Outcome of meeting on 20th April 2014

Company news

Apr 25, 2014

The planned meeting between Unison, ACAS and Care UK took place on Sunday 20th. Although a range of discussions took place, sadly no agreement was reached. 

Over the Easter weekend when Unison members were on strike, all shifts were covered by experienced colleagues and the strike action has not had any impact on people supported by the service who were enjoying their Easter break.

Care UK’s director for learning disability services Chris Hindle said: “ We have consistently made the point that there is no more money – the service is commissioned by the local authority and we are all aware that public sector funded services are facing a genuine struggle to meet a growing demand with tighter and tighter budgets. Whichever provider was chosen to deliver this service would have had to reduce costs in some way. We are disappointed that the union did not come to the table on Sunday with any practical proposals for bringing this dispute to an end.”

Under Care UK’s proposals, the basic pay of all employees within the service is being fully protected and all colleagues who transferred to Care UK will continue to be members of the valuable NHS final salary pension scheme and have future pay increments protected. Most importantly, there have been no job losses - no employee who transferred into the service has been made redundant. Care UK has offered a transition payment which provides affected employees  with salary protection for a period of around 14 months.