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TENS of thousands of social workers are being ripped off to the tune £130 million by privateers who snatch council care contracts and slash wages.
Research published today by the independent Resolution Foundation reveals that privateers are in many cases not paying even the statutory minimum wage of £6.50 an hour.
Laura Gardiner of the foundation said the practices were simply “wage theft” and called on HM Revenue and Customs to investigate the scandal.
The foundation estimates that at least 160,000 care workers are being diddled by privateer wage-slashers, losing an average of £815 a year which is simply handed to shareholders. For many the figure is higher.
Tactics used by the privateers include refusing to pay for time spent travelling, reducing the time a care worker can spend with a client — to 15 minutes in some cases — and refusing to pay staff for being on call.
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said the care sector is now “a haven for zero-hours contracts and Victorian-style employment practices.”
She said: “It is criminal that care workers are not paid for the time they spend travelling and on call between appointments. Care firms who engage in this penny-pinching practice must be publicly named and shamed.”
Privateers across Britain have undercut the cost of local authority care services and taken them over. Council staff are transferred to the privateers who then slash wages — despite legislation which should protect workers’ pay and conditions for two years following the jobs transfer.
Among the victims of the privateers’ wages theft are employees of Care UK in Doncaster in Yorkshire who last year took more than 90 days of strike action.
Roger Hutt, shop steward with public service union Unison, said: “Care UK reduced my pay by £500 a month — the size of my mortgage.”
One hundred MPs have signed an Early Day Motion demanding that Revenue and Customs launch an investigation into the care sector to enforce privateers’ compliance with the national minimum wage.
