Our bus services are broken. But they could be world-class. The Liverpool City Region Metro Mayor has the power to fix our buses by bringing them back into public control. Right now, private bus companies do what they like, dictating prices, routes, and timetables. You’ve seen the results: catastrophic cuts, skyrocketing fares, and buses that never turn up on time. It’s not just a bad deal for passengers — drivers are overworked and underpaid, leaving the bus companies struggling to run a reliable service as staff shortages bite. No wonder our drivers are sometimes forced to go on strike! Public control would mean affordable fares and more frequent buses. All with a smart ticket where daily spending is capped. And why not? It’s what they have in London! It would also put staff pay and conditions in public control, delivering a better deal for drivers and more reliable buses for you. Local politicians are there to represent YOU! Let them know you think buses should be in public control.

Members of PCS union working for Hinduja Global Solutions (HGS) in Liverpool are taking strike action over pay and conditions. Can you support their campaign? The Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) helps employers make safer recruitment decisions by processing and issuing record checks for people working with children and adults in vulnerable or sensitive situations. HGS deliver a contract for DBS running the contact centre and back-office functions. Highly rated, poorly paid HGS staff provide an essential service, dealing with around a million calls from the public, and 6 million DBS certificates every year. As key workers they worked throughout the COVID lockdowns, helping other key services keep running safely. But now their employer is offering only a meagre pay award, taking wages just above the minimum wage. HGS are also refusing to improve on other minimum legal terms and conditions. It's not like they can't afford to. Internationally, HGS are a hugely profitable firm, and their owner tops the rich list with a personal wealth of £24.5bn. When prices are rising so quickly, HGS' refusal to agree a fair pay rise will cause real hardship for their staff. One of our members said “We don’t want to disrupt the service we provide to the public but we want to be paid a fair wage to get by on. With double digit inflation I’m finding it really difficult to pay for food and pay the bills. While the company are making record profits and the owner is the richest person in the country, this is not right.” Can you help raise the pressure on HGS to come back to the table and do right by our members? Please send an email to the company's UK CEO now.

The Problem - The public paid millions to keep buses going during COVID. - That funding ends October 5th: 1 in 3 services could be cut! - Cuts could leave just 4 buses across the whole of South Yorkshire after 10pm and no buses in Barnsley after 7pm! The Cause - For decades, private bus companies have been putting short-term profits over the needs of people and planet. - Now our bus network is unsustainable without massive public support. The pandemic has made this even worse. - But even when the public offer to pay private companies to run services, they're now refusing to play their part! The Solution How do they get away with it? The public has almost no say over the network, leaving big business free to call the shots. 1) We need the Government to extend its funding to keep our buses on the road. 2) We need to speed up plans to bring buses into public control, so routes & timetables are set in the public interest. 3) We need a publicly owned operator to make sure essential services get run, even if private operators refuse!

Firefighters’ BA is crucial for tackling fires safely in buildings, providing them with protection from death, injury and disease when working in oxygen-deficient, toxic and hazardous atmospheres. Firefighters attending high-rise fires must wear their BA and be under air before moving beyond the bridgehead - a safe-air environment – to tackle the fire and rescue anyone inside the building safely. New policy guidance issued by the NFCC would permit firefighters to be sent beyond the bridgehead without being supplied with safe air. If firefighters are not using their BA to supply safe air when they pass beyond the bridgehead, it provides them with no protection at all. This new procedure would: - Expose firefighters to toxic smoke and other harmful substances that can cause death, injury, cancer & other diseases. - Make dealing with any equipment faults extremely difficult. - Make calculating how much air a firefighter needs to get out safely impossible. If a firefighter runs out of air or gets in distress, they could be beyond the point of rescue. Firefighters’ lives, and public safety, are at risk if this policy is put in place. Dead and injured firefighters can’t rescue anybody.

Millions of us across the country rely on train services every day to get to work, go to school, and as a greener option for travelling across the country. But the UK government is cutting Network Rail’s annual expenditure by £100 million. More than 2,600 dedicated railway workers will lose their jobs, their livelihoods and careers. That means fewer staff to undertake vital maintenance work, fewer inspectors on board trains, fewer route controllers to keep services safe and functional. It’s impossible to make those cuts without cutting corners on safety. We don’t want to see commuters packed like sardines into unsafe trains. We don’t want cuts that could make accidents more likely and increase the possibility of trains flying off the tracks. We deserve safe, reliable and affordable and well maintained trains for all. The UK government must recognise the world's most successful railways are in public ownership, and backed by sustainable government funding. We demand a better vision for the future of Britain’s rail. We want the UK government to put safety and livelihoods first. Sign the petition to stop this jobs disaster and the largest cuts to public rail services in a generation.

NHS workers (e.g. Porters, Cleaners, Catering, Security) who are employed by ISS, a private company that is contracted by Calderdale & Huddersfield Foundation Trust to run non-clinical services, want an end to their minimum wage rates, terms and conditions. As NHS workers they are demanding alignment with the NHS “Agenda for Change” contract that would see their pay, terms and conditions significantly improved. Every day since March 2020, our members have put themselves at risk; at risk of getting infected and at risk of infecting their family. We clapped for them, we labelled them heroes and yet these local NHS heroes face the indignity of being treated less than; to be employed as NHS workers, but not paid as NHS workers. The Trust outsourced their responsibility to ISS and in return ISS have raced to the bottom to set these workers on minimum pay. We are simply demanding that this be corrected, that the Trust recognise its responsibility to these NHS heroes and take action to end poverty pay at Calderdale Royal Hospital.

