Care home staff face sack after Christmas if they don’t sign ‘fire and rehire’ contracts

Private care provider Yorkare Homes has hit staff at Haxby Hall with the ‘fire and rehire’ proposal just six months after they took over the contracts from City of York Council.

All staff who sign the new contracts will lose shift pay and unsocial hours pay.

Annual leave and sick pay will move to the statutory minimum. Staff were issued with letters informing them of their choice earlier this month.

The council’s executive voted to transfer Haxby Hall to Yorkare on a long lease in January 2020, despite warnings of TUPE being “a fig leaf” from union representatives.

Covid delayed the transfer of staff contracts until earlier this year.

A motion to full council on Thursday (December 16) from councillor Janet Looker calls the transfer to Yorkare from the council “a debacle”.

The motion calls for a review of the transfer decision “to learn lessons and to determine what support it can provide Yorkare to enable it to honour its legal obligations around staff transfers”.

Yorkare took over responsibility for around 25 staff, many with long service, but around half have already left after the company set out its plans.

Andrea Dudding, branch secretary of York Unison, said: “Fire and rehire is a pernicious legal practice that strips pay and contractual rights away from loyal members of staff.

“It’s not just the perniciousness of fire and rehire – it’s the actual cruelty of an incoming organisation doing this to long-serving, low-paid staff, who are mainly women.”

She added: “Care is one of the lowest paid and undervalued sectors – it’s a very skillful job.

“These women don’t do it for money, they do it because they really care about the people that they’re looking after. And then to do this on top of what they’ve had to go through during the pandemic, just makes it even worse – even more heartless.”

Ms Dudding accused council officers of “sitting on their hands” while the transfer was going through.

Senior councillors at the time said the move would secure the future of the care home so that residents and staff could remain at the site and the building can be renovated.

That has now been ditched and residents are being moved to Amelia House.

Planning permission to upgrade Haxby Hall so it can offer 65 en-suite bedrooms, 47 of which will be for residential care and 18 for people living with dementia, were approved by the council earlier this year.

A Yorkare Homes spokesperson said the home had lost more than half-a-million pounds since April and is forecast to continue to lose £50,000 per month “if no steps are taken.”

The spokesperson added: “These losses are mainly due to the decreasing number of residents living at the home, rising costs and the impacts of coronavirus.

“Unfortunately, due to the problems and the losses the home is facing, we are unable to continue with certain aspects of the team’s terms and conditions such as enhancements at weekends, full sick pay and additional annual leave.

“However, we have maintained the 32% contribution rate to the team’s pension scheme and our proposed pay rates are higher than nearly all of the care homes in the local area.”