Barnet UNISON

Why we must ‘care for’ our care workers and stop the attacks on them

Care workers have been submitted to devastating treatment from Commissioners who wield their power through contracting out services. I say this because when we raise the issue of terms & conditions for our members working for the contractors, the contractors respond by saying it is the ‘Council who are responsible.’

In Barnet we have a dispute known as the Your Choice Care Workers dispute which you can read about here and here.  

But there is a wider issue that goes beyond Barnet Council, Social Care is in crisis but not just about the cost but what it is doing to the quality of service delivery. The key issue commissioning continues to ignore is that without staff there is no service and the race to the bottom will only lead to further scandals and allegations of abuse. Incredibly there are some people who believe that lower wages including zero hours contracts guarantees quality services!

Some members of the public condemn care workers for having the temerity to stand up to the ongoing attacks to their terms and conditions. These ignorant people and I mean ignorant try to argue care work is not an important role and are first to call care workers greedy for not accepting cuts to their pay.

They will condemn the Doncaster Care UK care workers and they will condemn Your Choice Barnet care workers.

BUT where would we be without care workers?

I would argue that the way we treat those who provide care is a measure of what sort of society we aspire to be. Social Care is in a crisis, not just because of funding but I believe because of the way we treat the staff who deliver the care.

How can it be right that care work pays less then working behind a bar or in a supermarket?

We will at some point all rely on a care worker whether it is for ourselves or for someone we love and cherish. The level of trust we place on the care worker is critical to the quality of care required by the person needing support.

Providing care is exhausting work both physically and mentally. It is critically important that those providing care are provided with the best training, support and supervision to ensure the care they provide is of the highest quality.

BUT ‘Commissioning’ has undermined the role of the care worker, it has led to zero hours culture, it has led to the ‘15 minutes’ of care culture where home care workers are forced to provide 15 minutes of care and move on to their next client.

The advocates of the commissioning model will throw up their arms and protest they have brought value for money and greater innovation but the facts are there to see

· ‘Social care commissioners should ditch zero-hours contracts’

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/25/social-care-ditch-zero-hours-contracts

· ‘300,000 people on zero hours contracts in social care alone’

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/300000-people-on-zero-hours-contracts-in-social-care-alone-8688796.html

· ‘Unscrupulous employers exploiting workers through zero-hours contracts’

http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/scottish-affairs-committee/news/report-zero-hours-contracts-/

· ‘Are 1 in 5 social care workers on zero-hours contracts?’

https://fullfact.org/factchecks/social_care_workers_zero_hours_contracts-29039

· ‘Ending the abuse of zero-hours contracts’

 

http://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/TUC%20final%20response%20to%20BIS%20consultation%20on%20zero-hours%20contracts.pdf

The only way for YCB to be financially viable would be if: 

1. Barnet Homes writes off the £1 million loan.

2. Barnet Council stop penalising YCB for ‘no shows’.

3. Barnet Council pays up front to YCB in order to help the cash flow situation.

4. Barnet Council pays the going rate for the services being offered.

5. Barnet Council conducts an immediate investigation as to why Adult Social care services have referred only a handful of referrals in the last 2 and half years.

6. Senior management and other Service Level Agreement costs imposed on YCB are reduced.

7. YCB & Barnet Council find a more efficient way to invoice for services. The current arrangement is that Barnet Group invoice Barnet Council then YCB invoice Barnet Group.

8. YCB is allowed to independently procure its own support services and not be forced to use Capita CSG services.

See background to the dispute below:

Background

YCB imposed a 9.5% cut in pay to all their staff starting from 1 April 2014. Barnet UNISON carried out an indicative ballot to ascertain if members wanted to accept the 9.5% cut or if they wanted to be formally balloted. UNISON members overwhelming voted to be balloted for strike action.

UNISON organised a legal strike ballot and members voted 100% for strike action this was an amazing result.

ACAS became involved and UNISON agreed to attend a meeting together with ACAS and YCB. At this meeting an agreement was reached that staff would have their pay reinstated for just one month, whilst further negotiations took place.

These further discussions elicited more financial information in an attempt to ascertain the financial viability of YCB and to see if savings could be made from ‘expenditure/overheads’.

We asked them to look at savings across the following headings:

· Senior management costs

· Financial services

· Accommodation costs

· IT services

· Business Improvement costs

· Renegotiate the terms of the £1 million loan from Barnet Homes.

YCB then made a revised offer of a 8.31% pay cut for our members, further reductions were offered if staff wanted to lose some of their annual leave. Our members were given a detailed chart showing the further reductions of the 9.5% depending on how much annual leave they lost.

On a 73% turnout 90% voted in favour of taking action to reinstate their pay. Actually more members took part in this third ballot in three months and more voted for strike action.

