Jill's Response to Dr Helen Lockett

This is Jill Goble's considered response to Dr Helen Lockett, the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health policy advisor who Project Managed the so called ' Modernisation ' of the Surrey & Borders Partnership NHS Trust's Work Services.

Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2006
To: helen.lockett@ukonline.co.uk

Subject: RE: Fwd: Fw: Injustice in Surrey

Dear Helen Lockett


Thank you for your response to my email of 27th August which I received on August 31st.

I am disappointed that you defend the decision to cut the £3 a day wages to all the 179 Priority Enterprises disabled workers. You say that these workers are really only volunteers who are not entitled to be treated as employees by Surrey and Borders NHS Partnership Trust (SABPT) and therefore not entitled to the minimum wage for their hard labour. You also say that cutting the £3 a day payments is somehow complying more effectively with the spirit and the letter of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) and the Minimum Wage Act (MWA).

In the first place I cannot imagine a situation where you would have 179 or any non disabled people volunteering to do manual labour for the Trust. Or do you regularly have non disabled gardeners and office workers turn up to say they will work for the Trust for £3 a day or for free? No it is only the disabled workers who have been expected to work hard for £3 a day and now for free. It is my understanding that the Disability Discrimination Act in spirit as well as in letter is to prevent disabled people from being treated differently from non-disabled people. In this case unless you can show us 179 or any non disabled people who are also working in manual labour positions as volunteers who are paid nothing by the Trust then disability discrimination is definitely occurring.

Secondly it is only the disabled workers at the Priority Enterprises who have had their £3 a day payments cut. The non disabled workers have carried on with exactly the same salaries and conditions of work. Again it is discrimination to treat the disabled differently from the non disabled but again at the Priority Enterprises all the disabled workers have been treated differently by having their £3 a day payments cut to nothing. This also is not complying with the spirit or the letter of the DDA. It seems to me that because these workers are disabled they have been treated differently and have been open to exploitation and discrimination that has been increased rather than decreased by your ‘modernisation’.

As far as complying with the Minimum Wage Act is concerned I have here a document you yourself edited called ‘Paying a Real Wage to People in Work Projects’ which states:

‘If your work project decided to pay an attendance allowance or an honorarium to workers, rather than the minimum wage rate, you could be taking a risk of a future investigation by the Inland Revenue Minimum Wage Compliance Team’ Our campaign has in fact asked the Minimum Wage team to investigate this case and I have asked Peter Kinsey at SABPT to supply details of that investigation to us as part of my Freedom of Information Act questions. I do not believe that by suddenly stopping the £3 a day payments you have gained immunity from complying with the minimum wage rules and I do not understand why you have avoided meeting the minimum wage requirements by not giving the disabled workers proper employment contracts? In other parts of the above document above you recommend the good practice of a very similar work scheme to those at the Priority Enterprises called Tuck by Truck. In case you have forgotten your own recommendations I would like to remind you of this Tuck by Truck story as quoted in your own guide ‘Paying a Real Wage to People in Work Projects’


‘In 2002 MCCH decided to address any ambiguity surrounding the allowance it gave to people with a learning difficulty who attended their services. Since they made this decision they have not looked back and their services have flourished.

At that time, it was not clear whether the existing work-scheme could have been found to be in breach of the Minimum Wage legislation as the guidance for work schemes had not (and still has not as yet) been tested in Court…

Tuck by Truck is one of MCCH’s employment and vocational services. It is contracted by the Local Authority to provide opportunities for people with a learning difficulty to build confidence, self-esteem and skills in a supportive work-focused environment. It also runs a business that provides and maintains snack trays to customer’s offices. Service users are involved in all aspects of providing this service including pricing the goods, preparing trays, checking stock, delivering the trays to customers and cashing up.

The most significant change was to separate the tasks service users carried out into paid and volunteer jobs…This was in compliance with advice MCCH received from the National Minimum Wage office, that ‘voluntary work can be offered alongside paid work providing the work is different and separate and one is not contingent on the other.’

Service users who carry out the paid work are now employed by MCCH as ‘Delivery Assistants’ and have a regular contract of employment, are paid minimum wage and take on the roles and responsibilities expected of any employee in the company.

The benefits of change

The service modernisation was fully completed by the autumn of 2003; since then they have been amazed by the changes that have taken place within the services.

