Star date: 3rd December 2014

MAYOR'S CHARTER BROKEN BY SALFORD COUNCIL AS TNT POST GETS HUGE CONTRACTS

Salford City Mayor Ian Stewart has been lauded over his Living Wage City, Salford Employment Charter and Salford Standard schemes which oppose zero hours contracts and minimum wages. But Salford Council itself is using TNT – now called Whistl – to deliver post.

TNT/Whistl was singled out at the North West Regional Labour Party Conference recently, which passed a motion slating Whistl for its zero hours contracts and lack of living wage. In just three months Salford Council spent over £90,000 with Whistl, almost three times more than with Royal Mail.

Full details here...

One of Salford Mayor Ian Stewart's main policies is that the Salford be a Living Wage City. Indeed, in November Councillor Paul Dennett went along to the Living Wage Week 2014 event to collect Salford's Living Wage Champion Award.

Behind the noble push for decent workers' rights is a battery of Mayor's schemes like Living Wage City, Salford Employment Charter, Salford Standard and the Social Value Charter which urge opposition to zero hours contracts and paying less than the living wage...

The Mayor's Employment Charter gets employers to pledge that they should be "Paying staff at or working towards the Salford 'living wage'" and "Opposing the use of zero contracts which undermine decent working conditions for employees."  The Council's own Procurement Strategy states that the Salford Employment Charter will be `actively promoted' when handing out contracts to outside organisations.

The Salford Social Value Charter even has a checklist for commissioners of public services which goes beyond the actual price of the service and includes "Adopting the best working practices and conditions" and "Paying a Living Wage".

TNT – now called Whistl – has been singled out as an employer which uses zero hour contracts and doesn't pay the Living Wage. At the North West Regional Labour Party Conference last month, over five hundred delegates, including members form Salford, passed a motion put forward by the CWU (Communication Workers Union), noting "with concern the expansion of the end-to-end postal services by Whistl (formerly known as TNT Post UK) across the North West and the impact this expansion has on Royal Mail's ability to sustain the universal service obligation...

"Furthermore" it added "Whistl offers only insecure terms and conditions for staff, employing workers on zero-hours contracts at minimum wage supporting the growth of a low-pay insecure job market. The CWU believe this will lead to a race to the bottom on pay and conditions in the postal sector.

"Whistl expansion in Liverpool and Manchester has been welcomed by some politicians for creating jobs" it explained "Companies like Whistl are not introducing new jobs, they will in the long-term just replace decent and well-paid Royal Mail jobs, which places a burden on the public purse by reducing income tax revenue and increasing the cost of income support and other benefit payments."

After the motion was passed, CWU's North West Regional Secretary Carl Webb, said "We will now use this as a springboard to take the campaign directly into councils to apply pressure on those that use postal companies that exploit their workers by using Zero-Hour Contracts and pay below the Living Wage."

Carl won't have to look much beyond the bounds of Salford itself, which despite the Mayor's charters and standards and social value has been happily pumping hundreds of thousands of pounds into TNT/Whistl's coffers.

In just three months this year – June, July and August – Salford Council spent £94,422 with TNT on postage, almost three times the amount of money it spent with Royal Mail which does pay decent wages and doesn't use zero hours contracts.

Charters, standards and gloating awards mean nothing unless it's all put into practice.

"The fact is there are employers out there across the North West who can afford to pay living wages, but aren't" said Lynn Collins, Regional Secretary North West TUC at the start of Living Wage Week last month

"It is now time for all responsible employers to commit to adopting this standard, which enables workers to earn just enough to be able to live a decent life" she added "We have the wrong kind of recovery with the wrong kind of jobs – we need to create far more living wage jobs, with decent hours and permanent contracts, something that we will continue to campaign for."

As far as Salford Council is concerned, she can go Whistl...

* Salford Council is also set to come under fire as it is switching its banking services from the Co-op Bank to Barclays Bank - which saw protests in Manchester last weekend related to its involvement in the arms trade, particularly surrounding Israel's bombing of Gaza.