Strictly business: a tale of modern care for the elderly
This is a story about a group of North London careworkers who cannot be made to accept the downgrading of their working conditions and the service they provide.
This hasn't quite stopped their employer - a care services provider called the Fremantle Trust - from imposing much-reduced conditions, though. The upshot is that the careworkers and the trust have been in dispute for nearly two years.
The careworkers used to work in Barnet council homes for the elderly, but were transferred to external employ when the council outsourced care services in 2001.
Many of the careworkers are middle aged women who'd never tried industrial action before this. Now that they're trying, they don't seem to be winning. Still - they're going for more.
The story:
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. 'Forced' is exactly the word to use: the careworkers were told to sign the contract, or leave.
With this contract, the trust made substantial cuts to careworkers' salaries, and annual and sick leave allowances - even though careworkers had been promised nothing would change when Barnet council outsourced its care contracts and employees to Fremantle.
The annual leave allowance was cut by about 11 days, and a minimal 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 these losses saw some careworkers take pay cuts of around 30%.
That was a big hit to take, and it left people very concerned about paying their bills. It seemed unlikely that things would look up in a hurry, either: 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 external employer at the time of outsourcing.
'Oh yes. They said it was all going to be super duper and we were going to be fine.' Fremantle careworker Carmel Reynolds, 2007.
