02.07.1998

Tameside solidarity

Following the mass sacking of 250 Tameside careworkers last month, solidarity is beginning to grow in the North West. A 150-strong public meeting on June 30 resolved to create a support group, within which most of the Manchester left are involved.

The dispute took a new turn when careworkers at 12 elderly persons’ homes in Tameside, near Manchester, received dismissal notices on June 3 after three months of strike action against pay cuts. The 250 workers, members of Unison, are employed by Tameside Care Group, an ‘arms length’ private company to which Tameside’s Labour-controlled council transferred the homes in 1990.

Acceptance of the transfer was urged upon the workers by their then union, Nupe, which secured a single-union recognition deal as part of the package. The workers were given an assurance that their nationally negotiated pay and conditions would continue to apply. TCG is part-owned (16.6%) by the council, the remaining nominal shares being held by a ‘Tameside Community Care Trust’. Current trustees include Andrew Bennett, ‘left’ Labour MP for Denton and Reddish; and Jack Thornley, a former Labour councillor and solicitor who does substantial business for the Transport and General Workers Union.

The rationale behind the transfer was that advantage could thus be taken of the Thatcher government’s more generous funding of newly admitted residents to private, as against council-run, elderly persons’ homes. It all went horribly wrong. In February 1993, it was revealed that the firm was in financial difficulty, blaming cuts in grants from the council and a slower than expected turnover of residents. An emergency aid package from the council and the Cooperative Bank bought time for talks on refinancing. Negotiations concluded, in 1994, with Unison securing a majority approval from its members for their removal from local government pay and conditions onto locally negotiated terms, with drastic cuts in sick pay and shift pay rates, together with a goodwill gesture of a 10%, across-the-board pay cut for six months.

The annual pay negotiations produced no rises for the following three years. By 1997 the workers had had enough. They lodged a three percent pay claim and voted overwhelmingly for strike action when it was rejected. The company directors reacted pre-emptively. Announcing that Tameside Council and the district health authority had dropped a bombshell - a cut in grant funding for 1998-99 of £395,000 - TCG issued 90-day notices to terminate the contracts of all the company’s workers. On offer, from May Day, would be new contracts in which the hourly rates of care assistants would be cut from £4.50 to £3.60; of night care assistants from £5.65 to £3.60; and of domestics from £4.05 to £3.25. Holidays would also be cut and the company sick pay scheme would be deleted entirely. If the workers did not sign the new contracts they would be deemed to have sacked themselves.

The threat failed. Following another overwhelming majority, the workers began strike action on March 30. Picketing started and the firm resorted to staffing agencies to supply scab labour. The workers’ resolve has clearly shaken the leadership of Tameside council, which has now miraculously discovered that it is able to restore £330,000 of the grant cut - but for one year only. The workers have voted overwhelmingly to reject this ‘solution’, and when a minority union, GMB, ordered its 44 members back to work on the strength of the offer, 29 of them resigned their membership in protest and transferred to Unison.

This group of workers is new to industrial action, but has learned fast. However, the stakes are high and it is vital that the action is continually and rapidly escalated if a victory is to be gained. In this respect the role of the scabbing agencies is crucial. When students and unemployed workers supporting the strike initiated the tactic of occupying the offices of scabbing agencies, the strikers were advised not to participate by the Unison branch secretary, Socialist Party member Noel Pine. Brother Pine cautioned that, if strikers were seen engaging in such action, then they may be victimised by management after a return to work. This reasoning could not be more false, but it is typical of an approach which attempts to keep the dispute tame and respectable. If this shortsightedness is not overcome, it will lead to defeat. Thankfully, the workers appear to have rejected comrade Pine’s advice. Picketing and occupation action has so far secured the withdrawal of two scabbing agencies, Apex Healthcare and Taylor-Brooke, from TCG work.

Unison’s national conference last month agreed that there would be a national demonstration in support of the TCG workers, on Saturday July 4. The main speaker will be Unison general secretary Rodney Bickerstaffe. The demonstration commences at 12.15 pm, from the Stamford Park entrance, Astley Road, Ashton/Stalybridge boundary.

A victory for the TCG workers, in a period when there have not been too many victories, would give an important boost for the working class as a whole.

John Pearson