UNISON has vowed to fight for the rights of 5,000 Staffordshire workers threatened with being sold off to a private company next year.
The vow by Staffordshire County branch comes after the county council gave the green light yesterday to plans for transferring nearly half its workforce, providing £75m of school support services, to a private ‘partner’ yesterday.
The council meeting also rejected UNISON calls for a decision to be delayed until staff had been consulted.
Although the Conservative-controlled council says it will be “a partner” in the “independently run business”, the union points out that it will mean school cleaners, support staff for disabled children, cooks, ground staff and others being transferred to “a private company, controlled by private sector investors, to deliver services to schools on a purely commercial, for-profit, basis.
“This is bad news for education, bad for the taxpayer and bad for staff.”
The council expects to appoint a winning bidder to take over the services in spring 2013, with staff transferred to the new company from autumn next year.
But UNISON Staffordshire branch secretary Steve Elsey pledged: “This is just the start for us.
“We will mount a campaign against the plans and continue to ask for meaningful consultation,” he told local newspaper The Sentinal. “We will do everything we can to meet our objectives.
“There are real concerns about bringing motives of profit into children’s education and things like special needs support being run on a for-profit basis. We are bitterly disappointed there was no delay.”