A trade union is only as strong as it's membership.

the CEO of Essex county Council pulls nearly a quarter million GPB yet she and Lord Hannignfield are on a transformation kick to outsource as much of Council Service as possible.

They claim they will make £3 million savings by 2012. The only way to do this is to outsource the back office staff (Lord H's own admission) . If we are all outsourced to the likes of IBM and other corporate masters, we won't be permitted to belong to unions.

Every week, I check the Jobs at ECC ads and every week, more and more heads of departments and directorate manager posts are being created in restructure after restructure. A bunch of jockeying for position.

It is fucked. I am fucked. My colleagues are fucked. And the service users are gonna be fucked.