Showing posts with label Brent Trade Union Council. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brent Trade Union Council. Show all posts

Monday 6 August 2018

Petition supporting Rastafarian bus driver forbidden to wear her colours



From Brent Trade Union Council,
Willesden Trades and Labour Hall,
375 High Road, Willesden,
London NW10 2JR



Marcia, a Metroline driver at the Perivale garage has been told that she is not allowed to wear a head covering in the colours of her Rastafarian belief (red, gold and green). 
We think this is discrimination- in the same way that we would if a Muslim woman driver was told she could not wear a head scarf. 
Marcia feels that for her to practice her religion, she needs to wear her colours-we support her in this choice. 
Multiculturalism is something to be celebrated, not hidden.
Marcia had to face a grievance meeting with the company, which she sadly lost. It is time for drivers who support her to take a stand. 
We call on London Mayor Sadiq Khan to intervene to help Marcia.
Marcia should not be forced to choose between her religious beliefs and her job-that's discrimination. We support her and call for her immediate return to work. 
Marcia Carty needs the full support of all bus workers, trade unionists and progressive people in London and beyond. She is being victimised as a black Rastafarian woman whose only crime is to wear her colours.  She has worn them for years, but now she is being prevented from starting work each day with her colours. 
Download this petition and get it filled in by as many of your friends, union members or not, as possible. This clearly contravenes Unite’s Equalities policy and is possibly illegal.  Unite needs to take firm action here.
The petition text reads:

  • No to discrimination: Defend driver's right to wear her colours
  •  Marcia, a Metroline driver at the Perivale garage has been told that she is not allowed to wear a head covering in the colours of her. Rastafarian belief (red, gold and green). 
  • We think this is discrimination- in the same way that we would if a Muslim woman driver was told she could not wear a head scarf. 
  • Marcia feels that for her to practice her religion, she needs to wear her colours-we support her in this choice. 
  • Multiculturalism is something to be celebrated, not hidden.
  • Marcia had to face a grievance meeting with the company, which she sadly lost. It is time for drivers who support her to take a stand. 
  • We call on London Mayor Sadiq Khan to intervene to help Marcia.
  • Marcia should not be forced to choose between her religious beliefs and her job-that's discrimination. We support her and call for her immediate return to work.

This is the petition CLICK HERE TO SIGN ON-LINE:


Monday 10 October 2016

Upcoming Grunwick40 events - exhibition, film, conference


From Grunwick40

Hi everyone
We’re really excited. There's just over a week to go until the opening of ‘We are the lions: an exhibition commemorating the Grunwick strike 1976-78’ – and it’s going to be amazing.
This exhibition wouldn’t have happened without your support. So we hope you’ll come and visit it at Brent Museum & Archives in Willesden, where it will run from October 19th 2016 to March 26th 2017. Opening times and details are here.
You’ll get a chance to explore archive images and records of the strike, immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the 70s and have some fun creating your own responses to Grunwick in the creative area (kids welcome too!). We also have the original Grunwick Strike Committee banner on display with its highly unusual design – see if you can spot its influence throughout the look of the exhibition.
And don’t forget, if you like what you see, we’re also offering a free travelling exhibition to schools and community groups. Drop us an email at grunwick40@gmail.com to book it for a venue near you.
As if all this isn’t enough, November will also see us run two huge Grunwick events:
They’re both free and open to all, which means they’ll fill up fast – so make sure you don’t miss out.
Now we’re working to get the formal permissions sorted so that we can get our amazing community murals out into the streets of Brent – it’s taking a little longer than planned but don’t worry, you’ll be the first to hear about the great unveiling. 
See you at a Grunwick-themed event soon!

The team at Grunwick 40.
Grunwick 40 partner organisations are Brent Trades Council, Willesden Green Town Team and Brent Museum and Archive

Thursday 12 February 2015

THEIR CUTS-YOUR HEALTH Deadline for submissions to Independent Healthcare Commission extended to February 24th

From Brent Fightback

The Independent Healthcare Commission set up by four boroughs and chaired by Michael Mansfield QC to look into the effects so far of the implementation of the Shaping a Healthier Future proposals has extend the deadline for submitting evidence to February 24th. This is the evidence Brent fightback has submitted:

In addition to the points made in the BTUC submission which Brent Fightback endorses, we would like to add that effective out of hospital care, care in the community, cannot be provided if social care provided by the Council is slashed.