Over the last decade, pay for civil servants and others covered by the pay remit guidance has been under attack and has lagged behind inflation, and pay levels and increases in the private sector. Individual departments have had their hands tied by the Cabinet Office and have been unable to offer fair pay increases for their staff – and it’s gone on for too long. This has been compounded by the absence of pay progression arrangements. Public servants deserve a fair deal – they are always important to our way of life, but their dedication has been crucial in getting us through the pandemic. The least they deserve is for their living standards to be maintained, and their knowledge, skills and experience rewarded. Among staff and employers there is a common recognition that pay systems are broken and in the need of fundamental reform and adequate funding. Please sign this petition for fair pay for those who help defend, protect, support and enhance all of our lives.

We are NHS workers in Lancashire and we urgently need your support. As hospital cleaners and catering staff, we are outsourced to OCS and have worked 24/7 throughout the pandemic to keep staff and patients safe. But while OCS boasts it turned over hundreds of millions during the COVID crisis, it continues to pay us less than our NHS colleagues doing exactly the same jobs. Hospital workers employed by OCS are £2000 worse off than our colleagues working for the NHS. We also have inferior working conditions including 7 days less annual leave and lower sick pay. We submitted a collective grievance about this issue in May 2021, and EIGHT MONTHS on, we finally received a response- which failed to address any of the issues and passed blame to the NHS Trust. We have become increasingly frustrated and have now voted 97.8% in favour of taking strike action to resolve this issue. One OCS worker said: "I work for OCS as a domestic on the hospital wards. When accepted the job I was told the rate of pay was minimum wage, but was not told I would be working alongside work colleagues on a different contract which has a higher rate of hourly pay and full sick pay, they also receive 35 days holidays and we get 28 days including bank holidays. We have all worked through the pandemic, working on Covid 19 wards where some Covid patients have been walking freely around the wards. As a thank you from OCS we received a 2 finger KitKat and told we could also have an extra 10 minute break! We all found this very insulting, we have been fighting our dispute with OCS for 3 years now and we feel that the 2 tier pay system and contracts that OCS have in place are very unfair and causes friction amongst work colleagues, we all do the same job and we should all receive the same rate of pay and terms and conditions." Sadly, OCS still isn’t listening. We think that a great way to get the Chief Executive’s attention is to flood his inbox with emails from all of us. Can you take a few minutes to email Bob Taylor? It’s easy, you just need to add your details and press send. We don’t want to strike if we can avoid it, especially not in the middle of a global pandemic but we will do what it takes to get fair treatment. Health bosses and OCS can still avert a strike by agreeing to pay us the correct rate for the job. Claps don't pay the bills. Key workers demand fair pay. #ONENHS, nobody left behind.

Trade unions estimate that this will result in over 400 job losses and essential public services will be severly impacted, if not lost altogether.

The heritage and wider cultural sector was hit very hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Thousands of jobs were lost as vital income streams dried up. As museums, galleries and other spaces have been able to reopen to the public and tourism has begun to recover there have been some green shoots of recovery. However this can only happen with both a safe workforce and visitors that feel confident about attending Covid-secure venues. This is being put at risk by the failure of the UK government to mandate the wearing of facemasks for visitors to indoor heritage venues in England. Although masks will only be one part of a comprehensive strategy to address the risks posed by Covid the World Health Organisations recommends them as an important part of this comprehensive approach.

Dundee City Council are trying to force through a disruptive restructure of all secondary schools in the area. If the changes were to go ahead, the council would band subjects together under one faculty. The council would remove principal teachers from secondary schools and replace them with a new position – “faculty heads”. The plans mean there would be fewer teachers in our already under-resourced schools and yet more disruption to students’ learning. The changes would significantly increase workload for teachers – that means less one-to-one time with students. And there is no evidence out there to suggest that the faculties model has any educational benefit. This will hit the poorest students, hardest. Dundee is one of the most deprived areas in Scotland. And one in five young people leave school without any qualification at National 5 level. Secondary teachers almost unanimously oppose the changes. 97% have voted to reject the plans, and 96% don’t believe that the changes will improve the attainment gap. Education is in crisis. We need more class teachers, not less. Every young person deserves a qualified and experienced teacher. Every young person deserves a quality education.

PFI BLEEDS THE NHS DRY, TIME’S UP FOR PFI PROFITEERS! Unison Lanarkshire Health Branch has launched a campaign to bring private contracts within NHS Lanarkshire back in house into public ownership. The campaign aims to end the private Serco and ISS contracts within NHS Lanarkshire; which provides catering, portering, domestic and security services at Hairmyres and Wishaw Hospitals back in house to put an end to a two-tier workforce. Once brought back in-house it will allow all NHS Lanarkshire workers at these sites to be employed on equal terms and conditions. Bringing these contracts back in house will also put an end to profit-motivated contractors providing public services at the public’s expense. Unison has produced a letter which we have directly mailed to all Lanarkshire Councillors, MSPs and MPs asking them to support our campaign to bring the staff back in-house where they belong. Let's be clear, PFI contracts are bleeding NHS Lanarkshire and its time to put a stop to private profiteers draining OUR National Health Service. Support our campaign and sign our petition! You can also get more involved in the campaign by: Phone: 01698 754333 Email: [email protected]