Doncaster careworker: I had to leave my flat because #CareUK wage cuts made paying rent impossible

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Kate B

Update September 1: More careworkers to take strike action – workers at the Your Choice Barnet company on September 8 and 9:

Video I took last year: people with learning difficulties and their families yell at the Your Choice Barnet board as the board refuses to discuss attacks on careworkers’ wages and walks out of a meeting:

Unison careworkers who work for the outsourced Your Choice Barnet company will take strike action on September 8 and 9 with another four days of action to follow.

Your Choice Barnet careworkers are fighting a harsh 9.5% pay cut imposed by private sector management. Like the striking Doncaster careworkers in the video below, the Barnet Your Choice careworkers provide services to people with learning difficulties. Those services were transferred into a local authority trading company by Barnet council in 2012.

Last year, Alan White and I wrote a detailed story for the New Statesman about that failed Barnet privatisation of services for people learning difficulties.

Your Choice Barnet was originally set up by the council as part of the so-called Barnet Group – a trading company which would “provide” housing and services for adults with disabilities. The council had the wild, and entirely unsubstantiated, idea that the company could make a profit and that people with learning difficulties would pay to come from all over London to use this Barnet service.

John Sullivan, the father of Susan Sullivan, a woman with Down’s Syndrome who relied on Barnet services for people with learning difficulties, told us that the name Your Choice was very ironic indeed:

“There was no consultation. We expected letters and so forth: in fact we never got a single phone call to tell us what was going on… The first meeting for residents was a disaster. It was clear there was no structure – Susan would be dragged around a series of shops and garden centres [for something to do]. She needs two things – continuity, and her friends: the people she’s been friends with since they were kids.”

John described the company’s claims that it could make a profit as “mental masturbation.” He was absolutely right. The promised profits never materialised. Instead – true to private sector form – Your Choice Barnet presented staff with plans to slash their wages last year. Your Choice Barnet said the wages cuts were necessary to keep the company competitive.

The Doncaster careworkers below are hearing the same thing from Care UK, their private sector employer. The Fremantle careworkers, another group of Barnet careworkers who I wrote about in detail here, were told the same thing. They lost their weekend enhancement pay – the extra money that made carework possible to live on as a job – and had their sick leave reduced to the statutory minimum.

This is why carework is in such dire straits. Services are outsourced to the private sector, which sets about grabbing cash by slashing careworkers’ wages to amounts that are too small to live on. We live in an era where already-low-paid workers and people with learning difficulties are considered acceptable collateral in that cash grab.

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Orginal post with striking Doncaster careworkers 27 August 2014:

Have more to add to this, but here’s a short post for those who are wondering why it is becoming impossible to make a living at carework:

Today, I spoke with Doncaster careworkers, including Mags Dalton, 44, who were protesting outside Bridgepoint Capital about charming private firm Care UK’s massive cuts to Doncaster careworkers’ wages. The careworkers work with people who have learning difficulties. Bridgepoint is the private equity company that owns Care UK – Mags’ employer.

Mags has lost about £400 a month as a result of those wages cuts and has been on strike for days this year in protest. Now, she’s had to give up her flat because she couldn’t afford the rent any more. She will move back to Newcastle to live with her parents. She will start another job and try to save up to move into another flat of her own at some point.

Mags is one of a number of Doncaster careworkers who have (and are as we speak) taken lengthy strike action in protest at the pay cuts of up to 35% being forced through by Care UK. Careworkers were transferred from the NHS to Care UK when the service was recently outsourced.

True to private sector form, Care UK quickly turned its attention to careworkers’ wages and conditions – wages and conditions which were hardly generous in the first place. Sick leave has been cut to the statutory minimum (the first three sick days must be taken without pay) and weekend and night pay enhancements slashed. New starters begin on £7 an hour – which means, of course, that workers won’t stay if they can find work elsewhere that pays even a little bit better. The pay cuts have hit hard. Mags’ rent was £465 a month and her £400-a-month wage loss put the rent beyond her.

