Work-related stress is a major social problem

Work-related stress is a major social problem

Marlyn Glen

25 May 2012

The Chief Inspector of Ofsted in England , Michael Wilshaw, recently described how teachers in schools should be treated :

“If anyone says to you that staff morale is at an all-time low, you know you are doing something right.”

In the NHS, in one year in the last decade, the Department of Health in England estimated that “£96 million was spent on replacing staff who have left their jobs due to bullying”

Scotland is not immune from the confrontational macho style of relations at work either.

UNISON Scotland reported earlier this year that almost one in three of their members in Scotland have either have been bullied, or have witnessed bullying in a six month period..

The websites of unions in education such as the EIS, SSTA and UCU, all carry detailed information on how to deal with bullying.

What should be of major concern is that bullying is occurring in the public sector.

The spirit of the public sector is supposedly one of dialogue, co-operation, dignity at work , and benefit for the common good.

Instead, we see all too often light-touch scrutiny of those at the top, while top-heavy micro-management of those at work.

With the banks now in partial public ownership, the consequences of failure are a bonus for those in command, but P45s for its employees

The higher echelons can accept the rewards that high salaries and secure jobs bring, but they can refuse to accept responsibility or culpability when things go wrong.

The buck stops somewhere else down the line.

Common sense assumptions that the hazardous consequences of stress for health is mainly the fate of the high-powered in authority who have to take make-or-break decisions are contrary not just to academic research but daily workplace experience.

Those who suffer stress-related illnesses such as anxiety and depression tend to be those in the lower grades upon whom demands are highest and where control over one’s work is lowest.

Stress also comes with a financial cost to the organisation affected through long term absence, reduced production , and increases in statutory sick pay.

With the public sector still to face much greater cuts in spending than have been made so far, women face added pressure from job losses, since they make up the majority of most public sector organisations.

The 2010 British Academy study “ Stress at work” reported :

“Work stress has increased since 1992, especially for women. In the past year these levels have risen at an alarming rate and there are no effective measures in place to prevent the situation worsening.”

This was its “disturbing finding” - a 25 per cent increase in the number of women suffering from job strain over the 14 year period between 1992 and 2006.

The latest TUC survey of union safety reps indicates that stress is by far in the most quoted problem for health and safety at work with longer hours, heavier workloads, less staff and unrealistic targets at its root.

The TUC itself declared that “ stress is most often found in the public than in the private sector”

Meanwhile, the Labour Force Survey found that last year 77 000 people suffered from work-related illness in Scotland , and that the sectors in which stress had been most prevalent in the UK were health, social work, education and public administration

Much more work-related stress seems almost inevitable unless attitudes and behaviour towards preventing stress from taking its toll on the workforce is made a priority.

There are Management Standards produced by the Health and Safety Executive on how employers should deal with work-related stress.

The TUC says that such standards “, based on the risk assessment approach, are seen as the most useful method of tackling stress in the workplace”, but that is only because of “ the absence of specific legislation “

The British Academy study emphasises this point by asking,

“With no legislation in the UK specifically on this issue, the report questions the effectiveness of the current voluntary code of practice that is meant to guide employers in matters of work stress. “

Work-related stress is major social problem.

Tax Cuts before Tax Credits

Marlyn Glen

In 2003, Michael Portillo, erstwhile aspirant to lead the Tory Party , took part in a BBC “reality “ TV programme entitled “My Week My World” .

It featured senior politicians taking on the jobs and lives of everyday people to see how they could cope with its stresses.

Mr. Portillo’s task was to look after 4 young children while also deputising for their mother as a classroom assistant and working in ASDA.

All of this was to be done within a family budget of £80 a week.

BBC noted that Mr. Portillo said that his week’s work “was harder than anything he had faced in the Commons.”

As from last month life has become intolerably harder for hundreds of families in Dundee as the Tory Government introduced changes that will take away from them almost £80 a week of working tax credits unless they increase their working hours by half.

Over 430 families and 760 children in the city are affected.

These are the couples earning less than some £17,700 a year who benefited from Working Tax Credit and work between 16 and 24 hours a week.

The Tories have ordained that unless they increased the number of hours by 50 per cent, the tax credits would be withdrawn.

To find extra hours of work in a collapsed economy is difficult, particularly in a city such as Dundee which already has the highest percentage of those working part-time in mainland Scotland.

The difficulty of finding extra hours escalates when we consider the number of those already “underemployed” in Dundee – those seeking extra hours of work – 5,200, or 1 in 10 of the working population.

Working Families is a major charity in the field of work-life balance.

It reports that just only 17% of employers were confident that they could accommodate requests for an additional eight hours of work.

It commented,

“The change to the Working Tax Credit rules are harsh.

"Parents will find that it is no longer worth staying in work.

“Many of our callers have one parent (often the mother) in a part time job, struggling to make ends meet after the other parent has been made redundant.

“It isn’t for want of trying that these parents can’t get more work.

“Our survey shows employers can’t offer them what they need to stay out of poverty.”

An acknowledgement of the actual day-to-day experience of such families is a very rare commodity in the Tory Party.

And so, at the opposite end of the social scale, in a world of different lifestyles, expectations and opportunities, millionaires are deemed by the Tories to be in need of a tax cut windfall.

As the Party of the Wealthy, the Tories will continue to deliver for them.

Marlyn Glen : Living side by side - Underemployment and Unpaid Overtime

Living side by side : Underemployment and Unpaid Overtime

Marlyn Glen

8 March 2012

The last Thursday in February was specially designated by the TUC as " Work Your Proper Hours Day"

This was to highlight the issue of unpaid overtime , which , according to the TUC, results in an extra 6 hours a week on average being worked by 1 out of every 5 members of the workforce in Scotland.

