Because for many staff working in Universities their pay is squeezed while others are paid extortionately. Wage rises have not kept up with inflation, staff face job insecurity and regradings, and privatised services often pay only the legal minimum wage for working at the same site. Meanwhile private remuneration committees set the highest wages without criteria or accountability, at up to 25x the pay of staff at the same institution and pay rises of up to 40% per year. It's just not fair! This campaign is led by UNISON.

The con-trick has been engineered by Recruitment Agencies, whereby the pay-rate they initially promised to their temp/contract worker is greatly reduced due to them using "Umbrella Pay Schemes" who are the middlemen, to pay their employees. Unfair pay Payslips are often confusing and the cost of employer's national insurance and processing of pay is then passed onto the temp/contractor by the "Umbrella Payment Scheme;" all because the Recruitment Agencies don't want to shoulder the burden of being the actual *'employer.' Many contractors/Temps are also being forced into becoming an unlimited company - this action isn't always practical for the temporary worker as many jobs may only be for few days. *THIS NEEDS TO STOP AS IT AFFECTS, NURSES, CONSTRUCTION WORKERS, TEMP OFFICE EMPLOYEES, THE LOW PAID and ALL OF THOSE WHO ARE JUST SURVIVING due to not enough permanent employment or the need to have flexible working hours Thank you kindly I hope to help not just myself, but others in a similar situation. I am employed by a Recruitment Agency and have been contracting via agencies for sometime; each week I am paid by an "Umbrella Pay Scheme" (Recruitment Agencies middleman). This scheme deducts their "margin" of £30.00 weekly from my pay along with *other deductions. Citation: - Under the umbrella company arrangement the burden of paying both workers’ and employers’ National Insurance contributions (NIC) reportedly fell on the workers, leaving some of them worse off by as much as £100 a week. - See more at: http://www.staffingindustry.com/eng/Research-Publications/Daily-News/Wales-Government-to-stop-use-of-umbrella-payroll-companies-on-all-future-construction-projects-32788#sthash.F7AMjyQs.dpuf

You have cut back on staff and made your service hopeless for those who need to query you - from personal experience those on low income and having to take agency or multiple jobs in a short space of time are assumed to be tax dodgers and put on emergency rate when they are those who can least afford it, yet you neither investigate or prosecute those who are dodging thousands of pounds in tax. Use money to provide a better service not a pointless additional information exercise.

There's already a shortage of UK trained nurses and the withdrawal of bursaries and introduction of loans will be detrimental in recruiting people for training. It will lead to even greater crisis in health care provision.