So now, at age 44, she’s got to head home and live with her parents while she tries to save for a new place. She has lived in Doncaster for years: “I made a life for myself in Doncaster with friends that I love and a job that I love. I only signed up for the house a year ago. I moved in on the 26th of June last year and the 25th of June this year, I moved out. How did that happen.”

This is exactly what happened to the outsourced careworkers at Fremantle in Barnet, who I talked with over the course of their months-long strike action several years ago. People who provide (as in work as careworkers) and use social care services are being destroyed by privatisation and it’s been going on for a very long while. Under governments of a variety of stripes, may I add.

Hope government loses this one as well: second court case on Independent Living Fund #SaveILF

Posted on August 20, 2014 by Kate B

From Disabled People Against Cuts:

A second court case against the DWP on the closure of the Independent Living Fund (ILF) will take place at the Royal Courts of Justice on 22 and 23 of October. The hearing is expected to last one and half days.

The ILF is the fund severely disabled people use to pay for the extra care hours they need to live independent lives. Last year, the court of appeal overturned a government decision to close the ILF. In spite of that, the government has announced again that the ILF will close. That’s why disabled people are taking the government back to court. Without the ILF, they will lose their hard-won independence.

There will be a vigil outside the courts from 12.30pm on 22 October to support the ILF users who are taking the case and disabled people’s right to independent living as enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – Article 19.

Article 19: “Living independently and being included in the community”, states that “disabled people have a right to live in the community; with the support they need and can make choices like other people do”.

Please join the vigil to show your support!

The closure of the ILF has obvious implications for the UK’s chances of meeting such obligations. Most importantly for those disabled people who will lose this financial support – they will lose any independence and choice in their lives.

Video: ILF recipient Kevin Caulfield on the role that the ILF plays in his life and independence:

Video: ILF recipient Gabriel Pepper, who has had three brain tumours, explains how he uses the ILF to pay for the carers who help him out of his house and to live independently.

Video: June 28 – Disabled people occupy Westminster Abbey grounds to protest at the closure of the Independent Living Fund.

Newham council to me: you are foul mouthed and aggressive. #Result. A #FocusE15 update

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Kate B

To Stratford again! where career mayor Robin Wales continues one of London’s leading Pillock of the Year campaigns…here he is at the recent Newham Mayor’s show running from the Focus E15 mothers and their kids when the mothers asked him again about social housing in the borough.

Video from the Focus E15 mothers:

“This [event] is a family day!” Wales barked at the mothers as they walked around the event with their – err, families. I wonder if I should even bother outlining the ironies in that one. I guess we can take it that when Wales says “families,” he means “families who are not campaigning for social housing for families.” For nearly a year now, the Focus E15 mums have been fighting for secure social housing for everyone who needs it, which is most people. The women want decent, secure social housing for all – places where people can settle for the long term and raise their families. It is actually hard to think of a more family-orientated campaign. (For more on the financing of Newham’s family days and other short-term crowd-pleasers, read Mike Law’s excellent blog on that council’s likely borrowing legacy here). Wales is under investigation now – a complaint was made about his behaviour towards the mothers at the mayor’s show.

So. Perhaps the real problem here is that Wales, Newham council and the political class generally find assertive, persistent women difficult. I thought about that again this week when I found a letter that Newham council sent to the NUJ about me earlier this year. I’d forgotten about this letter, so thought I’d share it with you before I throw on my pile of Fuck Off Kate correspondence from councils. All good.

