The practice of fire and rehire is a disgraceful tactic by a company like DHL, particularly for staff who have heroically worked throughout the pandemic. These staff have hard fought for rights, and the employer must respect them. In this case, a small number of older staff, on legacy contracts feel unable to relocate their place of work to the new DHL site. Their contract has no mobility clause. While the site is close, these members do not own a car and would need to cycle for up to two hours extra a day (on top of 11-15hr shifts) down dangerous unlit and often flooded roads. We demand DHL honour the contractual rights of our members.

Following a year when the British Council faced the largest crisis in the organisation since its inception, Dominic Raab, as the Secretary of State for the parent department (the FCDO), waited until December to refuse additional funding to give staff any sort of pay increase or performance payment in 2020. The British Council is the only government body not to receive a pay award for 2019/2020. Although the British Council has always been expected to toe the line of the Civil Service pay policy in every year prior to 2020, it would seem that it conveniently no longer applies to them. So far the Foreign Secretary has refused to respond to correspondence from PCS requesting that additional finances are provided to the Council. We are asking you to sign this petition to call on the government to listen to its employees, and to treat British Council workers fairly with a pay award for 2020.

Sick pay slashed in the middle of a pandemic, terms and conditions attacked, what would you do? Bus drivers with Go North West in Manchester are being bullied and threatened with the sack if they don’t sign new contracts on inferior terms in a brutal fire and rehire attack. The company has refused to row back and has even started hand delivering letters with dismissal dates included for those that don’t sign. Now the drivers, who have worked on the frontline throughout the pandemic and face having their sickness agreement ripped up and working longer hours for less pay, are getting ready to strike after voting by 82.3% to walk out. With your help we can keep the pressure on. Please join us in calling on the CEO of the Go Ahead group David Brown to act. He’s the top chief of the entire group and our best bet of getting the company to take fire and rehire off the table and get them back around the negotiating table. Email Mr Brown now.

Employees at AGH Solutions Ltd, a private wholly-owned subsidiary of Airedale NHS Trust responsible for facilities management, estates and procurement services are currently on unequal pay rates despite doing the same job. Workers who were transferred (TUPED) over from the Airedale NHS Trust into AGH Solutions (AGHS) in 2018 remain on the NHS “Agenda For Change” (AFC) contract, while many new starters are paid on lower pay rates. For the majority of workers on the AGHS pay Grade A, this means they receive nearly £1.00 per hour less in basic pay than the rest of their colleagues employed under the NHS AFC contract on Band 2. If you factor in unsocial hours pay on the weekends and nights the wage gap widens much further. “I don’t feel valued. I do the same job as a friend who gets paid more than I do for the same work. It’s not right.” - Shift Porter To outline the pay difference. A Domestic employed on the NHS contract receives a basic rate of £9.89 per hour. If they work between 8pm - 6am or on a Saturday they get paid £14.14 per hour, and if they work on a Sunday they get paid £18.29 per hour. 

In contrast, a Domestic employed on the AGHS contract only gets paid £9.00 per hour no matter when they work. The basic hourly pay gap and the fact that AGHS workers don’t receive unsocial hours enhancements makes a huge difference. This is all without comparing sick pay rates, holiday entitlement and pension plans, all of which are significantly better under AFC. The purpose of this petition, our campaign and the GMB dispute at Airedale Hospital is to end the pay disparity for the majority of workers employed on AGHS pay rates and stop the race to the bottom in our NHS. “GMB will continue to stand-up for key workers. This pandemic has highlighted the tremendous debt of gratitude we all owe our frontline NHS heroes, and at Airedale, with this campaign, we can begin to repay that debt” - Rachel Dix, GMB Regional Organiser

Are your Local Authorities Trades People and Council Tenants being put at greater risk of contracting COVID-19 during the National Lockdown? During the first lockdown local authorities across the country reduced the service they provided and carried out emergencies only repairs in occupied houses. Following the announcement from Boris Johnson of a further lockdown on January 5th, some local authorities have been slow to act and are continuing with non-essential works within occupied properties. The workers can visit numerous properties within a day, frequently exposing workers and the tenants to the serious risk of contracting COVID-19. Latest information indicates one in three people do not show any symptoms of the deadly virus. The new strain of the virus is 70% more transmissible and evidence suggests more variants are likely to develop. By signing this petition, you are supporting Unite the Union to help reduce the spread of infections amongst workers and tenants within your Local Authority. Checklist for Members and Reps (Re Construction Tradespersons entering properties and occupied premises) • Unite supports local authorities and housing associations responding to emergency situations and essential maintenance only in occupied properties. • Planned maintenance work can be undertaken in vacant (void) properties provided risk assessments are conducted and strict social distancing measures are enforced at all times. • All necessary PPE supplied to workers who must have it before commencing work and completing jobs safely. • Employers must consult with trade union representatives when producing a risk assessment and the results of risk assessments shared with and communicated to employees. All existing risk assessments need to be reviewed and updated. • Unite reiterates the requirement for dynamic risk assessment which Includes an agreed stop work process, where the assessment highlights a serious risk. Incorporates method statements, including induction processes, being delivered remotely, utilising modern technology to update and inform all employees and workers prior to any works commencing. • Safe systems of work to be reviewed and updated in light of the increased transmission of the new Covid-19 variant. This to include workplace and travel to work policies. • Involvement of Unite stewards and health and safety representatives in all safety discussions. Please see Unite coronavirus guide. • All employers must construct a stop work on health and safety grounds procedure. An employee who believes their safety is threatened can stop work, and work cannot be resumed until a solution is agreed. Develop these procedures with trade union representatives. • All employees afforded protection under section 44 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 (the right to withdraw from a work area when faced with imminent risk to health/safety). https://unitetheunion.org/media/3094/legal-s44-100-advice-to-members-returning-to-workplaces-200520.pdf • The right to decline work due to the failure of the responsible entity/person to ensure social distancing on site with no detriment to the worker.

