Capita 350 local jobs going going …..

Capita 350 local jobs going going …..

Would you take a 50% cut in pay, lose your pension and move three hundred miles?

That is what is facing former Barnet Council workers in Barnet if they want to follow the jobs Capita plans to transfer to Belfast, Carlisle, Blackburn, and Southampton among some of the various Capita locations.

As part of our statutory consultation with Capita, UNISON has been faced with the task of trying to find ways of mitigating the redundancies. As part of this process Capita as the employer has a responsibility to try and reach an agreement with the trade unions. At the start of consultation UNISON asked Capita to reconsider their business model but this was rejected and UNISON was asked to come up with an alternative.

But when you consider that Capita proposal is to make a 45% operational saving, export hundreds of jobs across the UK and employ staff on low wages and a poor pension it became clear that there was no chance for locally delivered service was going to be able to compete. Who could live in London on those terms & conditions? So far only a few staff have expressed an interest in moving with the job to some of the propose Capita locations. Secondly, because of commercially sensitive information it was impossible for Capita to be able to share the requisite information to enable a competitive alternative to be proposed. Lastly, Capita along with BT had a team of experts working on their proposed bid over a 18 month period which must have cost at least £1million something our UNISON branch does not have at its disposal.

“BUT where does this all end?”

George Osborne has announced even bigger cuts to public services, what does this mean for local jobs even in the north. Birmingham Council are facing enormous cuts and there is pressure on the long standing Capita Contract (service Birmingham). There is talk of terminating the contract and pressure for the Council to follow Barnet Councils lead and publish the contract for public scrutiny. What I suspect will happen is the contract will be re-negotiated and perhaps services exported out of Birmingham to another country in Europe of perhaps Asia.

“How many jobs can be exported out of the UK?”

I think the reliance on outsourcing services has become so dominant that public bodies are going to be held to ransom as the pressure to deliver savings creates the scenario whereby the private sector offer “off shoring” as the way to deliver more savings.

Back to Barnet.

 

It does look like that there are going to be significant redundancies