Welcome to the webpage of

Social & Community Care, Voluntary Sector & Housing Workers Combined Branches

This page is intended to provide information about Community Union for anyone working in the Voluntary, Community Care and Social Housing Sector; especially those in Yorkshire and Humberside, Greater Manchester and Lancashire.

If you work in the community then Community is YOUR union.

        For further details call us on 01482 474131.

Community's Combined Branches is the specialist trade union body for all those employed in the Voluntary, Community Care and Social Housing Sector.

Workers in our sector are especially vulnerable during this time of savage cuts in jobs and services across the public sector. The Coalition Government are trying to scare public sector workers into accepting redundancies and cuts in wages and pensions and this is already being passed on to workers in voluntary organisations and community care providers. The union is fighting hard to save jobs and defend wages and conditions and we are campaigning alongside many other organisations to build a broad alliance of people and groups to preserve the independence and integrity of our sector, the jobs of those who work in it and the services we provide to the public.

The Coalition Government think that our sector exists merely as a source of cheap and disposable labour - we are fighting to prove them wrong.

If you work for a voluntary organisation or a charity, for a Community Care provider or a Housing Association then why not join us? Whether you are a part-time cleaner or a full-time Social Worker; a Care Assistant in a residential home or an admin worker for a charity; a Housing Support Worker or a Youth & Community worker - there is a place for you in the union. Community Union incorporates the National League of the Blind & Disabled (NLBD) and the British Union of Social Work Employees (BUSWE).

Across the North of England several branches of Community representing Voluntary Sector workers, Social and Community Care workers, Housing Association staff and disabled workers in sheltered employment workshops have collaborated to form a Combined Branches group.

The Community Union - Social & Community Care, Voluntary Sector and Housing Workers Combined Branches is the specialist trade union body for everyone working in this sector. To find out more about the Combined Branches click here (if you don't have Acrobat Reader then download it free here).  If you work for the NSPCC then click here to go to the NSPCC pages on the union's national website. 

You can contact the union in a variety of ways

For details of union subscriptions click here, and for details of union benefits and services click here.

Union membership is not free but Community Union subs are weighted to offer reduced rates to low-paid and part-time staff. Community Union members enjoy the broad range of benefits (including legal advice, child benefit , immediate replacement vehicle if your car is involved in an accident and much more) that you would expect from a modern, twenty-first-century trade union.

The principal benefit of union membership however is knowing that whatever problem you may have at work, the union is always there to stand by you. Advising and representing members at work and in dealings with employers is the bread-and-butter work of any union and no member of Community is isolated and alone - the union is only a 'phone call away.

If you work in the community then play a part in Community - join YOUR union!

 

Last updated 24 April 2011.