Brent Council's funding has been drastically cut and among their proposals to achieve a balanced budget are many cuts which will severely damage the quality of care available - in particular the reduction in time from 30 to 15 minutes for carers' visits which has been widely criticised by elderly peoples' charities as ineffective and dehumanising. Also the closure of the (ironically titled New Millenium Day Centre which caters for 80 plus people with complex mental and physical needs - the group SAHF proposals are supposed to focus on.

Also the withdrawal of any provision for rough sleepers who have a high level of unmet health needs and already a disproportionately high level of A&E attendances because they lack alternative means of care.

At the other end of their residents' lives, Brent Council proposes to close ten of its seventeen children's centres. As well as providing facilities for play and education, children's centres often host health services for under-fives including baby and child clinics and advice on health and diet for parents and their small children. Brent has a very poor record on child immunisation, dental health, child mental health and obesity. If these facilities are lost, the NHS primary care services will be put under even more strain.

This is the Submission made by Brent Trade Union Council
 
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Over many years the Brent Trade Union Council has campaigned with other concerned organisations and the local trade union movement about the cuts to the local health service.Our colleagues in the health service unions warned us that the removal of services from Central Middlesex Hospital (CMH) would lead to the eventual closure of A & E.

Central Middlesex Hospital was rebuilt and extensively modernised at a cost of more than £62 million, reopening fully in 2008. This modernisation was funded in large part by PFI and was specifically designed for emergency medicine.

In spite of this, over the intervening years, many services have been moved from CMH to Northwick Park Hospital in a far more prosperous area. Services were transferred without consultation, because there was no obligation to consult since the two hospitals were part of the same trust. Staff were often given only a few days' notice that they were required to transfer and eventually Central Middlesex was left without the back up services needed for its A & E to remain viable. So we have a situation where management moved the services, then used it as a justification for saying that A & E was no longer safe or effective as maintaining an A & E service is dependent on the full range of hospital services being available to patients. Yet, right up to the day of its closure the A & E department at CMH was still being sent patients from the overstretched departments at both Northwick Park and St Mary's.

Having moved so many services to Northwick Park and closed the A & E at Central Middlesex, the CCG is now responsible for a splendid modern building which they will have to pay for until the end of the PFI contract and the dilemma of how to make use of it.

Throughout these years, Primary care services have been severely overstretched and continue to be so despite the Shaping a Healthier Future organisation and the local CCG having a “vision” of improving those services by investing to prevent illness, lessen the need for hospital admissions and shorten the length of time patients need to spend in

hospital. Of course the BTUC supports improvements in primary care, but promises were made that these improvements would be in place before radical changes were made to hospital services. However, they remain, to quote the CCG's own documents, “visions” and “aspirations”.

There is a crisis in recruitment of GPs, community nurses, health visitors and other staff needed to transform these visions and aspirations into reality, just as there is a crisis of recruitment for hospital staff and an expensive and destabilising reliance on agency staff. BTUC believes that the government's refusal to pay NHS staff even the 1% advised by their own pay review body and the housing crisis which is extreme in Brent, contribute to the recruitment crisis in the NHS, while cuts to the Council's budget threaten the provision of adequate social care, essential if patients' needs are to be met in the community.

The two Brent wards closest to the hospital, Stonebridge and Harlesden, are some of the most deprived in the Borough. The Locality Profile for Harlesden makes for grim reading. Harlesden is ranked in 30s for deprivation for England.

Despite having a young population 32% below the age of 20 years, in Harlesden ward, life expectancy is 13.4 years for men and 9.6 years for women less than the highest expectancy rate in Dudden Hill ward. It can be described by a tube train journey. If you take the train from Harlesden station and travel a few station north you will gain a decade in life expectancy.

Chronic Illness is significantly higher when compared to London and England figures, the biggest killers are Cancer, Circulatory and Respiratory diseases.

Mental illness affects one in six residents, TB is the second highest in the Borough and HIV is “considered to be very high” (Locality Profile).

Too many Children are found to be obese in their reception year when starting school and teenage pregnancies are also high.

