Weekly Blog — speaking truth to power – National Care Service
This week I published a piece on the branch website about the National Care Service debate. I want to use this blog to explain why I wrote it, what it means for our members right now, and where the dispute with The Barnet Group stands.
Why I wrote about a National Care Service
Politicians talk about creating a National Care Service the way they talk about most things — as a funding question. How much will it cost? How will it be paid for? Those are fair questions. But they are not the only ones.
After 31 years as a UNISON rep, I have watched care workers praised in speeches and shortchanged in their pay packets. I have watched outsourcing strip away decent terms. I have watched workers transferred out of council employment, away from the Local Government Pension Scheme, onto weaker sick pay, weaker holiday entitlement, weaker everything — and I have watched management call it an efficiency.
A National Care Service built on that foundation is not a National Care Service. It is the same fragmented mess with a new name on the door.
If the Government is serious, it starts with the workforce. Fair pay, secure contracts, collective bargaining, and access to a proper pension. You can read the full piece here: https://www.barnetunison.me.uk/wp/2026/07/30/a-national-care-service-must-start-with-the-workforce/
The dispute on our doorstep
While politicians debate the future, our members in Your Choice Barnet and Barnet Homes are living the present. And the present is not acceptable.
Earlier this month, 97% of Your Choice Barnet members and 100% of Barnet Homes members voted for industrial action in consultative ballots. Those turnouts would have comfortably beaten the statutory thresholds needed for a formal ballot. The message could not have been clearer.
The Barnet Group’s response? They refused to negotiate. They rejected the claim in full and said they would not move. That is not a negotiating position. That is a refusal to engage with people who deliver first-class public services on second-class pay.
We have now requested formal statutory industrial action ballots. That process is underway. The Barnet Group is wholly owned by Barnet Council. The council cannot stand to one side and say this has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with them.
The pension question
One of the central demands in this dispute is access to the Local Government Pension Scheme. This matters and it is worth explaining why.
LGPS is not a gold-plated luxury. It is a defined benefit scheme that gives workers a degree of certainty about their retirement — the kind of certainty that has been taken for granted by council employees for decades. Workers transferred into TBG and Your Choice Barnet were moved away from it. That means lower retirement income for some of the lowest-paid workers in the borough.
We often hear that LGPS employer contributions make it unaffordable. The employer contribution rate is currently 20.4%. That is not a secret. But it is worth pointing out that the people who find LGPS “unaffordable” for frontline care workers tend to be the same senior managers who are themselves in the scheme and drawing from it. If it is good enough for them, it is good enough for the people doing the actual care.
What happens next
The formal ballot process has begun. If members vote yes — and I expect they will — strike action becomes a real possibility. That is not where anyone wants to be. But it is where The Barnet Group has taken us by refusing to negotiate.
If you work in Your Choice Barnet or Barnet Homes, make sure your contact details are up to date with the branch. Watch for your ballot when it arrives. And vote.
Best wishes John Burgess Branch Secretary, Barnet UNISON