For those who do qualify, the current payment of £96.35 a week is not enough to pay the bills. 4 in 10 workers would be forced into financial hardship. At a time of increasing cases, fixing statutory sick pay can prevent the spread of the virus and ensure millions can get paid to quarantine safely at home. No one who self-isolates should worry about putting food on the table. No one should feel forced to go to work instead of recovering from the virus. Everyone has the right to decent sick pay.

With the Job Retention Scheme coming to an end in a matter of days alongside another closure of our industry, we are demanding that Stormont, Westminster and unscrupulous employers own up to their criminal mismanagement of this pandemic and stop throwing hospitality workers under the bus to cover for their mistakes. Public health should come before all else. Any restrictions should be clear, consistent and evidence-based - rather than half-baked. When closures are announced, supports must be put in place for workers before they are implemented. Our livelihoods are at risk not only as a result of restrictions but because widespread use of precarious and zero-hour contracts and the limited employment rights they bestow upon us. Hospitality workers were laid off in our thousands at the first sign of crisis. We were then rehired on 80% of our wage, just to now be kicked on the dump heap once more. More and more employers are engaging in knee-jerk redundancies and plans to fire and rehire workers to degrade their employment rights and entitlements. Reports from our Trade Unions and the Low Pay Commission already demonstrated how the current minimum wage amounts to an inescapable cycle of poverty. Even before Covid, hospitality workers were speaking out about their struggles to make ends meet. Then, we were expected to get by on only 80% of that measly amount. Now, we are somehow expected to survive on only 67% or 73%. For some, that is as low as £4.30 per hour. This is not good enough - our landlords won't accept two-thirds of our rent, and our electricity providers accept us only paying 67% of our bills. With the winter coming in many of us may now have to make the call; do I pay the bills, heat the house, or have a Christmas? Let’s face the facts: workers in the industry can't survive without being guaranteed 100% of our wages. Without such a guarantee, the industry will rapidly haemorrhage incredibly talented and highly skilled workers who will be forced to look for work in other industries. Unite the Union estimates that while one in eight jobs in the sector have already been lost; one in six of those who remain could lose their jobs in the next six months as businesses warn of up to 40,000 job losses as they are set to fail given lockdown measures and further restrictions on the hospitality sector. Whilst hospitality workers understand that this pandemic needs urgent action to prevent transmission spiralling out of control, our jobs and livelihoods should not be sacrificed in order to do so. Politicians at Stormont have frequently expressed how important the hospitality and tourism sector is to the Northern Irish Economy. Now it is time for them to put their money where their mouth is and provide support for us after we have been providing for everyone else for so long. We have kept key workers fed and watered throughout these tough months - we put ourselves on the line so others could enjoy moments of respite in our bars, cafes and restaurants - and we have time and time again given up our own holidays to make yours special. All we are asking for in return is an income we can survive on, and working conditions that ensure our future stability. Please sign this petition and support workers in hospitality & tourism.

The staff at the Avanti Customer Resolution Centre in Birmingham deal with all levels of customer queries and complaints, and play a vital role in providing a high level of service for passengers. Avanti West Coast is proposing to remove the customer resolution team from Birmingham and relocate it to a contact centre in Sheffield, overseen by the parent company First Group, a distance of around 90 miles. The large distance between the two venues makes it unlikely that staff will be able to transfer to the new location, and 60 posts are at risk of redundancy. These job losses will be damaging to the local economy in Birmingham, particularly at the current time of economic uncertainty. RMT firmly believes that the jobs should continue to be carried out from Birmingham and the proposals are merely a cost cutting measure by the parent company First Group. Since March 2020, Avanti West Coast has been in receipt of a large amount of public funding, originally via an Emergency Measures Agreement (EMA) for six months, and now via an Emergency Recovery Measures Agreement (ERMA). RMT is demanding that Avanti West Coast withdraw its proposals and instead commit to protecting all existing jobs at the Customer Resolution Centre in Birmingham. RMT is also calling on the Government to ensure that all future funding for Avanti West Coast, via its ERMA, is dependent on retaining all customer resolution jobs in Birmingham, on a permanent basis.