Brendan Barber, TUC General Secretary described the practice thus :

"The heroic amount of extra unpaid hours put in by millions of workers makes a vital – but often unsung – contribution to the UK economy.

"While many of the extra unpaid hours worked could easily be reduced by changing work practices and ending the UK's culture of pointless presenteeism, a small number of employers are exploiting staff by regularly forcing them to do excessive amounts of extra work for no extra pay."

UNISON estimate that last year the scale of unpaid overtime in the UK that it gave their employers £29.2 billion of " free work." , and this is occurring at a time of a public sector pay freeze.

Overwork takes its toll on health with greater sickness rates and a general decline in the quality of life outside of work.

Union surveys on the gruelling culture of long working hours have found that a third of their members said that they did not have enough time to be with their families.

Community involvement , social life, and even hobbies all fell victim to disproportionate working hours.

The recession is driving the excessive hours culture whereby job insecurity mounts through tougher workloads resulting from less staff and shrinking budgets.

Compare this with its mirror image , those who need to and want to work longer and be paid for that work.

They are struggling on their present income to provide for themselves and their families and want to work more hours per week simply to make ends meet.

Late last year the STUC called this situation Scotland’s " full-time employment deficit" and measured it last month to stand at a vast 502,000.

This is its estimated number of those amongst the unemployed, the economically inactive and the underemployed who would like full-time employment .

What would Dundee’s "full-time unemployment deficit " look like?

Using the same methods as the STUC, there would be around 3,800 amongst those currently unemployed who would wish for full-time employment as opposed to part-time employment.

Amongst the economically inactive , those who are currently not working because of illness, raising a family, etc, the figure would be some 4,600, although it is acknowledged that many of the economically inactive would require support to return to working.

"Underemployment" is usually associated with people being overqualified for a job they are currently doing because qualifications, while required for for good jobs in the past, today can no longer guarantee them in a deteriorating labour market.

However, here it is defined as :

those people who are in work but wanting another job in addition to their current job(s);

or

wanting another job with more hours instead of their current job(s);

or

wanting to increase the total number of hours worked in their current job(s).

The Scottish Government retains figures for the number of Scots who are underemployed in every local authority area with Dundee’s now standing at 5,200, or almost 10 per cent of the 16-64 year old population.

So the "full-time employment deficit" in Dundee could be over 13,000.

The smaller figure of 5,500 receiving Job Seekers Allowance in the city last month which is the usual measure of joblessness simply does not reflect the numbers looking for a better level of employment to raise their standard of living.

Billions of pounds worth of unpaid overtime is living alongside thousands of people desperate to work more hours so that they can provide a higher standard of living for their families.

The match up between is unlikely to be completely even , and so the remedy for both is an expansion of the economy that puts people back into full-time work.

When economic confidence returns , job insecurity and presenteeism should retreat.

Increasing job prospects reduces fear of losing a job , and it raises morale at work.

However, unemployment, underemployment and the flatlining economy are the price still being paid for Government immobility on jobs.

The NHS and the Council Tax Freeze

The NHS and the Council Tax Freeze

Marlyn Glen

3 February 2012

Who was it who said that the SNP Government "cannot continue to hide behind messages that they're protecting NHS funding"?

And who was it who added , "Chipping away at the workforce in this short-sighted manner has the potential to really harm patient care and overburden remaining staff."

It was Theresa Fyffe of RCN Scotland, a formidable defender of her members’ and patients’ rights and of the NHS, regardless of which party is in power in the Scottish Parliament.

Her comments come after the Salmond-Sturgeon assertions on the National Health Service -

"We will protect the NHS over the duration of this parliament" - Alex Salmond

and

"We will protect the NHS budget for the whole of the next parliament " -Nicola Sturgeon

These assertions exist in a different world from the inescapably grim reality of the state of the NHS that their own Government figures show.

On staffing, the number of nursing and midwifery staff is now lower than the level that the SNP Government inherited from Labour in 2007.

2,000 nursing and midwifery posts have been cut.

On expenditure, provisional figures indicate that in the next financial year, 2012-13, health expenditure is expected in Scotland to fall by £ 68 million in real terms,

In the following year, 2013-14 , it is forecast to drop by a further £88 million

In financial year 2014-15, Referendum time, it will decline further by £163 million.

By complete contrast, in an effort to establish its credentials as a low-tax party, the SNP Government’s over-riding concern above all else has been to freeze the council tax till 2016-17, at considerable cost to the public sector.

So while spending on health plummets by £319 million in real terms between now and 2015, the demands of freezing the council tax over the same period will cost £420 million.

The independent SPICe (Scottish Parliament Information Centre ) has produced figures which show the colossal sums involved in the council tax freeze.

The total cumulative cost of freezing the tax from its introduction in 2008-09 to the end of this session of the Parliament in 2016-17 is estimated to be £3.1 billion.

Compare £3.1 billion with this year’s total budget for all of Scotland’s health boards - £7.5 billion.

£3.1 billion is broadly equivalent to 40 per cent of all of Scotland’s health boards’ revenue budgets in the coming financial year.

The fine blog Taxing Scotland comes up with some pretty impressive information on who benefits from the council tax. ( http://bit.ly/wAGfkF )

There’s a novel twist to the well-established view that the very well-off benefit the most from the freeze.

Taxing Scotland ask – how much does it cost to freeze the council of the richest 10 per cent in Scotland ?

Taxing Scotland estimate it costs £155 million to freeze the council tax of the wealthiest 10 per cent for 5 years .

