The council for which I work is taking bids from private companies to become an "External Delivery Partner" in providing council services. In plain English, council services will be outsourced and mid to lower level council staff will be contracted to the External Delivery Partner. All jobs will be re-evaluated, post holders will have to apply for their jobs, those jobs will be at lower salary scale. What happens to pensions I don't even want to think about.

The council has been quite covert in it's dealings. Even Unison (labour union) were not consulted and consider that what the council has doen and is doing is illegal. Council managers only recently received very vague information to cascade down to staff.

A few Q&A road shows have been laid on but they filled up quickly as only 20 people permitted to book per session. The link to book sessions only first showed up on the organisation intranet yesterday morning. Was taken down yesterday evening before I left work. This morning when I came in to work it still was not there. About an hour later it reappeared in smalled print and different place on the page. Pointless because the new sessions they added were already full. Luckily I had booked a place for myself and 3 colleagues yesterday.

I have just put myself forward to be Unison Steward at my work because we don't have one on site. Not that I know all the ins and outs, I do have the passion and am willing to learn.

Fun times.