SoR Director of Industrial Strategy & Member Relations, Dean Rogers, took part in a panel discussion in Manchester to coincide with the Conservative party conference.
Hosted by Unions21 and the Bright Blue think tank, the discussion was entitled, 'Local Ties? Building better, happier workforces in key public services'.
The panel was set the questions:
- Why is it important to improve recruitment and retention in public services – and can this help solve regional disparities?
- What are the best ways to improve recruitment and retention and would salary alone be enough?
- How can we make ‘left behind’ communities more attractive, especially to attract and retain public sector workers?
Other panel members were Shaun Bailey MP and member of the Work & Pensions Committee; Richard Holden MP and member of the Public Accounts Committee; David Skelton, author of The New Snobbery; and Paul Whiteman, General Secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers.
Dean’s key contributions sought to:
- Amplify the economic importance of the public sector, especially the NHS;
- Explain the scale of the recruitment and retention crisis, particularly re radiography;
- Show how the wrong interventions could make the problem worse;
- Outline the key strategic points to address the crisis with some ideas for consideration by Government.
Afterwards he said: 'It is important for the SoR to get our message out to influencers and policy makers – doing more of this is a key operational objective in our new three-year strategic plan. So we very much welcomed Unions21 and Bright Blue’s invitation to give our perspective on an absolutely critical social, economic and political challenge.'
Dean added: 'The contribution was well received. I also took the opportunity to expand on points around next year’s pay and threatened pension increases to the two MPs and will be following this up further after their conference.
'It was encouraging to see these kind of issues featuring prominently at the Conservative party conference. Any party with aspirations to govern in the national interest must develop a serious and strategic plan for addressing the crisis in public services and any union must be equally serious about engaging in these debates. We’ll be sceptical until we see their answers emerging but members can’t afford for us to be cynical and at least we are discussing the right questions together.'