They further estimate that the cost of freezing the council tax of the top 20 per cent of income earners in Scotland is £280 million over 5 years.

The £155 million that it costs to freeze the council tax over 5 years breaks down to around £30 million a year - the equivalent of paying the wages of an extra 1,000 nurses at £30,000 a year.

The 5-year council tax freeze is undoubtedly populist, representing in the words of its enthusiasts " hundreds of pounds of help to hard-pressed families" ( without adding that the "hundreds of pounds" is spread over several years ).

In everyday life, those on middle income benefit by around £2-£3 per week

The council tax freeze is paid for by councils being forced to increase their charges for their services to council tax payers and the shedding the jobs of thousands of council workers who provide essential services that the community depend upon.

Eventually all populist politics have a political cost .

A 5-year council tax freeze is simply not a viable option, and will loom over the period of the Referendum as an example of the consequence of low taxation for public services in Scotland.

No one is under any illusions about the scale and the severity of the problems that any Scottish Government whatever its political colour would face from the Coalition cuts now cascading out from the UK Government

However, the Scottish Government’s priority should not be freezing the council tax payments of the wealthy who can easily afford to pay a modest increase to protect public services.

Neither is this a time for the pursuit of the SNP Government ’s Holy Grail of lowering Corporation Tax for businesses to 12 per cent with all the serious concerns that this would pose for the funding of public services.

Just as populist politics has its eventual political cost, so Government by Assertion delivered by Soundbite meets its nemesis amongst the very own cuts that it makes.

Last month, RCN Scotland made the perfectly reasonable case for an increase in places for student nursing in 2012-13.

They argued that this was necessary to meet the increasing demand on the NHS in the near future and to replace the many nurses who will soon be of retirement age.

The SNP Government’s response was to cut the intake for student nursing and midwifery numbers to their lowest level for 15 years.

"Protecting the NHS over the duration of this parliament" ?

Marlyn Glen : Charles Dickens, Dundee and Hard Times

Marlyn Glen
Charles Dickens, Dundee and Hard Times
28 December 2011
The Christmas - New Year period has its own popular book, film version and ghost story all in one - the evergreen A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, an allegory on the redemption of a greedy man who redistributes his wealth to the less fortunate.
Dickens is regarded as one of Britain’s greatest writers, and 2012 will see many events to mark the 200th anniversary of the author’s birth.
His fame is such that he is one of the few writers with an adjective named after him to describe a social condition - "Dickensian"
In October 1858 Dickens visited Dundee and gave a public reading of A Christmas Carol in Dundee .
The Dundee "Advertiser" reported :"On Friday night Mr Charles Dickens gave his first reading – the Christmas Carol –in the Exchange Hall, Bank Street, in presence of a very large and fashionable audience, who had met to see and hear the most popular novelist of the day."
After a two-hour reading,"Mr Dickens concluded amid loud applause."
Lenin, on the other hand, was far less praiseworthy.George Orwell tells that " the story was read to Lenin on his deathbed and according to his wife, he found its ‘bourgeois sentimentality’ completely intolerable. "
However, Karl Marx declared that Dickens " issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together."
Dickens’ novels highlight the plight of those failed by a Victorian society and who were pre-destined for the workhouse, the debtor’s prison, begging, squalor, and endless hours of spirit-breaking toil in the mills.
Dickens was not , of course, the only observer of the dire straits of the poor.
Below is an extract from a local book, written in 1850 by James Myles, a contemporary Dundonian, called "Chapters in the life of a Dundee factory boy: an autobiography".
His minimalist prose tells simply but effectively how child labour left its lifetime mark.
"When I went to a spinning mill, I was about 7 years of age, I had to get up out of bed at 5 o’clock, commence work at half-past five, drop at nine for breakfast ,begin again at half past nine, work until two which was the dinner hour, start again at half-past two , and continue till half-past seven at night.
"However, although these hours were long, they only made up the working dayIn reality, there were no regular working hours, masters and managers did with us as they liked."The working conditions were unhealthy.
"About a week after I became a mill boy, I was seized by a strong heavy sickness that few escape on becoming mill workers
" The cause of the illness which is known as ‘mill fever’ is the pestiferous atmosphere produced by so many breathing in a confined space together with the heat and exhalations of grease and oil.
"This fever is slow and dull, and painfully wearisome in its operation."It produces a pale sallow and debilitated look, destroys rosy cheeks , and unless the constitution be very strong , leaves its pale impress for life. "
However, whereas people such as Myles sought fact to make their case for the betterment of conditions, Dickens sought fiction, through his novels instead.
In Hard Times, published in 1854, Dickens describes how the massive changes wrought by the industrial revolution had fashioned the fictional "Coketown" and the lives of its people.
He wrote,
" It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all daylong, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next….. So many hundred Hands in this Mill; so many hundred horse Steam Power. It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single moment in the soul of one of these its quiet servants, with the composed faces and the regulated actions."
Hard Times has been regarded by some as an indictment of laissez-faire capitalism.
George Orwell was less persuaded , saying "its whole moral is that capitalists ought to be kind, not that workers ought to be rebellious….if men would behave decently the world would be decent."
Dickens provided a vivid analysis of the troubles of society, but didn’t suggest a collective, political remedy.
Personal changes in behaviour were his solution rather than whole-scale political and structural changes in society.
Dickens was no paragon of virtue himself.
In his private life, he became progressively detached from his wife of 22 years who had borne him 10 children and who had suffered several miscarriages.
They separated in 1858, with Dickens somehow regarding his wife as responsible for him having to support so many children financially and for her "lack of energy" as well.
What Orwell said about Dickens’ attitudes to capitalists certainly applies to Dickens himself – " if men would behave decently the world would be decent."
Dickens’ time was an era of extreme poverty judged by its standards of drinking water, provision of food, sanitation, health, housing, literacy and education, and information.
Yet, the poor were regarded by many of the comfortable classes as the source of their own predicament, an undeserving, feckless underclass on whom philanthropy and public money would be wasted.
Dickens viewed his novels as the best means to attack such beliefs and to rouse the conscience with stories of the unscrupulous ill-treatment and subjugation of the lives of his memorable characters pitted against a backdrop of glaring class inequalities.
And with his books being so popular, their message could not be easily dismissed.
If Dickens had been our Ghost of Christmas Present what would he be asking us to confront morally in what are today indeed hard times?
His great-great grandson, Gerald Dickens, is in no doubt.
He has said that the present day issue of bankers’ bonuses " sums up A Christmas Carol in a nutshell".
As we know today, appeals against selfishness calling for changes in the personal behaviour of bonus-wealthy individuals, as Dickens would have favoured, have been shown not to work.
There has to be legislation by Government to achieve this, just as progressive thinkers after Dickens’ time advocated government intervention in implementing programmes for improvements in health, housing, education and employment.
However, none of this detracts from Dickens’ ability to remind those in authority of their moral responsibility towards those they employed.
He never had to look far for evidence of the need for that accountability as this contemporary incident from Dundee shows :
In 1846 the case of "Six unfortunate and unprotected factory girls of Dundee" between the ages of 14 and 20 employed as flax-spinners in Baxter’s mills reached Parliament.
40 women in the mill had seen other workers in the same flat as themselves awarded a three pennies a week increase in wages and, not unnaturally, the women had asked for a similar rise.
Their request was refused, and they took the afternoon off for recreation as others at the mill sometimes did.
The rules of the mill meant that they could expect a fine of time and a half deduction from their wages.
However, on returning to work next day, they were detained in a room by four men , kept there till noon, whereupon they were marched through the streets of Dundee to another private room where waited a magistrate, a member of the Baxter family and the mill manager.
The six women then signed a paper which was then used against them duplicitously as a "confession"
The magistrate sentenced the six factory girls to ten day’s ‘ imprisonment with hard labour.
The matter was raised in Parliament with a call for a select committee to be set up" complaining of the illegal Trial and Imprisonment of Jane Bennett and other Factory Girls", but it was voted down.

