Notting Hill Housing Association recently announced plans to get rid of carers leave, flexi-time and reduce basic terms and conditions of staff. They are refusing to go to ACAS and are refusing to allow the union to even speak to its Board members. This prompted Unison members to go on strike, backed by 93.5% of members in the strike ballot. The savings from getting rid of Carers leave for staff with young sick children or disabled dependants will save £30,000 per year, or a bit less than 1/5th of the Chief Executive’s annual salary.

John Gray reports on the first day of the strike:

Today was the first 24 hour period of strike action in Notting Hill Housing Trust. There was a fantastic picket and lots of active support for the Strike. We estimate that over 100 members came to join the protest outside Notting Hill headquarters alone.

Interestingly, the vast majority of the strikers were women who of course will tend to have by far the most to lose if these anti-family policies are scrapped.

Shame about the Notting Hill CMT member who tried to deliberately provoke the pickets by declaring loudly he was “very happy to cross the picket line!” with a big smirk on his face. No wonder the organisation is in such a mess with folk like him in charge!

There was plenty of press interest and messages of support from various trade unions and encouragement from other UNISON branches and trade councils. We were next to a busy street and spent a lot of time encouraging passing motorists to “toot” their horn in support. There was a very good atmosphere amongst the pickets. This being “Notting Hill” we even had a portable CD player blasting out Bob Marley songs.

This was a good first day and hopefully management will come to their senses and start to negotiate. If not – we will be back.

Check out “All Together Worse” for further information and pictures.

1. UNISON Housing Assoc

   RT @libcon Notting Hill Housing Association strike http://bit.ly/citDCP

2. simong

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3. blogs of the world

   Notting Hill Housing Association recently announced plans to get rid of carers leave, flex… http://reduce.li/qyv5lw #association