‘Your Choice’ Care Workers Petition
To download petition please click here
Month: March 2013
URGENT UPDATE Your Choice Care Workers
UNISON received confirmation that our request for Your Choice to stop the bench marking of pay for Your Choice Care Workers has been agreed. Discussions about these proposals will be dealt with after the consultation has finished.
This is welcome news, especially on International Women’s Day as over 70% of the workforce are women furthermore it is good news for disabled workers as according to Councils own Business Case published May 2011 “the in-house services do employ 39% of Barnet disabled workers.”
UNISON ‘Your Choice’ up date report
6 March 2013
Dear Colleagues
Please find enclosed latest UNISON responses to the Your Choice in Consultation document
Email sent 6 March 2013
Hi Troy
Please find initial responses to the report presented to staff on Friday 1 March 2013. A fuller and more detailed response will be produced on receipt of information requested by UNISON. We have identified page numbers and paragraphs to aid a speedy response.
Page 4
Paragraph 2.4 “Review the structure which will result in 6.8 posts being deleted and the introduction of a new management structure.”
UNISON response: Deletion of frontline workers at a time when the Council is claiming to want to protect frontline services. Reducing staffing numbers on already stretched services will have a negative impact on staff health& wellbeing and the knock on impact will be service quality.
“Deletion of enhanced payments and introduction of a 7 day week”
UNISON response: This will place more pressure on low paid staff and result in experienced staff looking to leave as soon as they are able. It will lead to high turnover in staff which will have an impact on service delivery. The proposals will have a serious impact on staff morale and motivation. This is a very dangerous proposal.
“Benchmarking of salaries with similar organisations and the introduction of a new salary structure in line with the findings of the benchmarking exercise”
UNISON response: In the absence of any information and our insight in to the pay of the private sector this proposal means cutting low paid staff to below a living wage. This consultation report provides no information or evidence as to the reasons why the business plan agreed only a year ago was critically flawed. We are not in a position to know the scale and rationale for this attack on low paid care workers. It is our view that it is simply wrong to claim that paying poor wages does not impact on the quality of care.
· 3.2 The figure of £60,000 is a 300% increase on the figure provided to UNISON less than three months ago. This is more evidence that the business case was critically flawed. Please explain why the increase.
Page 5
“The 345k owed to the Council. There is no information as whether the Council are going to insist on this repayment and if so what the consequences are for Your Choice.
The paragraph starting “If no changes are made…”
· Please provide a detailed breakdown of this £1million gap and a response to why this massive gap was not foreseen by the Council’s Legal Advisors and Consultants?
The paragraph starting “The move to payment in arrears….”
· How has this happened?
· Is this a cash flow problem or is it a profit problem or a combination of both? Is this linked to the block contract issue or a separate financial issue?
Paragraph starting “The budget has …”
· Please provide evidence for this financial assumption.
Page 6
3.5 What new business has been won by Your Choice?
· What are the lower costs of your competitors?
Page 8
Valley Way a respite residential unit was required to provide a deputy manager, please confirm why this is no longer a statutory requirement?
Paragraph 4.3 Waking Night staff
We are concerned about the proposal to reduce waking night staff from 2 to 1 staff both for the staff and service users.
Paragraph starting “In Supported Living …”
· UNISON is concerned that waking staff are being removed from the Supported Living service, currently deployed in Agatha House.
Page 10
Paragraph 4.5 Supported Living Restructure
UNISON is concerned with the proposals to reduce the number of support workers from 23.2 FTE to 6 FTE. We believe this is de-skilling and reducing support at a time when the focus post Francis inquiry is on need for better trained and skilled staff and more supervision.
Page 13
· 5.1 Enhanced payments
UNISON is concerned by the proposals to remove enhancements for low paid care workers. We believe this will have an impact on staff morale and motivation and will impact on the quality of new recruits to the service.
· 5.2 Review of salaries
Please provide the results of the initial benchmark of your competitors.
UNISON is concerned that the benchmarking will simply result in low paid workers facing a further cut to their pay resulting in a demoralised workforce. This will impact on the quality of service provision.
Best wishes
John Burgess
Branch Secretary.
Email sent 6 March 2013
Hi Troy
I am requesting that the consultation is suspended on the grounds that we can not engage win meaningful consultation before we know the outcome of your proposed benchmarking exercise. As I advised at the opening meeting, your proposals to ring fence and assimilate are meaningless if as we predict the grades are significantly reduced. It is our view that this could lead to further compulsory redundancies.
Information requests
I am chasing up the email (see below) I sent on Friday as I am concerned that we do not have enough information for the trade unions and staff to be able to have meaningful consultation.
1. Please provide a breakdown of the £1 million gap identified in first 3.2 (paragraph 3) of the consultation document.
2. Please provide details as to how payment in arrears has had a significant impact on cash flow
3. What is the commercial rate of interest which Your Choice will pay on the loan?
4. Please provide the detailed business to case to demonstrate how Your Choice is going to be able to generate enough profit to pay back a £1million loan and meet the cost of the commercial interest.
