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Private care sector and Charities in the UK face 400million back pay bill.

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posted on Feb, 7 2018 @ 07:07 AM
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For years the care sector has been getting away with paying staff a flat fee to work sleeping nights in the care homes they work. After a few court cases over the past couple of years it has been deemed that they have not been paying the staff correctly and the staff was due the national minimum wage.
The private companies and the Charities are saying they can not afford it and are asking for a Government bailout which is also backed up by MP's.

Here is a short video explaining more.




Now I'm affected by this the company I work for have stopped sleeping nights and put on working nights now but we used to do 10 hour sleeping nights for 25 quid, we had to sleep on a sofa outside a persons room who had to have someone outside his room all night, we didn't get a lot of sleep and If you had 3 or 4 hours you were lucky and then normally followed by an 7 hour shift or If unlucky a 14 hour one.
So as you can imagine I'm due a few quid I have been in touch with my Union and they say as do the employment tribunals that it is an open and shut case I will win, many of us at work have checked all this out and last week HR came over and many of us said either pay us or we goto court and win and you pay the costs.
This will either go two ways either a bailout happens or many companies go bust with the bill and these homes will have to be nationalized.
So do we bailout and get the banks to pay for it somehow? I have been told by a person in upper management this is on the cards.
Thoughts?

www.theguardian.com...

www.theguardian.com...





edit on 7-2-2018 by testingtesting because: (no reason given)



posted on Feb, 7 2018 @ 07:12 AM
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Oh and just to add this has had a knock on effect for the people using the services....most can not afford to pay the staff they need to go on holiday seeing they have to pay every hour away now.
Now at my place I am pushing for a voluntary scheme where staff can waver the pay for the night so the service user can go on holiday.



posted on Feb, 7 2018 @ 07:33 AM
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a reply to: testingtesting

Private Care Home Owners are ripping off the elderly and their families.

The owner of a Private Care Home near to were i live replaces her £80,000 Range Rover every year with a new model.

Don't get fooled by these " Sob Stories " from Private Care Home Owners who say they can't afford to pay decent wages.

www.dailymail.co.uk...



posted on Feb, 7 2018 @ 07:42 AM
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a reply to: alldaylong

I agree I think most can pay but seeing so many private companies are dropping out of adult care because they can not make enough money I think we have a big crisis coming.
My company is now American owned and in the last few years we have been sold 3 times twice the provider selling up and dropping completely out of adult care going just into child care.
Should never be for profit tbh.
edit on 7-2-2018 by testingtesting because: (no reason given)



posted on Feb, 7 2018 @ 07:54 AM
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The companies and owners of the care home industry are making a killing.

The workers and the residents are scraping by in a terrible state.


Almost like letting private health providers run services results in inequality or something, innit.



posted on Feb, 7 2018 @ 08:00 AM
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a reply to: Painterz

Yup I'm on a message board talking to a lot of folk effected by it and many are calling for a national care service.
For it to be nationalised.
But should the industry be bailed out? like I said if not they will just get out of the sector and then what happens?.



posted on Feb, 7 2018 @ 09:33 AM
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a reply to: Painterz

Umm, from reading the stories in the OP, it would seem that you don't quite have your conclusion correct:

At heart, this is a case of shameful buck-passing by the government. A large proportion of sleep-in care is funded by the state, but it subcontracts charities and private companies to provide it. There are rising cost pressures on providers; despite our ageing population, council budgets for care have fallen by up to 30% in some areas.

At the same time, the costs of care have risen as a result of the increasing minimum wage and increased regulatory standards. The government has made some extra funding available, but nowhere near enough to close the gap.

Mencap says half of local authorities simply aren’t building the higher costs of sleep-in shifts into their contracts. This leaves charities and private providers in an impossible position. Do they pull out of contracts in which the numbers don’t add up, making carers redundant and uprooting the care of vulnerable people? Or do they carry on operating for as long as they can, at a loss?

Source

The problem, it would seem, is not with the contracted care companies, but with the subsidization that the government provides versus the actual cost of mandated minimum wages and increasing costs of business in the face of, in some places, 30% decreases in funding for the same medical services.

It's the government at the core of the issue, and the quoted text asks very good questions: Do the contractors pull out of contracts because the numbers don't add up, or should they continue providing care at a financial loss until they have to put up the out-of-business sign?

I know that it's easy to blame the big bad business owners and "private" health providers, but you're implying an incorrect solution to an actual problem. What you are looking at is a government that apparently incorrectly advised these companies on compensation for these employees, and now the same government is saying that these companies now owe back pay (and have 15 months to tell the government how much they owe).

