Lambeth’s race row ongoing…join us in protest

Remember the November story about the ways in which the council’s own equality impact assessment stated that cuts to housing division staff are falling disproportionately on black workers? The union has been working steadily to protect these jobs so far, but they are still on the block. It seems that by the council’s logic, if cuts must be made, why not the most vulunerable workers? Such probable race discrimination in redundancies is compounded by the realities of who is being hit the hardest by these cuts in the community: black women and children, the elderly, the disabled. The Lambeth Ethnic Minority Achievement Team was one of the first services to be completely cut. We believe we need to stand together against discrimination and against these cuts. Join us in fighting to preserve those services that remain, and the qualified and committed people who provide them…

Wednesday, 27th Feb
6-7 pm Brixton Town Hall

http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&id=107633

06 November 2012

Lambeth caught in race row over job cuts Trade union Unison has attacked senior officials at Lambeth LBC for suggesting job cuts to the authority’s housing division, which would disproportionately fall on black workers.

An equality impact assessment into the restructure of the authority’s housing division reported around three quarters (73%) of BME workers are at risk of redundancy, compared with less than half (45%) of white staff.

According to Unison officials, Lambeth’s redundancy proposals are in breach of the public sector equality duty and represent probable unlawful indirect race discrimination against black and minority ethnic (BME) staff.

Unison housing convenor, Hassina Malik, said: ‘Reorganisation proposals which only reduce the total number of jobs by a handful unnecessarily threaten more than a hundred workers with redundancy and the Council’s own ‘equality impact assessment’ admits that the impact on black staff is ‘extremely statistically significant’.

According to Ms Malik, managers from the housing division began consulting staff on job losses without making available the equality impact assessment. ‘It is not acceptable for Lambeth Council to press ahead with a restructure which they can see is discriminating against black workers,’ Ms Malik said. Concerns over the impact of the proposed job losses will be raised at a meeting between trade unions and Lambeth councillors on Thursday.

Don’t miss ESOL Fest on 19th June!

On Sunday 19th June there will be two big ESOL FESTS in London, one in the south and one in the north and east, with the aim of bringing together students, teachers and community organisations for a celebration of multi-culturalism and ESOL, within the context of a general defence of Adult and Further Education.

Download the leaflet

The South London Fest will meet at Windrush Square in Brixton at 12pm to march to Kennington Park for an afternoon of celebration and activities from 2-5pm, including music, food, dance, speakers, henna tattoos and lots more.

The East London Fest will meet at Hackney Town Hall 12.30pm OR Stepney Green Park at 12.30pm to march to Bethnal Green Gardens from 2-5pm.

We hope the event will be a festive day with a serious message behind it that ESOL is important and deserves, like all of Adult Education to be protected and we invite all teachers, students and community organisations to come out and support us.

If you’d like to get involved or speak at this event, please contact Mandy Brown, London Action for ESOL at mandybrowncow@hotmail.com or call on 07973853795.

Thanks for supporting the London Action for ESOL campaign.

Feb 7th 6pm- Demonstrate against the council budget

Lambeth Save our Services are protesting against the proposed council budget by holding a demonstration at the next council cabinet meeting at 6pm on Monday 7th February outside Lambeth town hall.

We want as many people to come to show the council that we are serious about fighting their proposed budget from which the South London Press estimates a quarter of council staff will lose their jobs. Invite friends and colleagues, bring kids and family, make posters and banners – this is going to be huge!

Lambeth’s Labour run council has already asked all staff to consider voluntary redundancy which shows how desperately they want to cut staff and services. They claim the budget will hardly affect front line services by cutting unnecessary services and slashing back office staff yet all school crossing staff and park rangers are likely to lose their jobs as well as many staff who work hard behind the scenes to support front line services. There cannot be such deep and drastic cuts without huge consequences to our local community – we need to fight these cuts and now.

We call on the council to refuse to carry out the Conservative-Liberal Democrat cut in council funding and deliver the services we actually need. Not only does the current budget impose many cuts, it does nothing to tackle enormous senior management pay (£220,000 for the chief exec!), wasted money on expensive consultants, badly negotiated external contracts and a housing ALMO (arms length management organisation) that desperately needs to brought back in-house to save money and jobs. This budget will be bad for Lambeth!

So please get involved with Save our Services and come and demonstrate on Monday 7th.

Download the leaflet and circulate to everyone you know. Printed copies available – get in touch.

Join the event on Facebook and invite everyone you know.

We will be leafletting and running stalls in the run up so please come and say hello and help out.

• Thursday 27th Jan – 5 till 6.30pm – Oval tube, Stockwell tube station
• Friday 28th Jan – 5 till 6.30pm – Oval tube, Stockwell tube, Brixton tube stations
• Saturday 29th Jan – 11am – Streatham high street – probably by the Odeon