Following a campaign led by the Joint Unions in Sandwell and lengthy negotiations between Sandwell Leisure Trust and the Council, a new business plan put forward by SLT was accepted by the Cabinet on 8th February 2017.
Darren James, Branch Secretary said “This is a huge turnaround from the position that the Trust was in 12 months ago. There was uncertainty for staff, in terms of who their employer may be and how they would be affected if the Trust did reach an agreement. This was not only felt by the staff, but also the public who use the services. A petition which was started by the Trade Unions gathered over 5,000 signatures in five weeks asking the council to do all they could to ensure the service remained, was presented to the late council leader Darren Cooper on 9th March 2016.
We believe that thishelped the council reach a decision to commence further talks and whilst we are pleased that they resulted in an agreed plan to ensure that SLT will continue to run the service with no change to terms and conditions, there are a small number of potential redundancies involved with the deal and GMB remain commited to working with the Trust to try and avoid any compulsory redundancies”
Posted: 20th February 2017