With low-paid public service workers employed by Compass in the NHS and Interserve at the Foreign Office taking strike action, outsourcing is back in the headlines today.
Both cases point to the unfairness faced by outsourced workers who are subjected to lower pay and worse conditions than the directly employed staff they work alongside. As Unison put it
The striking Compass staff have one simple demand – NHS pay rates and NHS working conditions
And while cost savings may have been made on the face value of the contract as a result, these costs are then managed by the contractor in ways that off-loads risk to others – through the suppression of wages, terms and conditions of the outsourced workforce, the use of insecure forms of employment in supply chains and the almost punitive treatment of sub-contractors.
Not only is this unfair to those workers, it is a false economy, leading to poor productivity, high levels of staff turnover and absence, less money for workers to spend in their local economies and more demand on in-work benefits.
This unsustainable and highly exploitative model of public service delivery must end.
Here’s five ways an incoming government could change things, for the benefit of working class families
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