5. Does this £1million loan include covering the £345k which may need to paid back to Barnet Council? If not, how do you [propose to fund this gap?
Your report makes a number of significant proposals which will have a detrimental impact on our member’s terms & conditions, their health & safety. Furthermore we believe that if these proposals are implemented they will have a detrimental impact on service quality.
I am asking for an undertaking as to when we will be receiving a response to our email and the promise to provide the further information promised at our meeting on 28 February 2013.
Best wishes
John Burgess
Branch Secretary.
Email sent 1 March 2013
Hi Troy
Whilst we await further details promised in our initial meeting please can you provide a response to the following questions:
1. Please provide a breakdown of the £1 million gap identified in first 3.2 (paragraph 3) of the consultation document.
2. Please provide details as to how payment in arrears has had a significant impact on cash flow
3. What is the commercial rate of interest which Your Choice will pay on the loan?
4. Please provide the detailed business to case to demonstrate how Your Choice is going to be able to generate enough profit to pay back a £1million loan and meet the cost of the commercial interest.
5. Does this £1million loan include covering the £345k which may need to paid back to Barnet Council? If not, how do you [propose to fund this gap?
Best wishes
John Burgess
Branch Secretary
Beware the “Ides of March” One Barnet Social Care Experiment is not working
Barnet UNISON Press Release: 1 March 2013
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Beware of the “Ides of March” – The One Barnet Social Care Experiment is not working!
Today approximately 170 staff will be presented with a redundancy consultation document (to view click here ) which contains within it the most draconian attack on low paid social care workers since the infamous Fremantle Care workers dispute. The Council Cabinet Committee back in May 2011 agreed to create a Local Authority Trading Company (LATC) named ‘Your Choice’. The transfer of staff to the LATC ‘Your Choice’ took place on 1 February 2012. At the time the Council website issued the following statement:
“Your Choice Barnet is projected to start delivering a surplus to the council from 2013/14. The surplus is projected to reach £263,000 by 2014/15 and £493,000 by 2015/16.”
Today staff are to be informed that Barnet Homes are having to ‘bail out’ Your Choice with a loan of £1million in order to prevent Barnet Group defaulting on the contract with Barnet Council. The projected surplus figures quoted are clearly not going to materialise.
Last year UNISON submitted several reports on the proposal to create a LATC.
“The options appraisals and business cases for Adult Services and the Housing Service and the business plan for the LATC have serious weaknesses and the process has been deeply flawed. They Council should not be making decisions on the future of services and public assets based on such poor information, analysis and advice.” (UNISON January 2012)
The proposals contained within the consultation document issued to staff and the trade unions today if implemented will see care worker terms and conditions slashed dramatically. This sends a message to potential new recruits to care work that these jobs are valued less than a shelf stacker in the local supermarket. One of the proposals is to reduce the number of waking night staff.
“For continence issues, those who require changing in the night do not require the use of hoists as they are already in bed.” (Paragraph 4.3).
It takes two staff to safely use a hoist, the implications if the above cut is implemented is that if a service user is incontinent during the night they will have to wait until the morning before they can be helped.
These proposals in our view are de-skilling and reducing management oversight and support at a time when the focus post Francis inquiry is on need for better trained and skilled staff and more supervision.
A ‘Your Choice Care worker said:
“There is a sinister undertow to these proposals. The people who will lose out as always are the vulnerable service users who take second place in what is now a business not care provision”
John Burgess, Branch Secretary said:
“The proposals including within this report are quite frankly unacceptable. The recent decision to outsource back office services to Capita has led to a series of statements from the Council.
“we will have £120 million to spend on public services in Barnet which we would not otherwise have. This will help to protect frontline services such as social care and libraries.”
In which case the Council should follow the example set by Stockport Council and bring back these services under the direct control of the Council in order to ensure there is no erosion of service delivery to vulnerable adults in the London Borough of Barnet.”
***** Ends *****
Notes to Editors.
Contact details: John Burgess Barnet UNISON on 07738389569 or 0208 359 2088 or email: john.burgess@barnetunison.org.uk
Links
1. Barnet Council Cabinet Agrees to create a Local Authority Trading Company
2. New trading company set to be launched
http://www.barnet.gov.uk/news/article/40/new_trading_company_set_to_be_launched
3. UNISON report on Local Authority Trading Company: Privatising Adults and Housing Services
4. Francis Inquiry
http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/anticipating-francis-inquiry-report
5. International support for Fremantle workers
http://www.unison.org.uk/news/news_view.asp?did=3620
6. Fremantle Care workers dispute
http://www.katebelgrave.com/2011/03/working-for-nothing/#more-244
7. Stockport Council bring back services in house
http://democracy.stockport.gov.uk/mgAi.aspx?ID=7511
8. Chelsea Cares goes into liquidation
http://kensington.londoninformer.co.uk/2011/10/chelsea-care-doomed-to-failure.html