An open letter to Jason Kitcat regarding GMB strike action over refuse collectors £95 per week pay cut

Brighton & Hove is currently in the middle of industrial action, following the proposal from the Green Party-led council to cut the take-home pay of GMB refuse collection workers by £95 per week.

Below is my open letter to the Leader of Brighton & Hove Council, Mr Jason Kitcat.

UPDATE: 10 May 2013 – 1pm. Jason Kitcat has replied to my email and his response is underneath my original letter

Dear Mr Kitcat

As you are the leader of Brighton and Hove Council, I’d like to urge you to reach an agreement with the GMB Union as soon as possible to put a halt to the strike action over refuse and recycling collection.

While I understand the economic situation is incredibly difficult, this is a core universal service that should not be affected by any imposed cuts.

As I recall, you, as a Green councillor, stood on a platform in 2011 of ‘fair is worth fighting for’. I refuse to believe that cutting pay by £95 per week for those affected is ‘fair’.

This comes at a time when new Council Tax bills have been produced showing an increase of 1.7% for residents of Brighton, despite a call from the Coalition Government to freeze council tax.

How you can increase Council Tax (setting your council aside from hundreds around the country who have frozen theirs) and then have the gall to propose a cut to the pay of key workers is difficult to understand.

This week, with the delay in collections, my own road is now strewn with rubbish and recycling that has blown away after being left out in the expectation that it would be collected.

This is a scenario that will have been repeated across the entire city and is not only a health hazard, but also a reflection on the city itself.

Brighton & Hove thrives on tourism – sadly, overflowing bins and recycling will not show the city off to its best advantage.

You must reach a fair settlement with the affected workers as soon as possible – you owe it to the residents of Brighton & Hove.

I look forward to hearing your response and how you intend to resolve the current impasse with minimal impact on the city’s residents.

Yours sincerely

Rob Mansfield

Response from Jason Kitcat

I’m sorry for the concern being caused, but we are not seeking to cut council basic pay.

As a Green administration we unfortunately inherited what the unions admit was a ‘mish-mash’ of allowances. These need to be resolved as the final step of ‘single status’ and that is what the council is seeking to discuss with unions and staff. I am very hopeful for a positive outcome. The unions also acknowledge the urgent need to resolve these allowances. The most recent staff survey flagged them as an area which made career progression less clear and payslips hard to verify.

For absolute clarity this process only relates to locally negotiated (part 3) allowances, not basic pay which was dealt with a few years ago.

The offer that staff are currently being consulted on will leave 90% of staff with very little or no change. Of the remainder a majority will see an increase in their take home pay. The minority who do suffer detriment will be compensated.

We are not seeking to cut the pay bill, and we have categorically and consistently made clear this is not a budget saving process. Indeed costs of recompense mean that short-term our costs will likely increase while in the long term we expect the wage will to go up slightly.

The lowest paid staff in our council already benefit from, and will continue to benefit, from our commitment to a £7.45/hour Living Wage. We are also committed to providing a 1% pay increase as per national pay agreement negotiations.

Unfortunately we have no choice but to resolve this allowances issue with council staff pay and allowances this year. It has knowingly been left unfinished for years but the council is now in the last chance saloon. The consequences of failing to complete the process would be permanently devastating to council services. We have to complete the final step of single status, which is the requirement on all councils to ensure fair pay for all regardless of gender.

Discussions continue which I hope will lead to a positive agreed outcome. I have every confidence that it will be through conversations that a solution will be found.

As to your points regarding council tax. It is below the rate of inflation and provides only a small contribution to offset the massive direct and indirect cuts the government is imposing on our funding and on residents. In the coming year the council faces incredibly uncertainty as it tries to support all those suffering big reductions in benefits, a totally new funding system based on business rate ‘localisation’ and growing demand for social care services. More context on the budget can be found on this page

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any further questions or queries.

Sincerely,
Jason Kitcat

The closure of more! magazine is another nail in the coffin of traditional publishing

more! magazine is closing
more! magazine is closing
In January 2001, I stepped through the office doors of more! magazine to begin two of the most entertaining and educational years of my career, so I am immensely sad that today Bauer Media has announced that the magazine is closing.

Quite simply, more! magazine was an institution. You’d be hard pushed to find a woman who didn’t flick through its pages at some point during her formative teenage years, either giggling at Position of the Fortnight, or laughing at the latest celebrity gossip.

For me, one of the great things about more! was that it had a proper personality. Cheeky and irreverent, humour was at the centre of its appeal, but it didn’t shy away from the topics that were important for young women.

While there, I wrote countless sex and relationships features, but I also reported on subjects such as rape, drugs and egg donation.

Easy target

For many, more! was an easy target for feminists claiming that it degraded women, was too exploitative and focussed too much on the ladette binge-drinking culture of women in their late teens and early 20s.

But the core audience that more! catered to – especially during its glory years of the mid-90s through to the early 2000s – existed (and still exists) and needed someone to speak to them and empower them.

There are young girls out there who need someone to make sense of their world, to give them a voice, and not treat them as some sort of alien species. Most of the time, more! fitted that brief to a tee.

Office life

What was key for me, as well, was that those of us on the magazine also thoroughly enjoyed putting it together and cared about the readers.

For 2 years at more!, I had the most fun I’ve had in any job over the past 19 years, learned huge amounts and made some amazing friendships.

Unsustainable

That more! is no longer sustainable as a commercial concern, is hugely depressing. I’m sure that there are many women out there who still fit the description of the core more! reader, but they no longer need to wait a fortnight to read the latest celeb gossip, pore over fashion and beauty tips, or get advice about sex and relationships.

Selling 100,000 copies a week is still pretty impressive, but clearly advertisers no longer bought into the brand.

Paul Keenan from Bauer said: “The prospect of continuing challenging economic conditions has led us to reach this decision as the title has become unviable.”

I feel hugely sorry for Channy Horton and her team and I also feel very sorry for the young women who will never get to experience more! in its true glory.

They may be lots of ways of finding the same thing on the internet nowadays, but it won’t come in the same fantastically-funny, well-written and joyously entertaining 140-page package that more! always was.

RIP!

Where are all the words going?

Once again, Facebook is changing its News Feed and the onus – more than ever – will be on pictures and video.

Meanwhile, the fastest-growing social network is still Pinterest, which is all about the visual rather than the textual, and Twitter, with its 140-character limit, continues to proliferate.
Continue reading “Where are all the words going?”