Marlyn Glen : Dundee in 2015

Dundee in 2015

Marlyn Glen
16 December 2011
Last month I took part in what was one of the most memorable events in the story of the Labour Movement in Dundee – the 8,000 demonstration against Tory Government attacks on decent retirement pensions for public sector workers.
It was a feat of organisation, a procession of people power with hundreds and hundreds of brightly coloured flags and vivid banners, and expressions of unity as a light to guide us down the long grim tunnel that this decade will be.
By contrast, the Tory Government’s attempts to portray their deficit reduction policy as a crusade of national solidarity – "We’re all in this together" - were rudely dispelled last week when David Cameron pleaded with the rest of the EU for special treatment for just one group in Britain – the banks, the same institutions that have got the country into the mess we’re in.
The other 26 countries in the EU, some with governments that are on the Centre-Right of politics want to impose a Robin Hood-style tax on banks’ transactions.
However, David Cameron stood firm for Bankers’ Rights, for the same institutions still revelling in bonuses, that will not lend today to businesses that want to borrow money to create jobs.
In the 2010's Dundee faces a "lost decade" in which its "lost generation" will see its living standards slump to levels not experienced in many years.
Employment in Scotland is forecast not to return to previous higher levels until the early 2020s.
A couple living on average wages in 2015 will be no better off than they were in 2002.
So a couple in Dundee with a joint weekly income of £714 this year will be worse off in 2015 than the same couple in Dundee were in 2002 with a joint income then of £599 .
Male pay in Dundee has slumped by 7 per cent on average in the past year.
A pay freeze will endure in the public sector till 2013, and Chancellor George Osborne plans to limit pay rises to 1 per cent till 2015 thereafter.
As prices rise, real wages fall, reducing living standards.
The new economic model is the old belief that government should be acting in the same manner as the household does.
This says that when a household hits hard times, it cuts back , and therefore a government in the same straits should cut its spending and as quickly as possible.
Decades ago, this argument was disproved by Keynes with his "paradox of thrift".
For Keynes, national economies cannot be run like individual household budgets.
The more money a person saves or cuts back on, the less money is available for buying the goods and services that are being produced, leading to job losses and less taxation coming into Treasury.
The next few years are almost certain to be less healthier times.
Not surprisingly, personal health worsens as insecurity heightens.
One of the best ways of keeping people healthy is to keep them in a job.
Job loss and job insecurity can make people more vulnerable to illness through loss of self-worth, lower income, exclusion from previous social activities because of lower incomes, and living with no control over daily life.
The Child Growth Foundation has already expressed concerns that huge job cuts mean less income, resulting in people turning to cheaper calorie-rich food higher in fat, risking higher levels of diabetes and obesity.
Cuts in voluntary sector funding puts greater stress on an already overstretched NHS, at a time when the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside has fallen to its lowest in 4 years.
Local government faces a cut of some £700 million in real terms till 2015.
Councils have received a "flat cash freeze" in their revenue allocation from the Scottish Government as a result.
These dire assessments describe how everyday life will be in the first few years of this decade .
The 30th. November rallies across Britain against pensions "reform" are unlikely to be the last.
Pensions are very much a personal rather than a political issue.
Bear this comparison in mind …. last weekend, world-wide publicity was given to Moscow, ( population 11 million, the most populous city in Europe), saw 60,000 demonstrators take to the streets last week in protests against election-rigging by Vladimir Putin.
In Dundee, (population 140,000,) the strength of opposition to Tory plans to cut public sector pensions saw over 8,000 take to the streets.

