.”

• “How is it possible for them to provide for the future of their housing with less staff and more homelessness. It’s not possible.”

More than half of respondents (55 per cent) said they regularly work over their contracted hours while 58 per cent said staff numbers are in decline, meaning they don’t have as much time to spend with clients. Like other workers in public services, housing staff have been experiencing years of zero or minimal pay. Almost 70 per cent of workers said their standard of living had dropped in the previous three or four years, with many struggling to make ends meet.

Mark Ferguson, chair of UNISON’s Housing Issues Group, said: “This survey shows the shocking truth of Scotland’s housing crisis. It goes beyond the raw statistics and shows the reality facing frontline staff who are struggling to maintain a quality of service against a background of declining resources and increased financial pressure, while their workload increases.

“We have a crisis with the availability, the cost and the quality of our housing and we urgently need a large scale investment to reverse Scotland’s housing crisis. Any plan for social justice – and Scotland has had no shortage of talk of social justice in recent months – must have housing at its core.”

ENDS

Notes to editors

1. The full UNISON Scotland survey – Open the door: housing staff on the homes we have and the homes we need – can be accessed on our website athttp://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/housing

2. Scotland has approximately 1.46 million owner-occupied homes, 368,000 privately rented homes, 277,000 homes rented from housing associations and 318,000 homes rented from local authorities. There are currently 23,000 long-term private sector empty homes across Scotland.

The most recent Scottish Government Housing Statistics record that there are 179,954 households with outstanding applications for social housing; of these some 29,500 are households on transfer lists meaning 150,000 households are waiting to enter social housing.

3. Further information can be found in our UNISON reports:

• Making homes for a fairer Scotland 
  http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/housing/
  MakingHomesForAFairerScotland_June2013.pdf
  
• Funding and building the homes Scotland needs 
  http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/housing/
  FundingAndBuildingTheHomesScotlandNeeds_Mar2013.pdf

Public service staff face 'toxic cocktail' of cuts and violence at work - UNISON

Thursday 25 October 2012
A 'toxic cocktail' of cutbacks and violence against public service workers has resulted in a huge increase in the number of violent incidents reported to employers, according to a survey by UNISON Scotland.

The union's annual survey of violent incidents reported to public service employers shows that 34,739 staff reported violent incidents last year - almost 15,000 more than when it was first conducted in 2006.

Scott Donohoe, chair of UNISON Scotland’s Health and Safety Committee, said:
"The biggest increase in violent incidents is happening in those council services that are facing the brunt of spending cuts. Staff are stretched too thinly, dealing with service users facing cuts in the services they rely on. This is a toxic cocktail that is putting hard pressed workers at greater risk of violent assault."

UNISON's Scottish Organiser Dave Watson will present the survey results to the UNISON's health and safety conference at Stirling University on Friday 26 October.

Dave Watson said:
"The latest figures demonstrate an appalling level of violent incidents faced by staff who are simply doing their job."

The report shows 34,739 staff reported incidents last year. This compares to 20,000 incidents when the first survey was undertaken in 2006.

There has been a big increase in incidents over the last year in local government by 2257 to 14274. While there has been a marked improvement in reporting that may explain some of the increase, there are also 7,000 fewer staff working for councils.

The NHS shows a further decrease over the last year in incidents by 967 to 10,974. However, the two largest health boards (Glasgow and Lothian) were unable to produce figures this year, so these figures have to be treated with caution.

Dave Watson criticised employers who failed to produce figures:
"While we are pleased that many employers are improving their systems, others have obviously got some way to go. If they can’t produce decent statistics they cannot be tackling the problem”.

Convictions under the Emergency Workers Act have increased over the last year by 44 to 324. Due to the limited scope of the Act few violent incidents result in criminal action. Efforts to address this were blocked by the Scottish Government when they opposed Hugh Henry MSP’s, Protection of Worker’s Bill.

Dave Watson said:
"Employers must redouble their efforts to protect workers and the Scottish Government must play its role by strengthening the criminal law."

ENDS

Note for editors:
The UNISON Scotland Survey of Violence at Work 2012 is online here:
http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/safety/ViolenceAtWorkSurveyOctober2012.pdf

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The reality of sickness absence – shocking survey findings revealed by UNISON Scotland

Date: 28 March 2012

Nearly half of public sector workers polled in a recent UNISON Scotland survey said sickness absence policies encourage staff to turn up ill or injured at work.

A quarter of workers (25%) said they had worked in the last month when too ill to do so, while almost two thirds (60%) said they had worked when ill during the past year.

The findings are the result of a UNISON survey which looks at the reality of sickness absence policies in Scotland and provides further evidence to dispel the myth that public sector workers are prone to taking sick leave.

One in seven (14%) of those polled said the sickness absence policy at their work is “unfair” and more than a quarter (26%) said the policy is badly implemented by management.

Of particular concern was the number of staff who reported ineffective stress policies in the workplace. Almost two thirds (60%) reported that the stress policy in their workplace was not effective, while 28% said there was no stress policy at all.

Scott Donohoe, Chair of UNISON’s Scottish Health and Safety Committee said: 

“Given the sort of jobs UNISON members do we should all be concerned that nurses, care workers, school staff and others are going to work when they are too ill to do so. Of even more concern is the evidence of poor sickness absence policies and little effective action on stress.

“From this survey, it appears that many public service employers in Scotland see managing sickness absence as forcing employees back to work as soon as possible, or disciplining those who are off work more regularly than others.”

Dave Watson, Unison’s Scottish Organiser, said: 

“This survey shows that the reality in Scotland is a long way from the ‘sickie culture’ that is often portrayed.

“Absence rates have been falling over time and it is a myth that there are easy savings from new policies that assume that sickness absence is mostly skiving.

“Positive sickness absence policies are important, but there is most to gain from tackling the causes of absence, particularly stress, and helping people return to work.”

ENDS

Notes to editors

1.     The UNISON Scotland survey polled public sector workers, asking them to share their experiences of the sickness absence policies in their workplace.

2.     The TUC report The Truth About Sickness Absence (2010) took the first detailed look at the public sector sickness myths. They found that public sector workers are more likely than private sector colleagues to work when too ill to do so and less likely than private sector staff to take a ‘sickie’ – a short period off sick. While public sector workers take longer periods off work on absence, many work in stressful and dangerous public sector jobs that can cause injury.

3.     Further information can be found online at:

• UNISON’s online briefing ‘The Reality of Sickness Absence’
• UNISON Health and Safety Zone – sickness absence
• HSE sickness absence
• Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives
• CIPD Absence Management Survey

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UNISON bullying survey reveals real impact of cuts

The shock findings of a UK-wide UNISON survey shows that almost one in three Scottish workers have been bullied, or witnessed bullying, over the past six months.

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