In Leicester, 300 council care home staff staged a one-day walkout in August as part of a joint UNISON and GMB battle to resist new "flexible" working over seven days. Three more strikes are planned for September, after 81% voted for strike action and 84% for a work-to-rule in a balot. In South Tyneside senior care workers are refusing to sign new contracts and balloting over strike action: the council wants to slice £50,000 from the pay bill by cutting sleeping-in allowances. In Glasgow, 1,500 social work staff in UNISON joined a week-long unofficial walk-out at the beginning of August in protest at management's suspension of three workers who had resisted the transfer of home helps from social work to a new catering and domestic care department. UNISON fears that this is simply a staging post to privatisation.
They eventually returned to work on the orders of Rodney Bickerstaffe after the victimised members were reinstated, and the council had won a court order banning the union and eight named stewards from helping the strikers. UNISON social service members have also been balloting for strike action in Cornwall and in Sheffield, where there has already been an unofficial 4-day strike over cuts in the children and families service.
200 sacked Care Workers are continuing their fight for reinstatement. Tameside Council and Tameside Care are trying to keep what is happening from the public.
Cutting wages and conditions of a skilled and experienced in Tameside. By sacking the care workers, they were also getting rid of those who cared for and would speak up for the elderly residents in their care.
The strikers have shown their support for other sections of workers in struggle. But they, too, need support from the wider workers' movement.
Depart 1.00pm Astley Rd, Stalybridge (near Stamford Park)
March through Ashton Under Lyne town centre Rally 2.30pm in Henry Square, Ashton Set up a Support Group. Send a donation. Send a message of support. Contact the strikers at Tameside UNISON, 29, Booth St, Ashton Under Lyne, Lancs OL6 7LB. 0161-308-2452. John Lister SOCIAL Services departments across the country are pressing through yet another round of cuts in services to some of the most vulnerable local residents as Labour sticks to Tory levels of spending.
In many cases councils are flouting the law, and ignoring their statutory obligations they struggle to stick within impossibly low cash limits.
In Birmingham, the High Gourt has ruled that council officers broke the law by taking council finances into account when deciding whether to award a disabled facilities grant to Taj Mohammed, whose needs fitted the criteria, but whose appliClOT coincided with a cash crisIS.
Help the Aged has claimed that over 2,000 elderly people have contacted them complaining that they are being forced to pay for "community care" services in residential or nursing homes by councils which are ignoring the law and government guidelines.
Last year the Appeal Court ruled that Sefton council was obliged to meet the cost of care home fees for clients with savings of less than £8,000, and to COtribute to the costs of those with less than £16,000. But Help the Aged LOW claims that councils dIC defying the law by resorting to techniques such as the use of waiting lists, designed to delay any financial contribution and pressure elderly people into using their own money to pay for care. One client in Dorset was told that cash was only available for clients with £1,000 or less.
The chair of the Association of Directors of Social Services more less admitted that cash-strapped authorities were breakthe law, and allocating support on the basis of cash pressures rather than the assessed needs of clients when he told Community Care magazine "After children's homes and increases in charges. Camden social services face a £4m cut next year, while Worcestershire County Council faces stiff opposition from carers to its plans to slash £S.1 million, including service cuts and increased charges.
Wolverhampton, one of the handful of councils still providing free home help services to elderly and vulnerable clients, seems certain to impose charges next year as it wrestles with a cash shortfall. Wandsworth's Tory-led council is looking to close a quarter of its children and family services in a bid to keep its council tax bills the lowest in England. Gordon Brown's announcement of a £3 billion increase in social service spending over the next three years - £1.2 billion short of the "minimum requirement" calculated by the Local Government Association - means that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Indeed as the NHS abdicates from its previous role in continuing care, ever more frail elderly people are dependent upon council-funded services. Staff, carers and relatives of the vulnerable people now being short-changed by social services, and all those who believe these services should be provided free of charge and properly funded from taxation, must unite to fight for more.
March and Rally: Bring your banners! Saturday Sept 12
workforce is part of the process of running down vital services f - -