Dundee 2015 figures
Pay
The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts that a couple living on average wages in 2015 will be no better off than they were in 2002
In 2002, the median weekly pay for men in Dundee was £358.
In 2011 it now stands at £ 405 .
In 2002 the median weekly pay for women in Dundee was £241 .
In 2011 it stands at £309 .
(Source : Office of National Statistics )
So a couple in Dundee with a joint weekly income of £714 this year will be worse off in 2015 than the same couple in Dundee were in 2002 with a joint income then of £599 .

Dundee City Council spending – the Flat Cash Freeze
Dundee City Council’s revenue allocations from the SNP Government to provide services in the city remain frozen, meaning a cut in real terms spending and services.
2011-12 £317million
2012-13 £316milllion
2013-14 £318million
2014-15 £318 million
The number of teachers in Dundee is now the lowest in 6 years.

NHS Tayside spending
NHS Tayside’s current budget of £596milllion is forecast to increase in real terms by just £6million by 2015, a 1 per cent increase, at a time when health service costs are rising annually by 4 per cent.
Overall in Scotland total health sending is set to decrease by £319million in real terms.
The number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside is now the lowest in 4 years.

Fuel Poverty
1 in 4 households in Scotland lives in fuel poverty.
A household is defined as being in fuel poverty if, in order to maintain a satisfactory heating regime, it would be required to spend more than 10% of its income on fuel.
This year, as energy companies pushed up prices even higher, the SNP Government all but abandoned its promise to "eradicate" fuel poverty in Scotland by 2016.
The SNP Government has also slashed funding for fuel poverty support by one third – from £71 million last year to £48 million this year.

Obesity
Over 1 in 4 of all adults in Scotland is obese, with the highest level, almost 40 per cent in the age group 55-64 .
The percentage of children aged 2-15 with a body mass index "outwith the healthy range" rose to its highest level last year to over 30 per cent.

Diabetes
NHS Tayside over 19,000 diagnosed with diabetes at the beginning of 2011 almost 1 in 20 of the population.
Almost ten years previously the figure had been 11,200.

Marlyn Glen : NHS Tayside staffing - Three Facts and An Admission

Marlyn Glen

NHS Tayside staffing : Three facts and an admission

6 December 2011
Three significant NHS staffing figures were published last month and one highly significant admission was made.
*The latest official government figures show that the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside continues to remain below the level it was at when Alex Salmond’s SNP Government took over in 2007.
*The overall NHS workforce in NHS Tayside is now over 300 less than it was two years ago .
*Around 1 out of 4 student nurses in abandon their courses.
and
Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon finally admitted that the number of nurses and midwifery staff in the NHS in Scotland is now lower than the number was under Labour.
Let’s look at the first fact.
The latest official government figures show that numbers of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside continue to fall under Alex Salmond’s SNP Government.
They remain at a level below the number of nursing and midwifery posts in the health board when the SNP came into government in 2007.
It’s now 23 whole–time equivalents in staffing numbers below what the figures were back then.
The headcount figure is also down on the 2007 level.
This trend stacks up poorly against the record of the previous Labour-led Scottish Executive.

In the last 4 years, under Labour from 2002-2006, the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside increased each year , and increased in total by over 230.
Let’s look at the second fact again now.
The overall number of NHS staff in NHS Tayside is now over 300 fewer than it was two years ago .
Today there are 13,914 staff in the health board, including GPs and dentists, ( using the SNP Government’s preferred choice of headcount figures.)
This is a decrease of around 320 from the 14,230 staff level reported two years ago.
This trend also stacks up poorly against the record of the previous Labour-led Scottish Executive.
In its last 4 years, under Labour, the overall number of staff in NHS Tayside increased each year and increased in total by almost 900.
These figures were already anticipated because of the SNP Government’s failure to match the Labour-led Scottish Executive’s growth in health spending.
The third fact is that the number of nursing students who drop out of their courses, known as the "attrition rate" still affects around 1 in .
The reasons for this are well-known and long-standing and include the need for childcare assistance and better support for clinical placements as well as financial difficulties and problems with career prospects.
This last issue, career prospects, now looks like taking on a greater significance.
In terms of demand, as the population ages there will be more need for nursing staff
In term of supply, there is a need to replace an ageing NHS workforce with younger staff .
Some 10,000 of Scotland’s nursing workforce are now over 55
In addition more of them are needed to meet the rising demand from the elderly.
However, student nurses can now see their career opportunities being restricted as the number of nursing posts in the NHS in Scotland falls - 2,000 lost in the past year, and so these diminishing career prospects will create anxiety, disquiet and perhaps a career re-decision.
And what of the highly significant admission ?
Earlier last month, ( 10th. November ) Nicola Sturgeon finally admitted to the Scottish Parliament, the SNP’s failure on nursing numbers which are now below those under Labour.
She stated,
"The number of nurses and midwives has reduced by 0.2 per cent from
the level that we inherited. "
No Government or health secretary can afford to have declining health staff numbers , particularly when you have previously declaimed that you " will protect the health service during the lifetime of this Parliament " with fewer nursing and midwifery staff.
Why is the NHS in this condition ?
The SNP Government simply just pass on cuts from the Tory Government in Westminster.
Furthermore, more money being spent on the SNP’s populist 5-year council tax freeze means of course less money for spending on the health service.
As a consequence of more and more duties being demanded with no increase in resources for the NHS in Scotland, career options for loyal staff such as voluntary redundancy packages have their
appeal.
This, however, will result in a further loss of nursing skills, with overworked and under-pressure dedicated staff remaining.
The extent of this working environment is revealed in a new poll of its members by the Royal College of Nursing in Scotland where more than 1 in 3 said that there were discouraged or told not to report their concerns over issues such as staffing levels or patient safety.
When RCN Scotland appeared before the Scottish Parliament’s Health and Sport Committee last month, their observation resonated with many :
"Nurses think they are very much on their own and that they are being targeted for savings……Nursing has lost a sense of all being in it together."

