Strictly business: a tale of modern care for the elderly

info (at) snapsthoughts (dot) com (SnapsThoughts: Britain from BELOW) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:50:00 GMT

This is a story about a group of poorly-paid North London careworkers who refuse to accept the privatisation of their service.

They used to work for Barnet council, but were transferred to the private Fremantle Trust when the council outsourced care services in 2001.

They've been in dispute with their employer for two years. They are not revolutionaries - by tradition, or inclination. Most are middle aged women who'd never tried industrial action. Now that they're trying, they don't seem to be winning. Still, they've launched more:

In April 2007, careworkers at Fremantle Trust carehomes for the elderly in Barnet in North London were forced to sign a harsh new employment contract. They were told to sign, or leave.

With this contract, the trust made substantial cuts to careworkers' salaries, and annual and sick leave allowances - even though careworkers were promised nothing would change when Barnet council transferred its care contracts and employees to Fremantle.

The annual leave allowance was cut by about ten days, and a statutory minimum sick leave scheme was introduced, with careworkers getting no pay at all for the first three days of sick leave.

Worse was the abolishing of the weekend enhancement payments that many careworkers relied on for a living wage.

They'd been getting time and a half on Saturdays and double time on Sundays - important enhancements for people on a base rate of about £8 an hour. Barnet Unison estimates that before the cuts, a care assistant working a 36-hour week earned about £15,700.

Suddenly, people were down around £300 a month. They couldn't pay their bills. It seemed unlikely that things would look up in a hurry: wages for TUPEd workers were frozen at about £8 an hour until 2010 and new starters came in at around £6.

So much for the council's promise of a benevolent private sector employer:

'Oh yes. They said it was all going to be super duper and we were going to be fine.' Fremantle careworker Carmel Reynolds, 2007.

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Strictly business: a tale of modern care for the elderly