Barnet Unison are calling for an inquiry into the discovery of legionella bacteria at some Fremantle care homes in Barnet.
Read the union's questions here and link here to the letter issued by Barnet council and NHS Barnet to staff and clients of Apthorp Lodge and Dell Field Court.
Showing posts with label Fremantle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fremantle. Show all posts
Friday, 18 February 2011
Thursday, 26 August 2010
Barnet council haemorrhages another £6 million
Barnet council has partially lost a case against Catalyst Housing Group (I think it was actually Catalyst's case against Barnet). It will probably cost the council - us, in fact - £6 million. There are a few more details here (open the pdf and search for "Catalyst").
Catalyst was the partner of Fremantle, the company that took over the running of Barnet care homes and became notorious for slashing the pay and holidays of its workforce. This was a cause célèbre in the labour movement for a couple of years, and provides an ominous presentiment of what we face with the Future Shape programme.
The failure of another contract between the council and a contractor highlights what the council's own reports say: they are in no fit shape at the moment to handle a landscape of mass contracted out services. And I doubt they will ever be in a fit shape to do that. They shouldn't even try.
The Catalyst saga is another scandal for a council continually giving the Conservative party headaches and harming residents and employees in the pocket time and again.
Please join the campaign to stop the Future Shape madness, and to get rid of this lousy administration!
Catalyst was the partner of Fremantle, the company that took over the running of Barnet care homes and became notorious for slashing the pay and holidays of its workforce. This was a cause célèbre in the labour movement for a couple of years, and provides an ominous presentiment of what we face with the Future Shape programme.
The failure of another contract between the council and a contractor highlights what the council's own reports say: they are in no fit shape at the moment to handle a landscape of mass contracted out services. And I doubt they will ever be in a fit shape to do that. They shouldn't even try.
The Catalyst saga is another scandal for a council continually giving the Conservative party headaches and harming residents and employees in the pocket time and again.
Please join the campaign to stop the Future Shape madness, and to get rid of this lousy administration!
- Lobby of the council, Tuesday 14 September, 6pm, Hendon Town Hall, The Burroughs, NW4 4BG
- Public meeting, Thursday 23 September, 7-9pm, Emerald Suite, North London Business Park, N11 1GN
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Let's scrap London taxi drivers!
The Tories could be looking into automating the entire Tube system and getting rid of all the drivers. Brian Coleman, for one, is keen on the idea. (Thanks to Joe Robb for this story.) The justification would be to save money, and avoid the disruption caused on those - actually, very rare - occasions when Tube workers go on strike.
All the workers who lost their job through such an act of unnatural wastage would... do what instead?
A large part of the justification made by the Tories for their public spending cuts budget, which will inevitably end in massive job losses - most of those people doing useful jobs - is that the unemployed will be soaked up by a massive expansion of jobs in the private sector, doing... well, many of them, presumably, the jobs that they were doing in the public sector, only worse paid. Remember the care workers in Barnet who transfered from direct council employment to work for the Fremantle "charity" and had their pay, pensions and leave cut by a third.
This transfer of jobs from the public to the private sector will also result in a relatively few private individuals creaming off a profit from our taxes. Makes sense? Not to me.
As for the improving efficiency argument, I don't believe in creating work for the sake of it, but it is far better to have everyone working even at the risk of being under-employed than what we increasingly see: large numbers of people idle and in poverty while those "lucky" enough to have a job work long hours under increasing stress. Rather than cutting jobs, why not cut hours?
The fundamental question is: who benefits from increasing efficiency? Is it all of us, society as a whole, or just a relative few, our employers, shareholders?
And as for that Brian Coleman, he seems to be in favour of maximum efficiency for everyone else and minimum efficiency for himself. Unlike on London Underground, which seems to me rather thinly staffed, the ratio of worker to passenger in Coleman's case is close to 1:1.
Has he ever wondered how much those taxi drivers he uses are earning and whether he is getting good value for money? Not for a second, I don't suppose, because he's not paying the fares, we are.
All the workers who lost their job through such an act of unnatural wastage would... do what instead?
A large part of the justification made by the Tories for their public spending cuts budget, which will inevitably end in massive job losses - most of those people doing useful jobs - is that the unemployed will be soaked up by a massive expansion of jobs in the private sector, doing... well, many of them, presumably, the jobs that they were doing in the public sector, only worse paid. Remember the care workers in Barnet who transfered from direct council employment to work for the Fremantle "charity" and had their pay, pensions and leave cut by a third.
This transfer of jobs from the public to the private sector will also result in a relatively few private individuals creaming off a profit from our taxes. Makes sense? Not to me.
As for the improving efficiency argument, I don't believe in creating work for the sake of it, but it is far better to have everyone working even at the risk of being under-employed than what we increasingly see: large numbers of people idle and in poverty while those "lucky" enough to have a job work long hours under increasing stress. Rather than cutting jobs, why not cut hours?
The fundamental question is: who benefits from increasing efficiency? Is it all of us, society as a whole, or just a relative few, our employers, shareholders?
And as for that Brian Coleman, he seems to be in favour of maximum efficiency for everyone else and minimum efficiency for himself. Unlike on London Underground, which seems to me rather thinly staffed, the ratio of worker to passenger in Coleman's case is close to 1:1.
Has he ever wondered how much those taxi drivers he uses are earning and whether he is getting good value for money? Not for a second, I don't suppose, because he's not paying the fares, we are.
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