For more details read Your Choice Barnet (YCB) “The real deal” here

Barnet UNISON issued the following letter today 21 August 2014 to all of our members working for Your Choice Barnet (YCB) in response to the YCB letter sent 19 August 2014 here

“Dear Colleague

You will have received a letter from Julie Riley on 19^th August regarding the decision to take strike action which is clearly designed to frighten you into not taking strike action. We want to set the record straight on some of the arguments presented in that letter.

It is true YCB was very open to UNISON about its accounts and this enabled UNISON to fully understand the dire financial state of YCB. As YCB have referred to their budget we believe that in the interests of transparency we strongly recommend that all of our members write back to Julie Riley and request a copy of the financial information shared with UNISON. It is important that staff, who are key stakeholders in YCB, can see the facts for themselves.

Contrary to what is contained within the letter UNISON made a number of suggestions, most of which were not accepted:

· Barnet Homes (BH) writes off the £1 million loan

· Barnet Council stop penalising YCB for ‘no shows’

· Barnet Council pays up front to YCB in order to help the cash flow situation

· Barnet Council pays the going rate for the services being offered.

· Barnet Council conducts an immediate investigation as to why Adult Social care services have referred only a handful of referrals in two and half years.

· Senior management and other Service Level Agreement costs imposed on YCB are reduced.

· YCB & Barnet Council find a more efficient way to invoice for services. The current arrangement is that Barnet Group invoices Barnet Council then YCB invoices Barnet Group.

· YCB is allowed to independently procure its own support services and not be forced to use Capita CSG services.

It is important to note that the accounts showed that YCB will balance its books only if you accept a 9.5% pay cut and YCB pays nothing back on its loan to BH. However, YCB were adamant they must pay back the £1 million. YCB were unable to tell us how they would find the money to pay off £1,000,000 over the next three years.

Our fear was that YCB would have to come back to our members for more money, which is why we asked in the meeting if they could give an assurance that this would not happen. As you know YCB were unable to give such an assurance.

We are concerned that our members cannot keep on ‘bailing out’ YCB every year.

YCB makes the point about still paying the London Living Wage for the assistant support workers (£8.80 per hour) but that is for this year only. The London Living Wage rises annually at the rate of the ‘cost of living’ (unlike your wage). This will mean those at YCB on £8.80 per hour should get a pay rise of around 3% next year for YCB to stick to this commitment. However, this increase was not contained within their budget.

We note in the letter which states “It is not the Council’s intention to take the services back in-house, however if there is no other option but to step in they would be likely to find other providers”. Our reps and members have reported back that they perceive this message as a direct threat that they should ‘shut up and accept the 9.5% cut’ and be grateful that they don’t get handed over to a private company.

I would like to remind members of the following statement made at Cabinet Resources Committee 24 May 2011 “Commercial risk ultimately remains with the Council and in the unlikely event of failure, the services will need to be brought back in-house.” (p.57 of the Business Case)

We are very clear that if UNISON’s recommendations made to YCB are not accepted then the future viability of YCB is at serious risk and Barnet Council should honour their statement on 24 May 2011.

UNISON members have taken part in three ballots over the last six months and on each occasion more UNISON members have voted ‘yes’ to reject the 9.5% pay cut. On Wednesday 20 August 2014 we had a meeting with reps and members and have agreed a programme of strike action and some demonstrations, details of which will follow shortly.

Please note the first demonstration will be outside Hendon Town Hall on Monday September 1^st at 6 pm.

Yours sincerely,

Helen Davies                                    John Burgess

Branch Chair                                    Branch Secretary

Yesterday Your Choice Barnet chose to go public in the Hendon Times about the ongoing dispute here and wrote a letter to our members.

Last night (20 August 2014) UNISON had a meeting with our members and local reps to discuss the letter and the decision of our members to take strike action next month.

Members were angry and upset at the content of the letter which you can read here.

Your Choice Barnet (YCB) “The real deal”

Background

YCB imposed a 9.5% cut in pay to all their staff starting from 1 April 2014. Barnet UNISON carried out an indicative ballot to ascertain if members wanted to accept the 9.5% cut or if they wanted to be formally balloted. UNISON members overwhelming voted to be balloted for strike action.

UNISON organised a legal strike ballot and members voted 100% for strike action this was an amazing result.

ACAS became involved and UNISON agreed to attend a meeting together with ACAS and YCB. At this meeting an agreement was reached that staff would have their pay reinstated for just one month, whilst further negotiations took place.

These further discussions elicited more financial information in an attempt to ascertain the financial viability of YCB and to see if savings could be made from ‘expenditure/overheads’.

