{"id":23385,"date":"2020-08-26T11:33:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-26T10:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=23385"},"modified":"2020-08-26T11:33:01","modified_gmt":"2020-08-26T10:33:01","slug":"come-clean-call-to-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=23385","title":{"rendered":"\u00e2\u20ac\u0098Come clean\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 call to council"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>The decision by Lewisham council to extend the contract of Greenwich Leisure Limited (GLL) to run the authorities leisure services has been condemned by Unite today, August 26.<\/p>\n<p>The decision to extend the GLL contract was taken at a meeting of the council that was closed to the public earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to the decision being made Unite has raised serious concerns about the long-term financial viability of GLL and its employment practices.<\/p>\n<p>GLL, which is officially a social enterprise, is currently refusing to disclose its financial position to Unite or reveals\u00c2\u00a0how the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted the organisation.<\/p>\n<p>But the company has told staff that its\u00c2\u00a0financial position has been severely hit\u00c2\u00a0due to the pandemic and is now in the process of making redundancies.<\/p>\n<p>Unite has previously raised concerns about GLL\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reliance on employing staff on zero hours contracts and the fact the \u00e2\u20ac\u0098social enterprise\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 does not recognise unions.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bLewisham council had the opportunity to do the right thing and it failed,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 commented Unite regional officer Onay Kasab.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bLewisham councillors stood for election two years ago on a promise to fight zero hours contracts and work with unions.\u00c2\u00a0 They have failed on these promises.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bLewisham claim it\u00c2\u00a0did not have the time to prepare an insourced bid but it was the body with responsibility for setting the timetable for the decision.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bLewisham has also suggested that it does not have the resources to insource its leisure services so why did it commit to being an insourcing council?<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bSuch a significant decision should never have been made at a closed meeting.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n<p>Kasab concluded, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bLewisham council failed to do the right thing initially.\u00c2\u00a0It now needs to put this right by coming clean and calling in the decision for reconsideration.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n<p>Unite is currently running a campaign to recruit leisure service workers to join the union. The workers are frequently low paid and on precarious contracts.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>JOIN UNITE TODAY <a href=\"https:\/\/unitetheunion.org\/\">HERE<\/a> <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>By Barckley Sumner <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The decision by Lewisham council to extend the contract of Greenwich Leisure Limited (GLL) to run the authorities leisure services has been condemned by Unite today, August 26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3136,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1308,1],"tags":[998,147,104],"wps_subtitle":"Lewisham slammed on secret plan\u00c2\u00a0to extend Greenwich Leisure contract","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23385"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23385"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23387,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23385\/revisions\/23387"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}