Homecare workers in Stockport are gearing up to fight back after their employer – a council-owned company – issued 90-day redundancy notices to more than half of them.
UNISON branch secretary Angela Rayner has been holding mass meetings with the affected staff and describes them as “devastated”.
The workers are employed by ISSK, a company set up by the council in 2009, and 81 out of 146 homecare workers are facing redundancy, alongside 16 clerical staff and 16 managers.
Ms Rayner calls the threat “the worst thing I have seen since I have been a trade union official, and I have been one for over 10 years.”
The union is now involved in statutory consultation over the plans, but Ms Rayner says that a major part of UNISON’s response – coming from the members themselves – will be a campaign to get the service, and workers, brought fully back in-house.
“When the service was in-house,” she adds, “overheads ran at £38 an hour – now they’re up to £53 an hour in just a few years, while our members have had a pay freeze. It’s not labour costs that have gone up.
“This is down to a failure to manage the service, and our members shouldn’t pay for that.”
And she accuses the company of using the redundancy threat to attack hours and terms and conditions, basically telling staff: “If you don’t like it, we’ll make you redundant.”
She also points out that the council and ISSK have invested heavily in staff training, so that all home-care workers are assistant practitioners with foundation degrees.
“Some of them have only recently qualified, and now they’re being threatened with redundancy to save a few pounds … but the company would then have to spend money training replacement workers on worse hours and conditions.
“It’s a short-term gain for long-term pain. It’s madness.”