Fremantle strikers

For much of 2007, careworkers in Fremantle Trust carehomes in Barnet took strike action in protest against the harsh pay and leave cuts a new Trust contract forced on them in April. The careworkers started striking to try and win back their lost earnings and leave allowances. The dispute is still unresolved:

A year's a long while to fight your employer: Sandra Jones, a careworker at the Fremantle Trust's Rosa Freedman day centre, says there are days now when she wonders if there's much point to it. She will 'keep on with the fight, because you have to keep fighting,' but she doubts very much that Fremantle will budge. 'Fremantle doesn't give a shit about its staff. It's gone on for so long now. They [the careworkers] are so demoralised. Some people have depression and stress.'

One thing everybody is particularly stressed about is Barnet Council's recent announcement that it plans to terminate part of the lease at the Rosa Freedman home - that's the carehome that Jones works at. Fremantle says that it will move residents in that home into residential care elsewhere.

Careworkers say that families of residents in the Rosa Freedman carehome are extremely unhappy about the transfer, because of the effect it is likely to have on their vulnerable elderly relatives - Fremantle management got, apparently, a vinegary response at a recent meeting with the families of Rosa Freedman residents.

The careworkers are worried about the transfer and the job implications of the closure, as well they might be. 'The closure of the residential care part of Rosa Freedman could result in staffing issues,' notes a 6 December 2007 report to Barnet Council's Cabinet Resources Committee. 'Fremantle will be responsible for these issues under the terms of the staff agreement with Fremantle Trust and Catalyst.'

And who be Catalyst, I hear you ask?

This story is also posted at liberalconspiracy. 

Photo: a protestor at the November Fremantle careworkers' strike rally.

It is 1pm on a crisp afternoon in North London's Burnt Oak, and a hundred or so Fremantle Trust carehome workers and supporters have gathered in the St Alphage church hall on Playfield Road, where they're waiting to be addressed by various lefty speakers and political worthies.

There's a bit of a buzz in the hall this afternoon: the carehome workers have just finished a very noisy (whistles, horns, hooting, honking, yelling, etc) protest march through the town centre, where they again aired their grievance about the harsh cuts that the Fremantle Trust has made to their sick pay, holiday allowances and salaries.

Most of the workers here are middle-aged women, and they are from a variety of - charming term - ethnic groups. They say they have no intention of abandoning their fight to win back the salaries and working terms that the Fremantle Trust forced them to sign away in April this year.

Longtime Barnet carehome worker Breege Kelly is one of these women. She's worked in the laundries and kitchens of Barnet Council and Fremantle carehomes for about 18 years. She says that she got her letter telling her to agree to the new terms and conditions just before Christmas 2006.

'Yep,' she says. 'It was saying that we had to sign the new terms and conditions by the 31st of March (2007). A lot of people put it off for as long as they could, but in the end, we had to sign it, or we would be sacked.'

Have been out and about interviewing some of the care workers who have been treated so appallingly by Fremantle, the company that Barnet Council outsourced its care contracts to. Back with a writeup soon.

...but not before sending a thought out to our very own deputy Labour Party leader Harriet Harman, self-described champion of women's rights: Harriet, old girl - how about you prove your commitment to us females by supporting the Trade Union Freedom bill and giving women like the ones being shafted by Fremantle a chance to protect their salaries and terms and conditions?

Go on, Harriet.

Go nuts.