Earlier this year, I asked the NUJ to complain to Newham council when security guards stopped me from attending a public council meeting. I’d completely forgotten that the council had sent a response, but remembered this week and hauled it out. In the letter, the council said I’d be denied entry to the council meeting because I was foul mouthed and aggressive to security guards. OUTRAGEOUS. Conveniently, I have a recording of the interchange between me and the security guards that evening. You can hear me challenging the guards – as well I might, seeing as they were denying me entry to a public meeting and pushing my press pass aside – and that I actually sound quite sweet, because I am. I am in person, anyway. Generally. I like to swear all the time on social media, not least because that’s an excellent way to let off steam after exposure to a twat like Wales. Anyway – I thought about all of this when I saw Wales racing away from the Focus E15 in the video above. Not for the first time, I wondered about Newham’s two-fingered salutes to assertive women. I’ve posted more videos of those salutes at the end of this article. The Focus E15 fight is a feminist fight, all right. These female campaigners have been dismissed categorically – by Newham, by Labour, by the political class and the press. They’ve kept going, though, and generated a great deal of interest and support. It is not easy to keep things going, but they have. Continue reading →

“I didn’t want my first #JSA meeting to be in a group session with a G4S guard.”

Posted on August 12, 2014 by Kate B

I’d be keen to hear back from anyone who has experience of this:

I spent a couple of hours today talking with someone who is a new JSA claimant in North London. This man started his JSA claim a couple of weeks ago. It’s the first claim he’s made. He filled in an application form online and then was sent a text by the DWP some days later which called him to a meeting at a London jobcentre in the first week of August.

He assumed that the meeting would be one-to-one with a jobcentre advisor – a meeting where an advisor goes through the application in detail with the claimant and jobsearch requirements are set – but instead found that the meeting was a group session with about ten other new claimants and one G4S security guard who sat in the room the whole time. This man was shocked to find that this first meeting wasn’t private. He found the experience confusing and worrying, and wasn’t sure what he agreed to in it.

He said that he was certainly concerned about asking questions and sharing personal details and financial information in front of a group of strangers. He wasn’t the only one. He said that “a couple of the people there looked very nervous and anxious at the prospect of a group meeting,” and that people were worried about confidentiality.

He also said that the two jobcentre staff who ran the meeting “said that the new claimant meetings were now ‘unfortunately’ group meetings rather than individual meetings.” He has another meeting coming up soon and thinks the new meeting is a one-to-one, so he wasn’t sure if the group session was a direct replacement for a new claimant one-to-one. He was hoping that his claim would be finalised at the upcoming meeting. He was concerned about papers that he signed at the group session though. He was worried that he may have agreed to a claimant commitment without properly talking about it, or having time to think things through. He wasn’t sure if that had happened and hoped to find out at the upcoming one-to-one. He didn’t want to make a fuss and not sign papers at the group session. He also didn’t want to ask many questions or reveal his financial situation in a room full of strangers.

I’ve put a transcript of our discussion below. I’ve found some evidence of these new claimant group meetings online and a woman I know told me today that she’d accompanied someone to another London jobcentre where new claimant group meetings were held. The woman she was with was excused from that group meeting, because she didn’t speak English well. She was given a one-to-one session with an advisor instead that day.

The man I spoke to today said:

“Beyond the complete lack of confidentiality and privacy in a group meeting, it proved highly impractical and inefficient to address questions of ten different claimants. New claimants obviously have very different and unique cases. I can’t imagine how anyone would want to talk about sensitive or difficult issues in that environment.”

People were also told to put their identifying documents and bank statements into a box for photocopying and had their names read out for all to hear when the documents were returned.

I’ve asked the DWP for more on this and I’d be interested to hear from anyone who knows about these meetings. You can contact me here. People I’ve spoken to about this have real concerns about confidentiality and also about the appropriateness of a group environment for people who need to discuss sensitive personal information. I’m also interested to know why these meetings are held at all and why a G4S security guard gets to sit in listening to people’s personal stories. Continue reading →

Court case to #SaveILF to go ahead

Posted on August 7, 2014 by Kate B

Great news from Disabled People Against Cuts who say:

“Permission has now been granted and the second ILF Court Case will go ahead.

The papers went to a judge this week and he has granted both permission and expedition (which means speeding up the usual timetable for the court case).

