[The first part in this series on trade union issues is here.]

It is 1pm on a crisp afternoon in North London’s Burnt Oak, and a hundred or so Fremantle Trust carehome workers and supporters have gathered in the St Alphage church hall on Playfield Road, where they’re waiting to be addressed by various lefty speakers and political worthies.

There’s a bit of a buzz in the hall this afternoon: the carehome workers have just finished a very noisy (whistles, horns, hooting, honking, yelling, etc) protest march through the town centre, where they again aired their grievance about the harsh cuts that the Fremantle Trust has made to their sick pay, holiday allowances and salaries.

Most of the workers here are middle-aged women, and they are from a variety of – charming term – ethnic groups. They say they have no intention of abandoning their fight to win back the salaries and working terms that the Fremantle Trust forced them to sign away in April this year.

Longtime Barnet carehome worker Breege Kelly is one of these women. She’s worked in the laundries and kitchens of Barnet Council and Fremantle carehomes for about 18 years. She says that she got her letter telling her to agree to the new terms and conditions just before Christmas 2006.

“Yep,” she says. “It was saying that we had to sign the new terms and conditions by the 31st of March (2007). A lot of people put it off for as long as they could, but in the end, we had to sign it, or we would be sacked.”

Indeed, Unison says that some members of staff who refused to sign were sacked. “They (Fremantle) work on putting pure fear [into everybody],” Kelly says. “I had to sign the new contract. I’ve got a mortgage and people got a mortgage, you know. They made it so that we had to stay and take it, what they were giving out.”

Why aren’t low-paid workers entitled to rewards?
Kelly works from Monday to Friday from eight in the morning until 2pm. Losing the weekend enhancements under the new contract was not an issue for her as a result (for staff who work weekends, the loss of weekend enhancements has meant fairly devastating paycuts of more than £50 a week).

Kelly’s issue is the cut to her holiday allowance.

Some careworkers had a leave allowance of around 39 days (that included bank holidays) under the Barnet contract. This allowance has been cut by 11 days.

Now, I can see no end of grotty neocons leaping from their sunbeds and call-girls at this point to argue that a leave allowance of 30 or so days is yet more evidence that public-sector workers are a bunch of overindulged slobs, but let’s just think about this for a moment.

Careworking in Barnet was never brilliantly-paid, even before the cuts to weekend enhancements. Barnet Unison estimates that a care assistant working a 36-hour week was earning about £15,700. The relatively generous leave allowance surely went some way towards acknowledging that caring for the elderly is physically and emotionally challenging, and that in a civilised society, people who do the job well deserve a few points.

God knows the private sector rewards itself when it feels like it. It’s no secret that plenty of soft-arsed analysts in the City get huge bonus payments. It would be interesting to know how much of that bonus money began its life in the public sector, as well. Go to Google and run a search under “Deloitte report, NHS,” or “KPMG report, NHS,” and see what you can see. The private sector argues that it generates wealth for the nation. That is true, but I would argue that by sucking money out of the public sector, it generates plenty of poverty as well.

It’s hard to understand why rewarding hardworking carehome staff is thought less than viable. Wouldn’t you want to know your elderly relatives were being cared for by people who were paid reasonably well, and who weren’t exhausted on account of taking on extra shifts to compensate for pay cuts?

If your answer is Yes, too bad. Any recognition that Fremantle staff got for their work has gone, and there are no plans for more. Wages for TUPE’d workers are frozen at about £8 an hour until 2010 and new starters come in at around £6.

Kelly’s 18-year commitment to her job and the elderly in Barnet is recognised by nobody. She will get no pay rises and no bonuses – nothing. She says that what she does get is extra shifts driving elderly residents around Barnet in the afternoon, to make up the hours that she lost when her leave allowance was cut. She says she needs that allowance. She uses it to visit her own relatives in Ireland.

“It’s always the low-paid workers that they’re hitting,” she says.

A Labour party
But hold the phone, people – what is this sturdy little creature puffing its way to the microphone to address the lucky masses? My word – it’s no less a luminary than Andrew Dismore, Hendon’s very own Labour MP. Members of various North London CLPs are out in numbers this afternoon, supporting the strike it seems. (I’ve posted a picture to the right of some of their little red behinds flanking the rally).

Anyway – Comrade Dismore is up on stage and surely all set to pronounce on the failure of the privatisation era and the evils of paying women workers as little as possible, etc. And off he goes: he says something about supporting the workers and the problem in Barnet being the Conservative council and it all being awful… bad… awful… blah blah blah… You get the picture.

I find Comrade Dismore’s address a bit short of the specifics I’m after, so I trot out of the hall when he does to solicit a little more detail. One of his little red helpers comes along.

I tell Dismore who I’m writing for, and say that a lot of people think that the Labour party is as responsible for the social fallout from the privatisation shambles as anybody, and that they have thought that for a very long while. I wonder if he feels like sharing his views on New Labour and privatisation.

“What you have to understand is that this is a Conservative council here and they are the ones that are making these decisions,” he tells me. “We have a Conservative council in Barnet.”