Marlyn Glen : Pensions and 30th. November

Pensions and 30th. November
Marlyn Glen

The “Daily Mail” couldn’t have put it better.
“State-owned Royal Bank of Scotland is to lavish around £500million in bonuses on its 'casino' bankers - despite a collapse in profits.
“Hundreds of traders and investment bankers who were bailed out by taxpayers at the height of the financial crisis are expected to walk off with pay and perks packages worth more than £1 million each.
“The huge handouts will fuel fury at City greed at a time when politicians and religious leaders are speaking out about corporate excess.”
(7th. November this year )
This is what others have described as “Socialism for the bankers” while its obverse, “capitalism for the workers” will be the cause of a massive national demonstration on Wednesday.
The moral debate is still about the reckless actions of those who were rewarded for failure, who required a large bonus simply to do their job, versus the rights of those who did not cause the financial crisis, but who are now being asked to work longer and to pay more to receive less of a pension as a result of it.
The political debate has been transformed into the hoary Tory myth of the “bloated” public sector with “gold-plated”, “unaffordable” pensions paid for by the taxpayer, and of Labour’s “rampant spending in office” , which was in fact vital to prop up the private banking sector from collapsing, an action repeated by other Governments .
Wednesday’s action has been described as a “women’s strike” and for good reason.
Almost two-thirds of public sector employees are women and when the public sector is hit hard by Tory cuts that are inevitably accompanied by punishing job losses, it’s women who suffer the most in terms of jobs, pay and pensions.
The Tory-led Government’s belief was that the clear out of jobs in the public sector would be the signal for the private sector to absorb these redundancies by creating more jobs for those losing theirs in the public sector.
That has never happened in any large measure - nor was it ever likely to - but for those that this has affected, it’s almost certainly meant a loss of pay for most of them.
The gross hourly rate for full-time women in the public sector is on average around £4.20p an hour higher than in the private sector.
The same rate for part-time female workers is on average £2.90p an hour greater in the public sector than in the private sector.
Added on to that disadvantage is what the TUC describe as “ a growing gap between public and private sector pensions caused by the employer retreat from decent pensions in the private sector”
Pension provision should include as one of its main objectives the levelling up of pensions in the private sector to those in the public sector.
It’s not about levelling down pensions in the public sector to the level of those in the private sector.
The claim about the “spiralling costs” making for unsustainable nature of public pensions is based on the belief that pension costs will absorb greater costs as more and more people live longer.
However, the UK Government’s Office of Budget Responsibility Fiscal Sustainability Report has already delved into the likely costs of pensions in the 2030s and the 2060s
It predicts that the cost of public pensions will have fallen to 1.8 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product by 2030 and will fall further still to 1.4 per cent by 2060.
As for “ gold-plated” pensions in the public sector, the average pension for women in the public sector is around £2,800 a year, and in the health service £3,500
Unions are angry about the claim of the Tory-led government that under their pension proposals, all those earning under £15,000 a year will see no increase in their pension contributions.
However, these figures refer to what a person would earn if they were working full-time in practice or in theory.
So a part-time worker earning £8,000 a year would not be exempt from increases in contributions because their “full-time pay” would be the equivalent of £16,000 a year, above the £15,000 threshold.
Employees face average increases of 3 per cent - a pay cut of 3 per cent by any other name -and the majority of these part-time workers are women.
Meanwhile, the TUC PensionsWatch reports that the directors of the top echelons of UK companies can expect average pension payments of almost £250,000 a year.
The report indicates that the leading 362 directors have stored up final salary pensions worth on average £3.9 million each.

Is there a particular Scottish dimension to the pensions issue?
The SNP Government believes that there is.
It is to debate the issue of pensions in the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday.
However, the entrance qualifications for anyone who wishes to participate in the debate is that they will firstly have to walk across the picket line at the Scottish Parliament.
Scottish Labour MSPs will be absent en masse from the Parliament on Wednesday along with the Scottish Green MSPs.
In his strong reproach of the SNP Government and its failure to listen to the voices of public sector unions to close down Holyrood next Wednesday, the Greens Parliamentary leader, Patrick Harvie, described it as “ an utterly cynical move”
He went further:
“On November 30th, the country will see the strongest wave of coordinated action for generations, all to challenge the UK Coalition’s ideological and counter-productive cuts. On that day, the SNP and the Coalition parties will sit together as an unholy alliance on the wrong side of the picket lines. Is this really what the SNP stand for now?
“No doubt there will be empty rhetoric from Ministers about supporting the right to strike – despite knowing that Parliament can only meet if employees and MSPs alike cross the picket lines.
“The SNP claim they’re on the other side of the argument from the Tories and LibDems.
“Wrong.
“The picket line is the argument, and the SNP have picked a side, the same side as the parties primarily responsible for this brutal attack on pay and pensions.
“The unions have been very clear about how MSPs can support them – by joining them at pickets and rallies right across the country. That’s the work we should be doing on November 30th.”
Patrick Harvie is the leader of a very different political party from that other one that is also in favour of an independent Scotland.