The hearing should be “as soon as possible”, which could mean anything at the moment, as the judges are on holiday and the court has a very bad backlog, but we would hope we will get a trial date for some time in September/October as planned.

On behalf of all ILF recipients we’d like to say a continuing thank you to those involved in taking the case. We know from experience just how gruelling and stressful taking legal challenges can be and we offer our solidarity with you all.”

The Independent Living Fund is the fund used by severely disabled people to pay for the extra personal assistants and carer hours they need to live independent lives. The government tried to close the ILF last year, but that decision was overturned by the courts. Needless to say, the government is trying to close the fund again.

More soon.

In this video, #SaveILF protestors chain themselves to Westminster Abbey gates at a 28 June protest to draw attention to the government’s plans to shut the ILF:

In this video, ILF receipient Penny Pepper explains how the ILF made it possible for her to leave home as an adult and set up her own independent life:

The government will not get away with this.

London evicts. Women and children first, thanks

Posted on August 4, 2014 by Kate B

One development (if you can call it that) I’ve really noticed in London this year is the increase in calls and contacts from people who are facing eviction, or trying to stop an eviction right then and there, or worried that they are being pushed out of their their estates and homes by planners and developers. I decided to start to collect the stories of some of the people affected. The first two are below in this post. They’ll form part of a longer piece I’m writing on these evictions.

A few thoughts on this –

The more I talk to people, the more obvious it becomes that the real problem is the terrible lack of decent, secure, well-maintained, well-managed social housing people can easily afford. Long-term lets are especially crucial. The expensive, wildly insecure private rental sector is a challenge for most of us who rent. It can be particularly challenging and unforgiving if you have support needs. If people had secure social housing with long-term lets, a lot of the problems they’re reporting now simply would never come to pass – problems like being forced to move because a landlord wants the house or flat back, the stress of uncertain short-term tenancies, having to live in single, tiny, dirty rooms that private sector landlords pass off as flats to collect housing benefit and all the rest. I’ve spoken with people who have serious mental health problems and who simply can’t handle the idea of moving home, or to an unfamiliar environment. They are offered other places in the private sector, but that’s neither here nor there. They don’t want to move. They can’t move. But they’ve been evicted – forcibly – because the landlord wants them out.

Unfortunately, social housing waiting lists in some boroughs run into the tens of thousands – about 24,000 in Newham, 28,000 in Camden and 20,000 in Lambeth, to give a few examples. The truth is that people’s chances of securing a place that way are non-existent. (There’s another point, too – with a bigger social housing stock and better security in it, people in social housing wouldn’t be facing eviction in the growing numbers they are now, either).

Without those places, it’s up to tenants to get by in a hostile environment. Doesn’t matter that many people struggle. You beat the odds yourself, or you go down. Ours is the great era of individual responsibility, after all. Iain Duncan Smith – a man who is himself housed in his rich wife’s mansion – is very big on this Do It For Yourself concept. Individual liability at any cost is one of Universal Credit’s many rotten planks. When UC comes in for all, if it does, the housing element will be paid to claimants, who then must pay rent from it. Anyone who fails to achieve that will be dismissed as feckless. Anyone who argues for direct payment to landlords will be written off as a Nanny State relic (*waves*). No matter that the odds in that game are already stacked against plenty of people. Cuts to council tax benefit and housing benefit mean that many already pay bigger council tax bills and bigger rent demands. Using rent money to cover council tax arrears because your council threatens you with a liability order to deduct tax straight from your benefits, say, would not be irresponsible. But we’ll end up there, anyway. We live in an age where individuals must sink or swim – which usually means a lot of well-off people blathering on about responsibility while they watch other people sink.

“They told us that we have to organise the money,” one very young housing benefit tenant said to me a week or so ago when she reported back from a Jobcentre Plus meeting about Universal Credit. “They said that we shouldn’t be having fun with our money.” Continue reading →