At the same time, according to the stories in the OP, the government is still uncertain as to whether or not it will help aid these companies in their backpay to employees (even though the accusation is that culpability lies on the government in the first place for their ill-advisement of salary rules, we must remember). And then to top it all off, not only are these companies reliant on the government funds for operation and this owed backpay, but now the same government isn't even certain if a "bailout" for these companies is even allowed under rules devised by the EU.

Where, in all of this, does the foundation of the problem become the greed of the business owners?



posted on Feb, 7 2018 @ 11:44 AM
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a reply to: testingtesting

Hold on a minute, if the industry is bailed out, then it is nationalised. Or at least partly. It would be the tax payer doing the bailout through the government. Just like with the Royal Bank of Scotland when that was bailed out. Of course when the health care industry is back on its feet the government will sell its (our) share back to private companies at a loss. Just like with RBS.

Who can complain about that system?



ETA if the private companies get out of the industry because there is no hand out( I mean bail out) then the industry will be by default nationalised. Let’s face it if the tax payer is going to pay for the service even at loss. Why should private companies have any involvement trying to maximise their profits?

It’s just the same with how they are trying and have privatised much of the NHS. There’s a lot of money to be made in drugs..
edit on 7-2-2018 by surfer_soul because: (no reason given)



posted on Feb, 7 2018 @ 12:19 PM
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a reply to: SlapMonkey



Where, in all of this, does the foundation of the problem become the greed of the business owners?


The business owners would never have got into it if they thought they couldn’t profit from it all. That’s the whole point of business. It’s also a risk and it’s down to the business to get their book keeping right. However if the government has broken the contract agreement by amending rules after the fact, it is down to the government compensate the business accordingly as per the original contract, or as decided in a court of law.

Still I don’t think the government should be contracting public funds to private institutions in the first place, but this seems to be the way things are going more and more across all sectors.



posted on Feb, 7 2018 @ 12:23 PM
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a reply to: SlapMonkey

Yeah funding has been cut big time that's why many companies have sold up and dropped out.
Our past two owners dropped out and gone into different areas away from adult services.



posted on Feb, 7 2018 @ 12:30 PM
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a reply to: surfer_soul

I do think as time goes on and more people being entered into care the private companies will drop out and it will have to be nationalised.
I think it really is heading for disaster tbh.
I have seen the level of care drop due to the funding cuts.
I do see the private companies maximise profit over care a lot but is the answer nationalising it? or does each council increase the funding?.
I dunno but at the end of the day it's the dudes who we look after who suffer.
It is that bad we put our hands in our own pockets sometimes to just get the guys the basics..
Austerity my arse.



posted on Feb, 7 2018 @ 02:04 PM
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a reply to: surfer_soul

Yeah, you and I seem to agree, for the most part, although you seem to imply that a desire to make money is tantamount to greed, and I would disagree.

Maybe I'm reading a little too much into that.



posted on Feb, 7 2018 @ 02:06 PM
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a reply to: testingtesting

Yeah, this is why I abhor the idea of the government taking control of my healthcare.

The poor people who need the care and were more or less promised that the government would take care of them are now watching the same government screw up their healthcare AND not even have a solution for the money problem that it seems like they had a hand in creating.

No thank you.



posted on Feb, 8 2018 @ 08:22 AM
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a reply to: SlapMonkey

I don’t think there is anything wrong with making money honestly, I don’t have anything against the rich or even millionaires. I do think greed is a major problem in society though. When individuals and businesses rip off customers and suppliers so they can squeeze out more profit. Or when they do sub standard work to save on time and labour costs etc...

It goes on all over the place all the time, across all walks of life. All for acquiring some materialistic pursuit which has no real value whatsoever. Maybe it boosts the egos of these people, but achieving something by cheating, isn’t real achievement at all I’m my book. It’s a sad state of affairs if you ask me.



posted on Feb, 8 2018 @ 08:44 AM
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a reply to: testingtesting

Austerity is just some BS excuse to stick it to the poor. If the government can’t pay back the national debt, they shouldn’t have ran it up in the first place. Of course the the conservatives will blame it on the previous labour gov, but they would have bailed out the too big to fail banks too, on top of that the national debt has nearly doubled since the tori’s took power, so how is austerity working?

I think the plan if there is one, is to inflate the debt away pretty much, but all that means is that our money loses it value and the poor as always end up worse off.

The NHS worked well enough as a nationalised service for long enougn since it’s inception, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t today if it was managed properly with the appropriate funding. The same goes for so called private nursing homes that are dependent on government funding.



posted on Feb, 8 2018 @ 11:10 AM
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a reply to: surfer_soul

I'm with you...I can't stand greed or people who take advantage of others.

I wish that society would jettison its enamored view of material things being a reflection of success.



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