The pensions issue, like so many others, has its roots in the financial crisis of 2008.
Before then, the financial sector was revered for its “special place” in the economy and its “productive” risk-taking which entitled it to the jaw-dropping salaries and eye-watering bonuses.
However, Economics Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, puts it differently.
“It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that, by and large, the members of the super-elite are overpaid, not underpaid, for what they do.
“Very few of them are Steve Jobs-type innovators; most of them are corporate bigwigs and financial wheeler-dealers. One recent analysis found that 43 percent of the super-elite are executives at nonfinancial companies, 18 percent are in finance and another 12 percent are lawyers or in real estate. And these are not, to put it mildly, professions in which there is a clear relationship between someone’s income and his economic contribution.
“Executive pay, which has skyrocketed over the past generation, is famously set by boards of directors appointed by the very people whose pay they determine; poorly performing Chief Executives still get lavish paychecks, and even failed and fired executives often receive millions as they go out the door.
“Meanwhile, the economic crisis showed that much of the apparent value created by modern finance was a mirage. As the Bank of England’s director for financial stability recently put it, seemingly high returns before the crisis simply reflected increased risk-taking — risk that was mostly borne not by the wheeler-dealers themselves but either by naïve investors or by taxpayers, who ended up holding the bag when it all went wrong. And as he waspishly noted, ‘If risk-making were a value-adding activity, Russian roulette players would contribute disproportionately to global welfare.’ “

Marlyn Glen : Dundee's Misery Index is over 10 per cent

Marlyn Glen
Dundee’s Misery Index is over 10 per cent
16 November 2011
There is such as thing as The Misery Index.
It’s the sum of the rate of unemployment plus the rate of inflation, and added together they give an indication of the financial misery that accompanies unemployment, under-employment and the fear of an uncertain future for individuals and their families.
Strictly speaking, the Misery Index applies only to countries.
However, taking some degree of licence to make a point, the Misery Index for Dundee would be 10.6 per cent just now ( 5.0 per cent rate of inflation last month plus the 5.6 per cent rate for unemployment in the city )
The overall rate of unemployment in Dundee masks its most troubling tale - the age 16-24 age group in the city has an 8 per cent unemployment rate, and in the past three and a half years, the number of unemployed in that important age group of future Dundonians, has risen from 945 to 1,605.
There are dire forecasts of more misery to come , in the day-to-day running of family budgets hit by rising food prices, higher energy and fuel costs, and particularly for women.
Many of them are now the breadwinner in the family, whether it be in full-time or in part-time work, and they face the horrendous odds.
That’s why the latest figures for those who are "economically inactive" in Dundee ( those) show that 3,600 such women in Dundee want a job.
The corresponding figure for men is less, at 3,200.
People who are "economically inactive" are generally speaking those are beyond retiral age, and those who cannot work for reasons such as illness, disability, or those who remain at home to look after family.
Family responsibilities are the most common reason given for women being economically inactive.
The increase in the number of women in receipt of Job Seekers Allowance in Dundee since last June is greater than in men, 365 to 312, probably reflecting in part changes in the Lone Parent Obligation.
Women make up the majority of employees in the public sector, such as the NHS, education, local councils, and it is this sector that is being targeted and shredded in this recession.
Women’s working skills are needed now as much as they were in the past.
The number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside is now the lowest in 5 years .
The number of school teachers in secondary schools in Dundee is now at its lowest since 2005, almost two-thirds of whom are women
The number of school teachers in primary schools in Dundee is now at its lowest since 2005, 90 per cent of whom are women.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
A view from America ( current Misery Index of 13) - an editorial in the "New York Times" - "Britain’s self-inflicted Misery" - lays the blame forcibly and truly where it belongs :
"Austerity was a deliberate ideological choice by Prime Minister David Cameron’s ruling coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, elected 17 months ago. It has failed and can be expected to keep failing. But neither party is yet prepared to acknowledge that reality and change course.
Britain’s economy has barely grown since the budget cuts began taking effect late last year. The most recent quarterly figures showed the economy flat-lining, with growth at 0.1 percent.
New figures reported Britain’s highest jobless numbers in more than 15 years. Independent analysts expect unemployment — now 8.1 percent — to keep rising in the months ahead. The government has kept its promise to slash public-sector jobs — more than 100,000 have been lost in recent months. But its deficit-reduction policies have failed to revive the business confidence that was supposed to spur private-sector hiring.
Drastic public spending cuts were the wrong deficit-reduction strategy for the weakened British economy a year ago. … Britain’s unhappy experience is further evidence that radical reductions in spending will do little but stifle economic recovery.
Slashing government spending in an already stalled economy weakens anemic demand, leading to lost output and lost tax revenues. As revenues fall, deficit reduction requires longer, deeper spending cuts. Cut too far, too fast, and the result is not a balanced budget but a lost decade of no growth. That could now happen in Britain. .
Austerity is a political ideology masquerading as an economic policy. It rests on a myth, impervious to facts, that portrays all government spending as wasteful and harmful, and unnecessary to the recovery. The real world is a lot more complicated. America has no need to repeat Mr. Cameron’s failed experiment. "
One of the band of economists who predicted the banking crash and the extent of the present recession ,and an ex-member of the Bank of England’s interest rate committee was by David Blanchflower, who has studied the long -term effects of unemployment on young people.
He looked at data from the National Child Development Study, which examined the lives of children born in one particular week in 1958.
He found that while those in their early 20s who had lost their jobs in the late 1970s and early 1980s managed to make good again, the pyschological mark of being without a job in the earlier years remained with many of them, in some cases into their mid-forties.
They were more likely to be earning less than those with uninterrupted employment and they were less likely to be healthy and happy with their work.
Below are some figures for levels of unemployment in Dundee across all age groups in that same period :
If David Blanchflower’s argument is correct, the question arises, how many amongst those who were born in the late 1950s and who lost their jobs in the 1970s and 80s felt the effect of its misery into their middle aged years, and still feel it even today?

