Sefton social care workers face pay cuts of up to 26%

WORKERS at a Merseyside social care provider were today told: “Take a 26% pay cut – or lose your job.”

About 500 staff at Sefton New Directions, which provides services for vulnerable adults and disabled people on behalf of Sefton council, face salary reductions amid wholesale changes to employment terms.

A consultancy report ordered by town hall chiefs also called for 53 redundancies and cuts to holiday and sick pay as part of an action plan to ensure viability of the cash-strapped company.

It must cut its budget by a quarter after the council sliced £3m from an annual contract worth £12m as part of its own £68m savings.

New Directions, which was set up by the council in 2007, said changes “inevitably need to be brought” after the authority said it would no longer commission services above market rates.

But staff blasted the level of cuts, with around 10% facing salary losses of just over a quarter.

One New Directions day care officer will lose 26% of his salary and eight days annual leave if the consultants’ recommendations are implemented.

Speaking anonymously, he said workers were “facing financial catastrophe”.

He said: “Most workers are the main breadwinner in their families.

“Losing a quarter of their annual salary will mean the mortgage and bills will not get paid. I have no doubts some of us will lose our homes.

“I am under no illusions we need to be more competitive in the private sector but this is a real carve-up.

“There must be other measures to make us more efficient than swinging the axe.”

Industry expert Fresh Care Consulting was paid £70,000 by the council to write the 70-page report, Unison union chiefs claimed.

Unison secretary Glen Williams said members were poised for industrial action.

Mr Williams said: “Low-paid workers, about 92% of whom are women, are being threatened with pay cuts or job loss.”

No one at New Directions was available for comment.