In February of last year our branch of Unite Community was approached by a group of parents in Leeds who had been informed that the customary school transport for their children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) was to be cut from start of the current school year.

Instead of minibus travel, Leeds City Council would provide some help with transport costs and, where appropriate, offer travel training so that students could make their own way to school.

The group of students affected would have been those aged 16 years at the beginning of the school year. Many of them had either severe learning disabilities or physical disabilities or both. Similar decisions have been or are being made elsewhere in the country.

The parents formed themselves into an organisation called DEAL (Disability Empowerment Action Links) to campaign with Unite Community to reverse the cut. Following a demonstration on the Town Hall steps last April, media coverage, the collection of hundreds of signatures for a petition, and lobbying, the parents eventually met with councillors and officials in June of last year.

Following the meeting, the City Council agreed to pause the transport policy for a year and to restore the normal school transport for the rest of their children’s school careers. It was also agreed to offer a personal travel allowance to those families who would like it. But, it was stressed, the allowance would operate on a purely voluntary basis.

Since June, DEAL and Unite Community have continued to meet with the councillors and officers. The City Council agreed towards the end of last year to pause their policy for a further year, but at the last joint meeting in January with campaigners, the Council agreed to reverse the cuts to school transport altogether!

This decision represents a great result for the parents and their campaigning. From Unite Community’s point of view, it shows how we can act effectively to support those facing cuts and how we can work in partnership with community groups. In short, it shows the great value of community trade unionism.

Join Unite Community in a day of action to stop and scrap Universal Credit. We will have a stall outside Wakefield Cathedral 11am-2pm on Saturday 1st December.

We will be talking to members of the public, handing out information, gathering signatures for a petition, and carrying out a survey of those in receipt of the benefit.

Universal Credit is plagued with problems and is pushing people into debt, rent arrears and poverty. Food bank use has also increased since its introduction.

Unite Community (Leeds & Wakefield Branch) will be outside Wakefield Cathedral (by the steps) on Saturday 1st December 11-2pm giving out information about Universal Credit, talking to people about it and asking them to sign our petition and to help us to campaign against it. Please join us.

Lancashire Unite Community Youth Officer, Tom Costello, has written a very good  pamphlet, Youth Fighting Back: Young Workers and Trade Unions. This brief but clear and well written account analyses why young people need unions and what unions can do for them. It includes examples of inspirational young people recently taking industrial action at McDonalds and TGI Fridays.

Tom also links trade union activity to the need to get rid of the Tories and to support Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party.

There is also practical advice on what individuals can do to take forward the struggle against exploitation and unfairness experienced by young people.

Tom’s pamphlet makes a great campaigning tool in order to recruit young people to Unite Community and the wider union movement.

How to obtain a copy

A pdf version of the pamphlet is available here and hard copies can be obtained from Tom himself by contacting him on email at: tom_costello1@hotmail.com

The Sanctions Working Group of Unite Community Leeds & Wakefield Branch has just published an online version of A Guide to Food Aid in Leeds. A sign of austere neoliberal times. Thank you to Leeds-based Unity in Poverty Action for all their considerable help with the guide. A  hard copy will be ready soon. Further details of the guide are available here

Unite Community member, Gerry Lavery, considers how the ideas of  Antonio Gramsci, one time leader of the Italian Communist Party and political theorist, have helped to inform the work of the Sanctions Working Group of Unite Community Leeds and Wakefield Branch. The harsh yet ineffective sanctions regime stubbornly remains. Until popular perceptions of working-age claimants are challenged in a more strategic way at a local and national level, then the hostile climate that supports sanctions is likely to persist.

Benefit sanctions have had devastating consequences, including death. They have often been applied to the most vulnerable, but have also been linked to poor health, worsening family relations, debt, homelessness and crime. Nor is there much evidence in the UK that they work. But, through Universal Credit, they will remain and be extended to those working and previously receiving tax credits. This policy is known as ‘in-work conditionality’, i.e., unless claimants can justify working a certain number of hours or not pursuing better paid jobs, they could also be penalised. Trials of the policy have already highlighted its potentially damaging impact. Continue reading →

Despite knowing Universal Credit causes serious problems for claimants, the Tory government is pressing ahead and rolling it out to thousands of people who will have to wait weeks to receive any money. Claimants are descending into debt, relying on food banks, getting into rent arrears and in many cases getting evicted from their homes because of in- built problems with Universal Credit.

Unite Community, the community wing of Unite the Union, will be holding a national Day of Action on Thursday 24^th May to highlight the problems with Universal Credit.

Details of local event

A local event will be held in Morley in Leeds. A stall will be set up in the main shopping precinct on Queen Street in Morley from 11am-1pm where campaigning will take place, leaflets distributed and signatures collected for a petition demanding a stop to Universal Credit.

There will also be a public meeting from 1.30-3.30pm in the Morley Labour Rooms, 2, Commercial Street, Morley, LS27 8HY for anyone wishing to join in a discussion about the issues involved and to consider taking the campaign forward.

Please join us.