Branch Secretary : info@housingworkers.org.uk
  

Sector Standards



The Unite Housing Workers Branch is working with Unite for Our Society and the National Housing Forum on a campaign to stop the race to the bottom in social care and housing. 

The Standards: 

The two leaflets set out good practice that workers and employers can both sign up to, and which, if adopted, will ensure that commissioning promotes quality of services and value for money rather than cuts to salaries and terms and conditions.

Other Resources: 

Members can organise together to discuss how to bring better standards into the workplace. There are posters for display and other materials for your union notice board.

We want social housing landlords and care providers to agree:

"We believe that the time has come to end the race to the bottom in social care and housing which unnecessarily harms the most vulnerable people in our communities. 

Cuts to staffing levels and increasing pressure on care workers to deliver more for less is a false economy and is resulting in a loss of experienced staff and damaging the quality of services.  We support the Unite campaign for sector-wide standards which will benefit both workers, and the users of the services"

Our aim is to agree a set of minimum standards to which all responsible social care and housing providers will adhere. We strongly urge all reasonable employers and commissioners that care about the service they provide to their community, to sign up to a voluntary code covering setting pay with the unions, union recognition, and agreements on working hours, working patterns, staffing levels, staff training and pensions.

We are lobbying commissioners to consider standards when commissioning social care and housing services. ?You can send this Briefing to your local councillor and ask them to incorporate decent standards into the contracts for services. 

Every housing worker can get involved in this campaign, which is about protecting the services we provide as well as ensuring that our own pay, terms and conditions do not deteriorate to such a degree that skilled, experienced and dedicated workers are forced to leave the sector.

"Our campaign will only succeed if Unite members across social care and housing stand up for decent pay, pensions, training, union recognition, work patterns, and working hours!"

Please contact the branch if you would like to know more about how this campaign can be organised within your workplace, especially if you are already running campaigns in your workplace on one or more of these issues.

 

See below for related news articles and leaflets.