‘Incredibly unfair’: York care home workers face pay cut after working through pandemic
York care home staff say plans to cut their pay and slash their terms and conditions are “an insult” after working through the Covid pandemic.
Senior care workers at Haxby Hall are facing a pay cut of 15 per cent just six months after private provider Yorkare took over the lease from City of York Council.
All staff are set to lose shift pay, unsocial hours pay, nine days annual leave and company sick pay.
Care workers face a pay cut of nearly five per cent – from £10.37 to £9.90 per hour, while senior care workers’ pay will drop from £12.67 to £10.80.
Yorkare took over responsibility for around 25 staff, many with long service, but several have already left following the plans.
A Unison petition has been launched to call on Yorkare to think again.
Haxby Hall staff said: “After the toughest 18 months of our lives, when we have cared for our residents like we would our own, Haxby Hall is threatening to tear our contracts up and pay us less for doing the same job.
“It is an insult – and so incredibly unfair. Some of our colleagues have said, ‘enough is enough’ and quit to find jobs elsewhere.
“Yet despite a national shortage of care workers, Haxby Hall still won’t listen and make good what we were promised.”
‘Fire and rehire’
The council’s executive voted to transfer Haxby Hall to Yorkare on a long lease in January 2020, but Covid delayed the transfer.
Senior councillors said the move would secure the future of the care home so that residents and staff could remain at the site and the building could be renovated.
Planning permission to upgrade Haxby Hall so it can offer 65 en-suite bedrooms were approved by the council earlier this year.
Andrea Dudding, branch secretary of York Unison, said: “Put simply – this a fire and rehire exercise and we see it as an appalling attack on our mainly women members who have gone above and beyond during a global pandemic; being the family their residents needed when family couldn’t visit and having to support those residents and their families through illness and death.”
Yorkare are understood to be losing tens of thousands of pounds a month on Haxby Hall, but Ms Dudding said Yorkare’s plan was “a cynical move to strip our members of their contractual rights.”
A Yorkare spokesman said: “Haxby Hall is unfortunately currently making unsustainable losses, therefore we have had to open consultation with the team to ensure we can maintain jobs. We have prioritised maintaining their 32 per cent pensions during this process.”
The petition against the cuts can be found here.