Aberdeenshire UNISON has issued the following press statement to the Evening Express on Aberdeenshire Council’s budget proposals which are due to be considered by the full council on Wednesday 19th March.
This was reported in the Evening Express on Friday March 13th. Click here to see article.
Branch Co-chair, Kate Ramsden was also interviewed on Radio Scotland North East that morning.
Aberdeenshire UNISON Press Statement
The branch is warning that staff in Aberdeenshire Council are already doing more with less and proposals to cut jobs further can only make matters worse.
Year on year local councils have suffered cuts to their budgets at the same time as demands on their services have increased.
Our members have told us that they are already working additional hours to cope, often unpaid, affecting their life work balance and their health.
Our members care about the services they provide and they care about the people the services are for. That is especially true of those members who support our most vulnerable citizens. Cuts to staff have already affected those service users massively and that will only get worse as these further cuts bite.
We will be pressing the council to ensure they have robust and meaningful Equality Impact Assessments on the planned cuts to identify the impact on those with protected characteristics and the measures they will take to mitigate these. This is required by the Fairer Scotland Duty.
We are also calling on the council to review any mitigations to make sure that they have worked. This is particularly important for a council whose workforce is primarily female, many of them in low paid jobs that are nonetheless vitally important to the wellbeing of our most vulnerable citizens many of whom live in rural settings.
We have reiterated our call for the council to maintain its commitment to no compulsory redundancies.
ENDS