We have only outlined a few items from the Brent Locality Profile for Harlesden Ward but we want to emphasise how completely unacceptable it is to close the A&E and other services in the middle of a population that so desperately needs a proper A&E and the important the general health services that go with it.

To compound this misery the facilities at Northwick Park which is the A&E that is suppose to replace the CMH facility, cannot cope with the extra load from the CMH and was rated as the worst A&E in the country.

The near impossibility of using public transport to go to Northwick Park. The difficulty of taking a sick child in the middle of the night to the A&E does not bear thinking about. Again the Harlesden and Stonebridge wards have the lowest levels of car ownership and minicab costs are prohibitive for those on low incomes.

Brent Trades Council also want to support and be associated with the submission from The Hammersmith and Charing Cross Save Our Hospital Campaigns.

On behalf of the Brent Trades Union Council please place our submission before Mr Mansfield.


 Brent Fighback adds:



In addition to the points made in the BTUC submission which Brent Fightback endorses, we would like to add that effective out of hospital care, care in the community, cannot be provided if social care provided by the Council is slashed.


Brent Council's funding has been drastically cut and among their proposals to achieve a balanced budget are many cuts which will severely damage the quality of care available - in particular the reduction in time from 30 to 15 minutes for carers' visits which has been widely criticised by elderly peoples' charities as ineffective and dehumanising. Also the closure of the (ironically titled New Millenium Day Centre which caters for 80 plus people with complex mental and physical needs - the group SAHF proposals are supposed to focus on.


Also the withdrawal of any provision for rough sleepers who have a high level of unmet health needs and already a disproportionately high level of A&E attendances because they lack alternative means of care.


At the other end of their residents' lives, Brent Council proposes to close ten of its seventeen children's centres. As well as providing facilities for play and education, children's centres often host health services for under-fives including baby and child clinics and advice on health and diet for parents and their small children. Brent has a very poor record on child immunisation, dental health, child mental health and obesity. If these facilities are lost, the NHS primary care services will be put under even more strain.
 
Submissions should be made to: Peter Smith, Clerk to the Commission, at Hammersmith & Fulham Council. Submissions should be addressed to him at Room 39, Hammersmith Town Hall, London W6 9JU or sent by email to peter.smith@lbhf.gov.uk. Later submissions will be forwarded to the Commission but may not be given the same attention as those received by the deadline.

Saturday 5 May 2012

Believing James Powney...

I wrote recently LINK that in my experience Cllr James Powney, despite our differences, has always posted my comments on his blog, but it seems that others have not been so fortunate.

Pete Firm, who is secretary of Brent Trade Union Council and a Labour Party member, posted a comment on the leafleting licence issue some time ago. The comment was about James Powney's suggestion that the campaign around the issue had been 'invented'

Cllr Powney had written:
The mischief started with the Willesden and Brent Times leading with a story that gave the impression that this was an entirely new set of rules, and glossing over the exemptions.  What is striking is that I personally spoke to the reporter and told her that "political purposes" meant a variety of political campaigns, not just political parties
Firmin's comment pointed out  the  Editor's note in the subsequent WBT , at the foot of a letter from Michael Read clarifying exemptions to the licence requirement, which said:
Brent Council's communication team has issued an apology to the Times for issuing an inaccurate statement on which our original report was based.
In other words, as I have also pointed out, LINK the Willesden and Brent  Times story was based on an e-mail from the Council itself.

 The comment was never published on Cllr Powney's blog and Pete wrote on April 30th asking why.
James, Can I ask why you haven’t published my comment (submitted last Thursday or Friday) to you blog post “How To Invent A Campaign”? Pete Firmin
 Firmin has has received no response.

 Coincidentally the latest post on James' blog is pertinent. LINK He is concerned that people don't believe him:
All this helps to create an atmosphere where anything that a Council officer or councillor says is disbelieved.  I have had this many times over the libraries issue, when I have pointed out that an assertion is not true, only to be told that it must be, and to have my interlocuter refuse to believe me even when I refer to documentary proof. 
Pete Firmin and I have both pointed to the 'documentary proof' in the Council e-mail and the Editor's note, that Cllr Powney's accusation about an invented campaign was wrong.

Time to publish Pete Firmin's comment, James?