.
Year Average Number unemployed in Dundee
1979 8,668
1980 10,861
1981 14,723
1982 15,611
1983 15,943
1984 16,423

"Nurses " at breaking point

Nurses "at breaking point"
NHS Tayside revenue budget forecast to increase by just over 1 per cent
Marlyn Glen
3 November 2011

In these times of diminished hopes, the fears of dedicated but demoralised nursing staff in the NHS were revealed a few weeks ago by RCN Scotland’s survey of members.
It showed that only 30 per cent of nursing and healthcare support staff felt that their job was "secure". This was a drop of over 40 per cent compared with the 74 per cent recorded two years ago.
Furthermore, under 40 per cent would recommend nursing as a career, compared with 54 per cent in 2009.
Nursing staff were described as being " at breaking point".
The doctors’ professional body, BMA Scotland, stated last month that the NHS in Scotland was braced for "unprecedented " reductions in budgets in real terms money, and that the "rising costs of health inflation could jeopardise the range and quality of services the NHS currently provides.
"It is vital that the Scottish government and managers take a long-term view for the NHS and work with health professionals to identify how services can be made more efficient and where cuts should be made without compromising patient care."
The Scottish Government has a different perception of the condition of the health service from those who work in it and use it day-by-day.
Thus, First Minister Alex Salmond claimed in June,
"Even in these difficult times, health employment in every single category—through medical consultants, general practitioners, dentists and nurses to allied health professionals—is substantially up today on the level that we inherited in 2007".
Unfortunately for Mr. Salmond, the figures on the NHS say something different.
The Scottish Government’s own database states that details of the number of general practitioners and dentists employed " is currently unavailable due to changes in methodology and data quality issues"
The figures for the total NHS workforce minus GPs and dentists shows that in the past 4 years it has risen from 130,245 to 131,914 - just a 1 per cent increase - "substantially up today on the level that we inherited in 2007"?
The same database shows that there are now over 360 fewer nursing and midwifery staff in the NHS in Scotland than there were when Mr Salmond became First Minister.
In fact, in each of the past two years, the number of total NHS staff has fallen, and the Scottish Government’s own figures also show that some 2,300 posts in the NHS in Scotland will go in this financial year.
These same figures on staffing, this time for NHS Tayside, tell a different tale as well from the "substantially up" story.
According to them, the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside has decreased by 21 ( full-time equivalents) and is not "substantially up" since Mr. Salmond became First Minister.

In NHS Tayside in "Allied Health Professionals", a category quoted by the First Minister, there has been a average rise of just 5 more staff in each of the past 4 years from a base of 803 - "substantially up on the level that we inherited in 2007"?
Some Allied Health Professionals in NHS Tayside have fallen in number.
In Occupational Therapy there are 23 fewer compared with 2007.
Over recent months ( March to June), there have been a fall in the number of staffing posts in Dietetics, Orthotics, and Therapeutic Radiography.
In the past 2 years, 12 posts have been lost in physiotherapy.
We are constantly told by Scottish Government Health Ministers that they are now providing "record funding" for the NHS.
The same can be said of generally of employers who are providing "record wages" for their employees.
However, do these "record wages" keep up with those record prices in the shops , in energy bills and transport costs?
It’s when the Scottish Government’s "record funding" is scrutinised in this light that the real picture emerges.
The Scottish Government’s " Spending Review and Draft Budget for 2012-13" provides its preliminary ( but not finalised) figures for NHS expenditure till 2014-15.
The total expenditure , in real terms, taking inflation into account, is forecast to fall by £319 million by then.
To give just a few possibilities in individual specialities, in real terms expenditure ,
General Medical Services face a cut of £53 million
General Dental Services face a cut of £30 million
Ophthalmic Services face a cut of £7 million
Nursing Education and training face a cut of over £11 million
Clean Hospitals/MRSA Screening face a cut by £2million
Alcohol Misuse programmes face a cut by £3 million
NHS Tayside’s initial revenue allocation budget, currently just under £600 million a year, is anticipated to increase by less than £1 million in real terms in the coming year, an increase of just 1 per cent.
By 2014-15, it will rise by just over £6 million in real terms on the initial budget to just over £600 million. Over the four year period, the overall rise will be just over 1 per cent.
However, health service inflation costs - drugs and equipment in particular - are currently running at around 4 per cent.
On top of that are the "efficiency savings" .
These are serious financial demands.
3 per cent "efficiency savings" were ordered from budgets this year, with no real let up forecast for future years.
The Christie Commission reported on the struggle that the public sector services such as the NHS have in meeting increased demand, chiefly from an ageing population and chronic health problems , while the Scottish Government has set itself upon a low-taxation policy.
The Commission estimates that the shortfall in funding to meet this demand could rise to £3 billion by the middle of this decade.
It said,
"Our public services are now facing their most serious challenges since the inception of the welfare state.
"This rising demand for public services will take place in an environment of constrained public spending.
"In the absence of a willingness to raise new revenue through taxation, public services will have to achieve more with less."
This means nursing and other clinical posts vacancies being left unfilled and the re-deployment of existing staff.
It means front-line posts disappearing.
It doesn’t mean that the same standard of service for patients can be provided with fewer staff.
This is what happens when the Scottish Government’s core policy is a 5-year council tax freeze which no one knows how it can be paid for.
A sweetshop without prices.