We asked them to look at savings across the following headings:

· Senior management costs

· Financial services

· Accommodation costs

· IT services

· Business Improvement costs

· Renegotiate the terms of the £1 million loan from Barnet Homes

YCB then made a revised offer of a 8.31% pay cut for our members, further reductions were offered if staff wanted to lose some of their annual leave. Our members were given a detailed chart showing the further reductions of the 9.5% depending on how much annual leave they lost.

On a 73% turnout 90% voted in favour of taking action to reinstate their pay. Actually more members took part in this third ballot in three months and more voted for strike action.

Key ongoing issues throughout the negotiations so far

· Was YCB able to generate enough new income to reduce the need for cuts to staff?

·Was YCB able to generate enough new income to pay off the £1million loan to Barnet Homes?

·Over the last 18 months there has been a 30% reduction in staff as staff have been made redundant in order to save money for YCB.

· Staff working in Supported Living & Valley Way have had their ‘out-of-hours’ payments slashed in order to save money for YCB

· YCB have increased the numbers of assistant support workers and reduced the numbers of support workers in order to save money for YCB

· YCB is wholly owned subsidiary of The Barnet Group which is wholly owned London Borough of Barnet, YCB had to take a loan of £1 million from Barnet Homes (another company which is wholly owned by the London Borough of Barnet through The Barnet Group)

· YCB said they had not been made aware of the cash flow problems as a result of moving from block contract payments.

· YCB were not resourced for the level of invoicing necessary when the payment moved from block payments.

· YCB were unprepared to cope with no payments for ‘no shows’.

“What is a ‘no show?”

This is where the service user does not attend a service, this could be for planned reasons such as holidays or hospital appointments or through sickness. It is has been shocking to hear that the impact of this critical factor had not been identified as a serious risk to the financial viability of YCB. We have learnt that although discussions have been had with LBB over ‘no shows’ the financial losses are a significant factor in the future viability of YCB. We estimate about 50% of the 9.5 % cut to our members is as a result of the financial penalty imposed by Barnet Council on YCB.

· It has become clear over the last 18 months that the financial viability of YCB rests solely with Barnet Council.

· Barnet Council is penalising YCB by not paying for ‘no shows’

· Barnet Council is hardly making new referrals to YCB

· Barnet Council is not paying YCB the going rate for the service provided “Prior to the salary reductions changes we were being paid a market rate of £18.43 per hour and it was costing us £21.81 per hour and this was not sustainable” (source: Hendon Times 3 June 2014)

· In response to the cuts to our members there has been some commentary (inside YCB and in the public domain) that if only YCB could grow new business the profits would negate the need to make pay cuts to the staff.

· Barnet UNISON decided it was critical to our negotiations that we look into the possibility of generating new income in order to see if this was an area which if successful would enable the cuts to be withdrawn or reduced. In our negotiations with YCB we asked for details for each service in order to see if they could deliver new business and if so what any new income would mean to staff in terms of their 9.5% pay cut.

· For Supported Living we learnt that any new business would not deliver a financial benefit to the business so no point in looking to grow this service.

· The two of the three day services are intensive support for service users so even some marginal increases in numbers of service users mean that there is not enough marginal profit to generate meaningful income either to mitigate the cuts to our members pay or support the future viability of YCB.

· Barnet UNISON felt there was too much money spent on back office services for an organisation which employees only 105 fte staff. YCB responded by offering a marginal 1.19 % saving from their ‘expenditure/overheads’which meant the 9.5% cut would reduce to an 8.31% cut for our members.

· Because our members rejected the revised offer YCB have said they will not make the identified 1.19 % back office saving.

· Our members reported ongoing threats that they should “forget about returning to Barnet Council and be more worried about being privatised” needless to say this did not go down well with members!

· YCB were unable to give any assurances to staff that if they accepted the 8.31% cut this year, YCB would not come back for further staff savings next year.

· YCB were unable to explain how they were going to find the money to make the first repayment due in 2014/15 of the £1million loan over three years to Barnet Homes.

It was clear that the only way for YCB to be financially viable would be if:

· Barnet Homes writes off the £1 million loan.

· Barnet Council stop penalising YCB for ‘no shows’.

· Barnet Council pays up front to YCB in order to help the cash flow situation

· Barnet Council pays the going rate for the services being offered.

· Barnet Council conducts an immediate investigation as to why Adult Social care services have referred only a handful of referrals in the last 2 and half years.

· Senior management and other Service Level Agreement costs imposed on YCB are reduced.

· YCB & Barnet Council find a more efficient way to invoice for services. The current arrangement is that Barnet Group invoice Barnet Council then YCB invoice Barnet Group.

· YCB is allowed to independently procure its own support services and not be forced to use Capita CSG services.