Ahead of strike ballot, GMB calls on Dundee City Council to step back from ‘horror show’ home care cuts

Ahead of strike ballot, GMB calls on Dundee City Council to step back from ‘horror show’ home care cuts

On International Women’s Day (Friday 8 March), GMB Scotland is calling on Dundee City Council to step-back from an ‘absolute horror show’ plan to cut the pay of local home carers by up to £4,500 a year.

Last month, home care staff voted overwhelmingly against plans by the local Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) to impose new work patterns of 30 or 25 hours a week on a split shift system.

It would mean that staff who want to remain on single shift options would have their working hours reduced to 23, 14 or 12 hours a week, leaving carers who want to avoid split shifts facing a wage cut of as much as £4,500 a year.

A full industrial action ballot of GMB’s membership in home care is scheduled to get underway next week.

GMB Scotland Organiser Helen Meldrum said: “On International Women’s Day we are asking this question of the city council: ‘Is this how you value women’s work in twenty-first century Scotland?’

Dundee is famously known as Scotland’s matriarchal city but the first against the wall for a fresh round of local cuts are low-paid women in our home care services.

Left unchallenged the council will impose cuts on the pay of our members by as much as £4,500 a year, a move HSCP management says is needed to “move with the times”.  It is an absolute horror show.

Plunging hundreds of women into poverty pay is not a credible prescription for the delivery of essential public services and our members are gearing up for a full strike ballot to defend their livelihoods.

But the fact that we have to campaign so hard against these cuts shows how far we have to go in Dundee and Scotland when it comes to properly valuing women in work.”

ENDS

Contact: GMB Scotland Organiser Helen Meldrum on 07958 156838 or Peter Welsh, GMB Scotland Communications, on 07976 447077.