“Yes,” I say, “but you’re in government and you have a situation here where TUPE is being dismantled by a private company. What can Labour do to protect against that?”

“Well, yes,” he says. “People have to go to a tribunal.” He thinks for a little while. “It’s not just about the public sector,” he says. “I am supporting [employment] rights for agency workers as well. Okay,” he says. He starts moving away. “Thank-you.”

I tag along and explain to Dismore that the point I’m trying to get at is that the masses hold the Labour party responsible for the sort of fallout being experienced by the Fremantle careworkers.

“I think that is a bit of a misrepresentation,” he says. He sounds a little impatient. “What we have in Barnet is a Conservative council.” He says that what is important is that care standards are maintained and that terms and conditions are protected. He thanks me again, and again starts to leave.

“Like for those people?” I ask, pointing at the hall where the Fremantle strikers are still gathered. I wonder out loud what the Labour party is planning to do for the Fremantle workers from this point.

“Well, it’s the union’s campaign,” Dismore tells me. He looks up at his helper. “What I will be doing is talking to John (Burgess, the Barnet Unison branch secretary) about turning the heat up on the Tories.” He thanks me again, and starts to leave.

“When I was in the union at Hammersmith and Fulham, we had real problems with not-for-profits dismantling TUPE, and that was a Labour council…” I say.

…”I’m not in a position to comment on Hammersmith and Fulham,” Dismore says.

…”but…” I say.

…”We have a Conservative-controlled council in Barnet,” he says.

“Do you support the Trade Union Freedom Bill?” I ask him.

“Yes,” he says. “Um, yes. I do. If it ever gets read.”

I wonder again what Dismore plans to do exactly for the Fremantle workers.

“I’ve got two ideas,” he says to me.

I look at him. Two whole ideas, eh? – and a good eight months after the carehome workers were forced to sign their new contracts and increase their hours to make up their money. Those people are suffering. The service must be suffering.

I laugh.

“I’ve got two ideas,” Dismore says, “but I’m not telling you what they are.’

Hard Labour
Back in the hall, Newham Unison branch chair Michael Gavan is busy telling the crowd how Labour-run Newham Council is trying to shaft him for organising a campaign against council plans to privatise the council’s refuse (as in trash) function and various cleaning services. He knows as well as anyone that the upshot of that privatisation exercise will be less pay for his members and a lot less in the way of decent service.

“Our council likes to describe itself as an Olympic borough,” he tells the audience. “That gives you an idea of the stupid people at our council.”

He says that he has been suspended from work for three months and that the council is trying to sack him “because I organised a campaign against privatisation and they said I did it without the employer’s permission… and that I wasn’t acting in the employer’s interests. Well, look, guys – we’re a trade union. We don’t act in the interests of the employer.”

I talk to an elderly man called John Clarke next. He says he came to the rally today to support the Fremantle workers, because they looked after his mother so well during the three years that she was in the Merrivale resthome. His mother wasn’t rich – she lived in a council flat all her life. She depended entirely on public provision for care.

“I couldn’t have got better care for her if I’d paid thousands and thousands of pounds,” he says. “They were great to her. They took her out to places and they really looked after her. I will never forget that.”

The living end
Something kind of weird is going down inside the hall. One of Dismore’s little red helpers has charged up to the photographer I brought to this event. She seems to be demanding his credentials. She wants to know who he works for and why he’s taking pictures, and God knows what else. He can’t stand it, so he sends her my way.

She bustles over, and demands to know who I’m writing for. Then she tells me that she wants me to send the photos that we take to Dismore. “Andrew Dismore, MP,” she says. She spells out Dismore’s parliament email address at a very fast clip. “Andrew Dismore, MP.” She tells me to send the photos over in the morning.

I can’t quite believe I’m hearing this. “What?” I ask.

“Andrew Dismore, MP,” she says. “Send them over to Andrew Dismore, MP.”

“I’m not doing that,” I snarl. God help us, I think. What next? Who are these people? “I don’t work for the Labour party. Why would I send you our photos?”

“Andrew Dismore, MP,” she says again.

“I’m not sending you my photos,” I repeat. “Why the hell would I do that?”

She looks at me for a bit, and seems finally to work out that the photos are off the menu. “Oh,” she says. She walks away.

The guy sitting next to me has been watching all of this and apparently feels moved to comment. He leans towards me as the woman leaves. “I absolutely hate the Labour party,” he says. “I used to love them, but I can’t stand them now. I hate them. I really do.”

——————–
Photos from Saturday’s Fremantle careworkers’ strike and rally 10 November 2007.

About the author
Kate Belgrave is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. She is a New Zealander who moved to the UK five years ago. She was a columnist and journalist at the New Zealand Herald and is now a web editor. She writes on issues like public sector cuts, workplace disputes and related topics. She is also interested in abortion rights, and finding fault with religion. Also at: Hangbitching.com and @hangbitch
· Other posts by Kate Belgrave

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Economy , Equality , Trade Unions

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