The National Minimum Wage is currently set at £6.70 per hour for anyone over 21, which will go up to £7.20 (for over 25s) in 2016. This is calculated by the Low Pay Commission and is the lowest amount any UK employee can legally be paid per hour. The Living Wage is a term defined and set by the Living Wage Foundation and is calculated according to the real cost of living, including food, fuel, childcare and more. This amount is determined by independent academics. The UK Living Wage is currently set at £8.25 per hour nationally and £9.40 per hour in London. (in recognition of the fact that the cost of living is higher in London). Across the UK, one in five working people currently earns less than the Living Wage. While the introduction of the National Minimum Wage has been almost universally acknowledged as a significant step forward for the lowest paid in society, it still falls way short of the amount people actually need to live on. The chancellor has announced that the National Minimum Wage is due to rise to £7.20 per hour for over 25s in 2016, while at the same time, in a deceitful sleight of hand, he is attempting to rebrand this as the "National Living Wage". While that 50p per hour increase over the current National Minimum Wage will be welcomed by the several million people who are currently paid the National Minimum Wage, it will still be £1.05 per hour less than the UK Living Wage and £2.20 per hour less than the London Living Wage. If the Government were proposing to increase the National Minimum Wage to the amounts the Living Wage Foundation have deemed to be what people actually need to live on, then they would be entitled to re-name it as a "National Living Wage", but if not, then they have no right to hijack the term Living Wage and it should instead be referred to as what it actually is - an increased National Minimum Wage. It seems they are attempting to deliberately muddy the waters and steal the clothes of the true Living Wage, in order to deceive the public into thinking the increased National Minimum Wage will be an amount people can live on, when that is not the case. This petition urges the heads of news at BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky, as well as the editors of national newspapers, to recognise their responsibility to the British public to communicate accurately and transparently and so to only use the term "increased National Minimum Wage", as that is what it is. We also expect news presenters, correspondents and columnists to challenge any attempts to use the misleading term "National Living Wage" and to explain to viewers and readers why that term is inaccurate and misleading and to explain what the true UK Living Wage and London Living Wage are and to make it clear that they are set by the Living Wage Foundation, as opposed to the National Minimum Wage, which is set by the Low Pay Commission. But why does it matter what it is called? It matters because Britain remains an extremely unequal society, in which there are millions of people in fuel poverty and an increasing number reliant upon food banks for basic necessities. However an increasing number of these people are in work, yet they are not paid enough to sustain their basic needs. A growing number of employers are voluntarily opting to pay all their staff at least the true UK Living Wage and this is to be commended - as they really are ensuring their employees are paid enough to live on and they should be recognised for doing so. It may well seem like a semantic and technical argument, but the widespread mis-use of the term "National Living Wage" is intentionally misleading and is giving people the false impression that once it is introduced, every employee will be paid an amount they can live on, when in reality there will still be several million of the lowest paid people who will welcome the 50p per hour pay rise, but who will be receiving an increased National Minimum Wage, not a National Living Wage. The more people sign this petition, the more difficult news organisations will find it to ignore this issue and the more likely it will be that we can stop the misleading misuse of an important and meaningful term, which affects millions of the lowest paid workers in Britain. Thank you for your support and please forward this to people you know.

It is important to the economy and confidence in Sierra Leone that British Airways reinstates flights to Sierra Leone. When the Ebola crisis hit Sierra Leone major airlines stopped flights. This led to the loss of thousands of jobs. It is now 10 days since Sierra Leone was declared Ebola free but British Airways have yet to re start flight http://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/destinations/freetown/flights-to-freetown?clickpage=destinations-en--africa--index&kmtag=c&ban=||ACC|1|LNK15|||||CampID||||L2||||||| S/Leone in talks over London-Freetown flights Par KC/as/APACréé le 2015-11-23 16:22:17 The authorities in Sierra Leone are reportedly in talks for a new flight linking their capital Freetown and London as repeated requests for British Airways (BA) to resumes its services remain fruitless. BA first suspended its flights to Freetown on August 2014, claiming fears of a possible transmission of the Ebola virus. That followed reports of cases where the disease was reported in foreign countries through air travel. However, over two weeks after Sierra Leone was declared free of the virus, the airline is reluctant to resume flights to the country. The new flight in the pipeline, according to the pro-government Torchlight newspaper in Freetown, which on Monday criticized the British government over BA`s continued reluctance, will be provided by Kevin McPhilips Travels. About seven airlines subsequently suspended flights to Freetown during the peak of the epidemic, but almost all of them, with the exception of BA, have since resumed flying to Freetown. BA has been a major concern because it was the only one linking directly the two cities. “Sierra Leoneans felt abandoned by the former colonial masters when even an attempt by Gambia Bird Airlines to resume direct flights was met with stiff rejection from the British government,” the Torchlight said in its Monday editorial. The paper said if all goes as planned, the new airline is scheduled to commence flight between Lungi International Airport in Freetown and Gatwick in London in December. But, Tony Rogers, who in February 2015 worked at the British-built Kerry Town Ebola Treatment Center in Freetown, finds the suspension of the flights as an “unjust” attempt at isolating the country. Rogers therefore set up an online petition on the site 38 Degrees. “I understand that there has been an enormous economic impact of loss of tourism and commercial trade by the airlines such as British Airways. “I understand that some airlines have returned but British Airways remains sadly reticent regarding reinstating flights,” the UK nurse told APA in an emailed statement. KC/as/APA - APANEWS

