The voluntary sector is in the grip of an unprecedented funding crisis and the £5bn in funding snatched by central government is forcing many to the wall, making a mockery of the prime minister's claims to be fostering a "big society".
In the face of such extreme financial pressures, workers and service users are feeling the pain. Unite is being told about the human costs of the cuts as stories flood in from the sector. One member said: "Seventeen of us are being made redundant. We work on a project helping people who have had mental health problems get back to work, or into training. We risk losing our homes, our service users are at risk of relapse instead of recovery". It will not be long before society buckles under the strain.
Unite has launched the Unite for our Society campaign to reach out to those working in the 170,000 charities spread across the UK, as a new Unite survey shows that cuts to funding, job losses, and individual stress are the chief worries of voluntary sector workers.
We have had over 2,000 workers from a spread of voluntary organisations across the UK respond to our survey into workplace concerns. The evidence is clear; cuts are destabilising the country's third sector and workers and service users are in the frontline.
That's why we are campaigning to support workers, kicking off with a series of new-media conference calls where workers can get advice from a panel of experts on issues ranging from redundancies and the legal right to challenge council cuts to voluntary organisation funding. The first will be on how to use equality impact assessments to fight the cuts, and the second will be led by Rachael Maskell, Unite national officer for the voluntary sector, while a leading legal expert will focus on your legal rights when facing redundancy, how you can work with colleagues or other voluntary sector workers in your area, and how union membership can help in difficult times.
Unite is keen to build a picture of how cuts are hurting charities, workers, services users, and society at large. The website is home to an interactive cuts map, which highlights the individual stories of people hit by national and local government cuts to the sector. So far, over 400 people have told us the real human cost of the cuts.
The information we gather will be key to our efforts to get this government to stump up and fill the funding gap left by its ill-advised policies. The government's £100m transitional fund and big society bank provide £400m, but this still leaves a colossal £4.6bn funding shortfall. It is time this government took its head out of the clouds and opened its eyes to the realities of the sector. It is delusional to suggest that efficiencies can be made in a sector that already operates on a shoestring or that knights in shining amour will arrive in the form of wealthy private donors.
As these deep cuts rock and weaken the very foundations of the country's third sector, the more hollow the government's big society rhetoric sounds. This government must act now. Together we can make the voluntary sector stronger.
Sally Kosky is Unite's national officer for the not-for-profit sector
• For more details on the Unite for our society seminars, please click here
• Tell Unite about the issues you are facing at work. Take the survey
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