Our members don’t want to strike, particularly not in the middle of a global pandemic. They just want a wage they can live on, but Kingdom management's refusal to engage in meaningful talks over the 2020 pay award, harmonisation of sick pay, as well as enhanced pay for working nights, weekends and overtime has left them with no other option. These are low paid guards, who provide security 24/7 for the Royal Berkshire Foundation Trust. The £12p/h for security officers and £13p/h for supervisors they are seeking is modest and affordable. For Kingdom to exploit the pandemic to drive down pay is totally unacceptable. Please Show your support for Kingdom security guards at the Royal Berkshire Hospital. Add your name to our email to the Managing Director, urging him to get back around the negotiating table with Unite and pay his staff fairly. *The Unite members first went out on strike on 14 December for five days. The second strike action started on the 4 January for a further 20 days. More action is planned.

The decision to cut rates means we are paid less than the National Minimum Wage for working overnight protecting vulnerable community members. We have worked on the frontline throughout the pandemic and risked our own lives to care for the community for low wages. We are being rewarded with a pay cut as the cost of living spirals. The decision is not cost effective in the long term and will worsen the conditions and quality of care for the community over time. At Christmas, Geoff Driver OBE, Lancashire County Council Leader, sent a message thanking us for the care we provide and acknowledged that we already put in lots of unpaid extra work. Yet he had led the council to cut our pay and with this acknowledgment seems to expect that we will work for free because we care about supporting the most vulnerable members of society. Lots of other North West Local Authorities acknowledged the vital work we undertake and refused to cut wages of their outsourced workers, we ask that Lancashire reverse their decision and show that they value us.

Without the nursery, many posties, especially women, would not be able to work. The nursery has been a vital support to many in its 22-year history, enabling local people to take jobs at Mount Pleasant. Protecting Kiddycare Nursery also protects jobs for local people.

We are Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) staff. We are British citizens who serve overseas in countries such as Belgium and France, maintaining and caring for the cemeteries of our fallen heroes. We are proud of our role in ensuring that the 1.7m people of the Commonwealth forces who died in the First and Second World Wars, will never be forgotten. We now need your help. With just three weeks’ notice and despite our many years of loyal service, the CWGC has given us a stark choice: be repatriated back to the UK or face having our incomes halved. This is happening it us as we’ve been told that we will no longer be entitled to UK contracts after 31 December 2020, when the Brexit transition period ends. But switching onto new contracts means changing to our country of employment’s tax code and changes to pensions and other terms and conditions, which could see us lose up to 50% of our income. To be given just three weeks’ notice to making life changing decisions on whether to uproot our lives and that of our families in the middle of a global pandemic when jobs are scarce is terrifying. So is accepting losing up to half of our income. We are desperate. We now need the minister Ben Wallace to intervene on our behalf to protect our terms and conditions and put pressure on the CWGC to talk to our unions. Please help us by emailing the minister.

Engie security staff at Blackburn and Burnley hospitals work around the clock to keep people safe at the hospital but are paid far less than our colleagues who do the same job for the NHS. We are often forced to take on unhealthy amounts of overtime that take us away from their families and impacts our health and wellbeing due to low pay. For too long outsourced companies have exploited their staff for private profit. By supporting Engie staff, you are taking a stand against this. Fair pay must be at the centre of all public services. As a vital part of the NHS team, Engie Security staff deserve the same pay and conditions as our NHS colleagues.

Over the last few months, we've been raising concerns about worker surveillance technology and how it is on the rise – often without workers being aware. This week, we got the clearest indication yet that it is going mainstream. We learned that the Productivity Score feature in Microsoft’s Office 365 allows employers to monitor their staff: looking at how many emails you have sent, how many meetings you've attended and how often you interact with colleagues on instant messaging. This kind of surveillance is an intrusion on our privacy and is deeply troubling for productivity, with workers feeling they are being watched, and others able to game the system. With many people working from home, at least some of the time, this is putting monitoring into our homes, blurring the line between our work and private lives. Workers need to be consulted when new technology is used. We need guarantees about what monitoring is going on, and how. We are calling on employers to consult workers before any monitoring software is used (this is the law in our view) and for Microsoft to disable this feature by default – and we need your help

In July 2020 QUB Management took the decision to remove dozens of workers in the Students' Union from the income supports provided by the government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (JRS). This decision was taken with next to no consultation and has left hardworking employees with no income. The decision from the university to end payments appears to us on the surface, to be premature and based solely on saving costs as the government required further employer contributions from the beginning of August. For many of us, this loss of income has had a substantial financial impact, leaving us unable to afford essentials such as food, housing, electricity and gas. Not all workers are students and are ineligible for student supports or for state benefits such as Jobseeker’s Allowance whilst still formally employed. Those who are full-time students are ineligible for any state support at present. Recently, the government has announced further plans to aid employers and workers in this time of economic uncertainty, particularly those affected by necessary closures and restrictions on operations to control the spread of COVID. The government has announced that there is no shortage to the funds available in order to secure ongoing employment for workers during the pandemic. Further, Queen's University has no shortage of funds to support their hardworking staff throughout a crisis. Without our efforts, the Speakeasy and other SU facilities would not run. We contribute so much to the student experience and in return, we are asking for the university to provide us with a basic income, give us some job & financial security and afford us the respect that we deserve.