UNISON, the UK’s largest union, has won a total of £225,000 for 29 cleaners and caterers after a six year battle against a private company which dismissed them and advertised the jobs on worse pay and conditions when it took over the service contract at Aintree Hospitals NHS Trust.
In March 1998 Walton Hospital In-patient services ceased and the patients and medical staff transferred to Fazakerly Hospital. RCO Support Services, which held the contract at Fazakerley Hospital argued that it had no obligations under the Transfer of Undertakings regulations (TUPE) to employ the 29 domestics and catering staff . All the other staff – doctors, nurses, administrative and clerical – were transferred along with the patients.
The case was successfully taken as far as the Court of Appeal, which backed UNISON in ruling that the workers should have been offered work on their existing terms and conditons of employment and that the union should have been consulted.
The ruling means that UNISON and other trade unions will be able to use this leading Court of Appeal authority when faced with a future contractor unscrupulously trying to avoid their TUPE obligations.
UNISON General Secretary Dave Prentis said:
“Our members were effectively thrown on the scrapheap by RCO with devastating disregard for their obligations under the law. It’s taken six years to get justice. But unscrupulous employers should take note, that they won’t be allowed to get away with this sort of behaviour. They showed all the worst aspects of the private sector – making a profit at the expense of low paid women workers. These women were loyal NHS workers who deserved much better.”
Sadly, two members have died since the case started. Most of those dismissed were women in their 50s/60s, many of whom had worked for the health service for more than 20 years. Some had managed to get other work, but the majority remained unemployed.
Individual compensation payments vary because some got other jobs very quickly while others remained unemployed.
ends