The impact of giving people a permanent contract of employment with real wages has actually led to more and more service users requesting support to gain their own job external to Tuck by Truck. Several individuals have gained full-time employment from local employers and this has sparked another wave of enthusiasm and requests for open employment from others. The delivery rounds have also provided opportunities, customers have been approached, in response to individual service user requests and several people are now in work placements with Tuck by Truck customers.

Other benefits to service users and to MCCH include:

Service Users:

Status as employees; Increase in pay; A clear division between volunteering and employment, where employment is paid at the minimum wage; Payment which minimises impact on benefits with the option to increase hours based on individual choice; A range of individual stepping stones to employment; A real workplace culture which encourages people to look beyond the service into open employment or education.

MCCH

The organisation has moved from a position of risk to one of compliance with the benefit system, employment legislation and best practice; Company policies and procedures are being reviewed to enable the more effective recruitment of people with a disability; The recruitment of new employees has diversified the company workforce; The focus is now on the person rather than just the business; The service has increased its capacity to support individuals into open employment. ‘

The example above highlights the benefits of employing disabled people so why have you neglected to employ any in the Priority Enterprises modernisation? The same document also gives all the details for employing people according to minimum wage rules with the least disruption to benefits. All the 179 disabled workers at the Priority Enterprises could have been employed for even three hours a week each and the cost of this would be little more than the £3 a day payments that were being made before you cut these to nothing. With some flexibility arrangements could also have been made for the disabled workers to spend their hours in employment in mainstream departments of the NHS such as the office, catering and cleaning departments outside of Priority Enterprises so that experience of real jobs in real work environments could be gained.

Although you cite a lot of documents and ‘internationally recognised evidence-based practice’ to back up your ‘modernisation’ I have read enough on this topic recently to know that there is no real consensus about best practice in this area. Even the government itself reports:

Government report accuses charities and public sector of exploiting disabled workers by paying less than minimum wage
03 August 2006 08:05


Public sector and charities flout minimum wage rules when employing people with learning disabilities.

Many employers are paying workers with learning disabilities less than the minimum wage, according to a report.

A "worrying" number of employers – especially local authorities and those in the voluntary sector – are defying National Minimum Wage (NMW) rules by under-paying staff with learning disabilities.

The report, by the Department of Health and the Department for Work and Pensions, warned that organisations faced the threat of costly employment tribunals if they failed to apply the NMW.

"The working group is concerned about the worrying number of learning disability employment providers that appear to be in breach of the National Minimum Wage," the report said.

The government working group on learning difficulties and employment said local authorities needed to work more closely with JobCentre Plus to help more people with learning difficulties find work. By Georgina Fuller

And in another report by the government called 'You can work it out. Best practice in employment for people with a learning difficulty' we see: ‘As services seek to help people find more meaningful activities than sitting around in day centres, employment is acknowledged as playing a crucial role in people’s lives. But success in getting people in to paid work remains woefully inadequate. Instead , services have created a world based on work for which few people get paid. There is a growing variety of training, social enterprises, work-related projects, work experience and volunteering schemes. There are people who to all intents and purposes are working, but who receive little or no payment.

This is illegal unless there is genuinely no obligation to attend and no obligation to do anything.

There are people who are described as volunteering- this conveniently gets around the issue of employment contracts and payments. These situations are exploitative.’

So Ms Lockett you can see from this guide that even the government admits your ‘volunteers’ at the Priority Enterprises are being exploited. The guide can be found at:
www.valuingpeople.gov.uk/EmploymentGuides.htm

We would like you and the managers at SABT to review your decision not to employ the workers at the Priority Enterprises and make them work as unpaid slave labour. I am also sending this to Bob Groves at your employers Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health and to your funders at the Gatsby Foundation who say on their website that they wish to help people,especially the disadvantaged, get better lives. The poor disabled disadvantaged workers who have had their £3 a day pay cut to nothing by your 'modernisation' certainly have not had their lives made better at all. In fact they are the only ones in this excercise who are worse of because of your modernisation and that IS discrimination..

Please let us know what you intend to do on this matter and all replies or lack of replies will be published on our campaign blog at http://justice4sabtworkers.blogspot.com/

Yours Sincerely

Jill Goble


Cc: Dr Bob Groves bob.grove@scmh.org.uk Director of the Employment Support Programme DCMH

The Gatsby Foundation contact@gatsby.org.uk