Marching on Easton

The campaign committee met and we decided to hold a march and rally in Easton next Friday. We were pleased to welcome Faruk Choudhury to our meeting and talk about developing our links with the Muslim community in the City. Faruk is the labour canditate standing against Lib Dem Cllr Keily in the Easton ward of Bristol. It is Cllr Keily who has pushed through the Council's privatisation plans. Keily is the executive member for Adult and Community Care and he hangs by a thread in his job with Labour having already decided he needs to go and the Torys putting him 'on probation'.

We will protest on Keily's home turf and the campaign committee is tasked with organising a strong turn out from the Home care Assistants for our afternoon of demonstration.

Home care assistants met last week - we are determined to step up our campaign

Because we care about our service users we have been unwilling to call for industrial action, and prefer to ask the people of Bristol to support us, this should not be seen by the council as a weakness we won't be silenced or appeased and we will not go away. We will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that the future of homecare is as a public not a private service where the care comes before the profit.



Steps we are taking:

We have formed a committee of 34 Home care assistants who will lead campaign organisation

1. We will get involved with local council elections and back candidates who back us


2. We will keep positive and recognise that we are making good progress, we are proud of who we are and the jobs we do, we are proud to serve the older and disabled people of Bristol


3. We will gather as many signatures as possible for our petition
   
   We need our service users, their families and all people in Bristol to support us. We are ordinary working women, we are not trouble makers, but we are not a push-over. We will not abandon our service users and we will not be bullied out of our jobs.
   
   Please back our campaign and sign our online petition on the Council's website: http://www.bristol.gov.uk/items/epetition.html Keep Bristol Home Care. Please talk to us in the street, we wear a mint green uniform and there are hundreds of us. We need to know you care too.
   
   

Trade Union Statement made to Bristol's ruling Lib Dem Cabinet

Statement to Cabinet 22nd March 2007

Alun Beynon on behalf of the Transport and General Workers Union

This new report is even more of a shambles than the last. We have moved from vagueness about TUPE and firmness about savings; to vagueness about savings and firmness about TUPE ++. However, the Cabinet remains in an untenable position. Given half decent management, the price of an hour of Homecare is dependent upon labour costs. Therefore it is disingenuous to argue that you can protect terms and conditions, including those of new staff, while promising savings which will be spent on more care.

The Homecare workers know that transfer to the private sector would put them in a perilous position. TUPE ++ offers no guarantee of security and when the Council no longer directly employs staff it carries no liability either for making sure TUPE++ prevails or for equal pay. The likelihood is that, if transferred, these loyal women workers, will either be driven out of their jobs or suffer detrimental changes to their pay and conditions.

The independent sector is full of bad employers. The Council’s own research has established that all those aspects of terms and conditions of employment which mark out a bad employer from a good one, are prevalent within this group. Poor pay, no sick pay, holidays fixed at the statutory minimum, no travelling time between service users, no pensions and minimal training. The contrast with the Council’s terms and conditions is stark and illuminating.

However, it’s not too late for the Cabinet to see sense and to acknowledge that the way forward for any socially responsible politician will be to engage with their employees and their representative trade unions. At long last, the Homecare Business Unit is now well managed but years of incompetence will take time to put right. We are making real progress with improvements. In good faith, hundreds of Homecare Assistants have changed their hours of work and modernised their work practises. This management are trying to regain the confidence of employees who have lost trust in the Council, because for many years they were treated an inconvenient burden rather than as dedicated Care professionals. It is vital that trust is rebuilt and, provided this report is rejected, the trade unions will commit themselves to working with the management to ensure that high quality, cost effective care becomes a hallmark of the trust between Bristol City Council and its in-house provision.