Union takes stand against £20m cuts

Cllr Abdul Jabbar

A DOZEN union members protested over cuts being made to staff members, as Oldham Council needs to make savings of more than £20 million next year.

Councillor Abdul Jabbar told councillors they need to bridge the 2017/18 budget gap of £20.315m.

As part of the development and consultation process for these proposals, the Overview and Scrutiny Performance and Value for Money Select Committee met last month to review 44 proposals with a total value of £7.012m.

Cabinet then considered the proposals on December 5, resulting in a total of £6.147m of Phase One in the 2017/18 budget reduction proposals being commended to council for approval.

This will leave a balance of £14.168m still to be addressed for 2017/18.

Councillor Abdul Jabbar said: "The people of Oldham are really being hurt. The burden has shifted from central government to local government."

Council leader Jean Stretton added: "Cuts to local government have hit Oldham disproportionately. It has been hard, harder than ever."

Unison members protested outside the civic centre, which they said were in opposition to permanent changes being made to Council staff's terms and conditions.

Julie Finnegan, secretary for the Oldham local government branch, said: "They want to carry on with the cuts that they imposed three years ago.

"We have been in negotiations over the summer. Some are re-instated, which is good for our members. We have asked them not to make some permanent.

"They said they wanted to make £2m changes from the terms and conditions but when we went through the accounts we saw £94m earmarked reserved - they have £18m unallocated.

"We have asked them to look at using some of that to offset that savings.

"Since 2010 staff have had cuts to services, to jobs. We went along with them three years ago to help them to set changes.

"We are already stretched with the workload.

"We have asked them to put the emphasis back on staff, show them they want the staff here, and value them."