The Sheffield City Region is the ‘low pay capital’ of the UK and has consistently ranked highly on COVID infection-rate charts. Now on the brink of a local lockdown, the lives of low wage workers in the city are in turmoil. This pandemic has shone a light on the people who really keep Sheffield going. It isn’t the billionaires, the bankers or the CEOs. It’s the healthcare workers, the carers, the cleaners, the transport workers, the refuse collectors and the fast food workers who feed people. The working class people struggling to get by. Working conditions in these industries are deteriorating quickly - adequate PPE is not available and social distancing is impossible. Fast food restaurants, shops and distribution warehouses are becoming epicentres for continuing the spread of the virus, resulting in multiple serious workplace outbreaks. If low wage workers have to self-isolate, most are forced to rely on Statutory Sick Pay, which is only £95.85 a week. Some won’t even receive that. Employers are risking the health of our communities by putting workers in the impossible position of choosing between health and paying the bills. Global corporations like McDonald’s and Amazon have the money to protect workers - but they choose to pay billions in dividends to shareholders instead.

I saw first-hand the difference union learning made for hundreds of my workmates and friends. So when I heard the news that the government planned to cut the Union Learning Fund, I was devastated. I thought of everyone I’d supported as a union learning rep and what they would have missed out on without this programme. I thought of the workers getting our country through this crisis, who deserve an opportunity to access education and learn new skills in the workplace. It’s impossible to list all of the benefits of union learning I’ve seen, but I can honestly say it’s changed lives. Our training around mental health helped normalise talking about it at work. People who missed out at school learned English and maths in union learning courses, skills they’ll have for life. And those who came to learning centres and engaged in courses came back over and over again, earning apprenticeships and higher qualifications. And independent reviews have consistently found union learning to be effective and transformational for the workers who take part, their families, and communities. The government must reverse its decision immediately.

City University outsourced catering services to the multi-billion, multi-national company Sodexo. Because of the impact of the pandemic, City has told Sodexo catering services at the University need to be cut massively. And so Sodexo plan to make up to half of the contracted catering staff at City redundant. Catering staff at City are majority women and overwhelmingly people of colour or migrant workers. They are the most diverse group of staff working at our University. Other staff at City are not being threatened with redundancy. It is unfair and unjust that catering staff, because City does not employ them directly, are being targeted for "cost savings". Sodexo is not offering any kind of enhanced redundancy payments. They are only offering the statutory minimum. This means some staff will be excluded from receiving any redundancy pay; others will have the redundancy payment capped at a very low level - three times less than the amount City would use when calculating redundancy. For any staff who stay working at City, they will have to accept pay cuts, worse holidays, worse sick pay and worse other terms and conditions. At the beginning of possibly the worst financial crisis in living memory and the greatest public health threat in a century, catering staff and their families face being left unemployed or underpaid. City took the decision to outsource catering staff to a private contractor like Sodexo. The University is responsible for making sure that Sodexo treats City catering staff with the respect they deserve.

Belinda Phipps is CEO of We Are With You- she earns around £140,000 per year. Meanwhile, ex-NHS staff working for We Are With You in Wigan and Leigh stand to lose £150,000 during the course of the NHS Agenda for Change three year pay deal (April 2018- April 2021). We will lose an average of £7,870 each during the course of Wigan Council's contract with We Are With You, with some of us losing out on as much as £10,974. This is simply wrong and across five years, will suck £230,000 out of the local economy whilst We Are With You directs funding towards costly rebrands and its London headquarters. We work hard for We Are With You in Wigan and Leigh to ensure that local people recover from addiction, regaining health, self esteem and becoming fully functioning members of our society. We work in this field because we care and because it's rewarding to support recovery, but we deserve to make a decent living. When we transferred over to We Are With You (formerly known as Addaction) from the NHS, we were promised the NHS rate for the job, but We Are With You have gone back on their word. "Supporting people to overcome drug and alcohol addiction is an incredibly tough job and makes a difference for every single one of us in Wigan. "We Are With You’s employees deserve the pay settlement they were promised when they moved from the NHS to We Are With You". Lisa Nandy, Wigan MP We deserve a decent wage for doing what is an important job for our communities. Please sign the petition to support us. #WeAreNotWithYou #KeepYourPayPromise #BelindaFibs #WeWontPayYou

Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust announced to staff in March 2020 that they believe the current model of provision for reproductive medicine at St. Mary’s Hospital is not sustainable. Commissioners are now carrying out a scoping exercise on the service’s future, and this could result in a recommendation the service is tendered and could be at risk of privatisation. Staff members working for the St Mary’s Reproductive Medicine service provide a vital lifeline to women and families seeking fertility treatment in Greater Manchester. The service also provides specialist care to women with complex medical conditions, cancer, and who are undergoing gender reassignment, which are not accessible elsewhere in the city region or offered by other providers. If privatised, we are concerned that these specialist services could be at risk. Unions are concerned that many other private sector providers have higher treatment charges and inferior services. Furthermore, staff are in many cases paid less than NHS workers in the private healthcare sector, with less annual leave, sick pay and other essential benefits. We cannot allow this vital service to fall into private hands and be run for profit, when its purpose is to serve the public of our city.

As care workers, we have gone above and beyond during the coronavirus crisis to care for your loved ones. A survey by UNISON North West found that 8 out of 10 of us would not receive our full normal pay if we were ill or had to self-isolate or shield due to COVID-19. As a result, many care workers said they may have to attend work while ill which would drastically increase the risk of spreading infection to vulnerable residents and service-users. As part of UNISON’s Care Workers vs COVID-19 Campaign, we have been calling on local commissioners and care providers to protect our pay when we are absent due to COVID-19. As a result, Salford Council and local NHS partners have introduced the 'Salford Offer' which provides additional funding to local social care providers to protect frontline care workers, service-users and the local community by maintaining the full normal wages for care staff that are absent due to COVID-19. The 'Salford Offer' is the very least that we deserve, yet despite the fact it will cost them nothing, there are a number of care providers in Salford that is refusing the support the 'Salford Offer'. Some of these providers have reported millions of pounds worth of profits over previous years.

Currently, hundreds of hospital cleaners, caterers and security guards working at Aintree University Hospital, Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Liverpool Women’s Hospital and Broadgreen Hospital are employed by private companies. We are employed by private contractors Compass Medirest, ISS and OCS and as a result, we are at a disadvantage compared with NHS employees. Like all of our health service colleagues, we’ve put ourselves at increased risk over the last few months keeping patients safe. We don’t want a medal, we just want to be treated equally with our colleagues who are employed by NHS. We deserve proper pay and working conditions so that we can deliver a high quality service for Liverpool patients. UNISON Liverpool Hospitals Health branch secretary Su Edwards said: “Our members do some of the most vital jobs within our health service. They cook patients’ food, keep the hospital clean and protect patients and staff. “Yet currently, these health service heroes are being treated like second class citizens. There is only one way that companies such as Compass, ISS and OCS can make a profit within the NHS and that’s by cost-cutting. This means that hospital staff employed by private contractors receive lower pay and worse working conditions than colleagues employed directly by the NHS. It is morally wrong. “But it’s not just hospital staff who are getting a raw deal. Compass, ISS and OCS prioritise profit over people- they bid for NHS contracts, then they cut costs and patients pay the price. If we brought these services in-house, we could deliver a higher quality service, with more staff on shift, better hospital food and safer hospitals.”

RMT is stepping up the fight to protect our members jobs and working conditions at Trump's flagship Scottish Turnberry golf operation as the close of the formal consultation looms large. As all the talk is about UK staycations at the moment it is clear as day that these savage cuts at Trump Turnberry are nothing to do with COVID-19 and everything to do with casualising the workforce and kicking away their working conditions to jack up profits. RMT is demanding that the axe to be lifted from above our members heads at Trump Turnberry and we are calling for public and political support for this campaign.

PCS members are in dispute over low pay, unequal sick pay entitlement compared to directly employed HMRC staff and job insecurity. All workers deserve the dignity and respect that employment usually provides. But the minimum wage is simply not enough to live on. Statutory sick pay rates are so low and only normally payable from the fourth day of illness, meaning staff routinely work when they are sick as they cannot afford not to. These are dedicated staff whose skills, hard work and enthusiasm are crucial to keeping the UK’s tax offices safe, clean and functioning. In fact, the vital work they do has been recognised by their key worker status during the Covid-19 pandemic. They have continued to work throughout lockdown despite the personal risk to themselves and their families. The PCS union have approached HMRC several times to urge them to meet their members’ just demands but HMRC has declined to do so. Send a message to Jim Harra and show your support.