On 12th November HMRC announced plans to close 160 offices across the UK and move to 13 regional centres which will put thousands of members jobs at risk. As part of that decision HMRC announced that Barbara Ritchie House in Livingston & Bathgate Contact Centre are to be closed by 2020 with staff wishing to remain in employment expected to travel to the Edinburgh regional centre. The Closure of Barbara Ritchie House and Bathgate Contact Centre by 2020 will result in approximately 1200 jobs being withdrawn from West Lothian which will have an impact on both the local economies and employment in the area. We believe HMRC's plans to close Barbara Ritchie House & Bathgate Contact Centre are completely unnecessary and based on a political agenda without giving consideration to staff or local communities.

We now know that all of the offices in Bootle and Netherton – The Triad, Litherland House, St John’s House and Comben House – are set to close by or before 2020. This means that around 3,000 staff face a move to Liverpool. This will result in job losses, as they are among around 6,000 staff facing the move to Liverpool in the North West while the new Regional Centre will only hold between 2,800 and 3,100 staff. It will also devastate the local economy, putting many businesses particularly along Stanley Road who rely on HMRC staff custom to survive at risk of closure. We believe the plans in their entirety represent the simplistic vision of a senior civil service who like the way things look on paper, and don’t care in the slightest how their organisational pipe dream impacts on people. The reality is these plans hurt, both members and the Bootle community as a whole.

Yesterday, our MPs debated the Trade Union Bill again. And the Government won. The Bill passed with 305 votes for, and 271 against. This is devastating news - but the fight goes on. As the debate moves to the House of Lords, we need to highlight the attack on democracy that is contained in the Bill. The Conservative party want to be in power for a generation, and are fixing the system to make that happen. They’re making it harder to register to vote, and are redrawing the Parliamentary map in a way that benefits them. The Bill is seeking to impose limits on minimum returns and vote percentages of total membership, for those seeking to take industrial action. This reeks of rank hypocrisy from a Government who only polled just less than 25% of the electorate, yet they deem that a clear mandate to continue with their ever more punitive and regressive policy making But that’s not all. Hidden in the Trade Union Bill is a clause that is deliberately designed to restrict trade unions supporting the Labour Party financially - while doing nothing to limit the hedge funds and millionaires that support the Tories. Another clear case of "Do as we say, Not as we do!"

We finally have the Firstsite we dreamed of, a jewel in our midst, a beating heart of creativity in Colchester. The Board of Trustees at Firstsite are largely an outsider group who are not in tune with the current feeling and support for the huge achievements of both Anthony Roberts and the staff in creating a jewel in Colchester's creative community. They are dismissive of the community in Colchester and are about to destroy all that has been created by Anthony and his team. Please don't let this happen.

In April of 2016 the government, on recommendation by The Centre for Research in Social Policy, intend to raise the National Living Wage to £7.20 p/h with the objective of increasing it to £9.00 p/h by 2020. As a worker earning a similar amount to the 2020 target I feel from both personal experience and by listening to the struggles faced by fellow workers that the term is a misnomer and would be much more accurately described as the 'Subsistence Wage'. Definition; The lowest wage a worker and their family can survive on.

A group of Firstsite staff are leading a campaign to change the proposed staff restructure at the gallery, to enable the continuation of the positive changes that have begun to take place. We are calling for this rethink so we can protect jobs for people, particularly local people, instead of relying on volunteers to make up the majority of the customer facing staff. The cutbacks to the current staff structure will adversely affect the visitor experience and have a negative impact on the diverse and interesting programme of events, particularly within the learning department and the engagement of children and young people, currently one of the strongest areas Firstsite has with engaging with the community. The restructure addresses necessary financial savings that need to be made, but the proposed changes will result in short term savings, rather than creating a sustainable organisation that can generate income going forward. This will also perpetuate an unequal working and earning structure within the organisation. These changes will increase pressure on the remaining staff, many of whom already work outside of their job requirements, whilst offering a more than generous wage for the Director of the gallery.