Salford care workers take on private profiteers: Interview with UNISON President Steve North

Socialist Alternative recently spoke to Steve North, Chair of Salford City UNISON and UNISON National President about the ongoing struggle of social care workers in Salford. Steve is speaking in a personal capacity. 

Can you tell us about the situation facing the workers who went on strike against Park Homes? 

Park Homes is a company that operates all over the UK, but the homes are actually owned by Salford City Council, who outsource the service. These workers have had a series of problems since Park Homes took over: failure to pay staff correctly and on time, under-staffing, poor treatment and a general disregard for the wellbeing of staff and residents. 

What has outsourcing meant for the care sector overall? 

The effect has been that profit is placed above the wellbeing of staff and residents. Adult social care is not well funded – that is common knowledge. There are very low margins in the budgets, so when a local authority outsources a care service, the only way for private companies to make a profit is by downgrading pay, terms and conditions of staff, while reducing the quality of experience for residents. 

All companies do this, but in this case it is particularly vicious – and the fact that this is happening in a council- owned home is particularly egregious. Often companies make the excuse that they took on the risk of investing or in building the housing, but even that is not the case here. 

What steps have the strikers taken? 

The explicit demands of the strike are for an improvement in pay and conditions, rather than about ownership. But the council has a significant role to play in resolving the dispute. Ultimately, what workers want is a way out of this company. It was clear that if workers were going to be taken seriously, they would have to cause some disruption.

Of course, care workers, and many of those that are in sectors UNISON organises are concerned about the quality of the service, and about how the wider community sees their action. But we made an effort to build in the community where residents were drawn from, and we could see that their families had concerns about the treatment of their relatives, and saw that this wasn’t the staff’s fault. Once we clearly had that, we went ahead with the ballot, and held two days of industrial action. 

These two days of action didn’t in themselves, have a big effect on the company, because ultimately they are not bothered about a reduction of care quality. But it did show to the council and the wider community that we have to act. Now there are discussions about Salford City Council intervening to solve this situation. That is a good start, but we can’t stop until we get all social care workers back in the public sector, on the basis of collectively-bargained, local government pay and conditions.