PLANS for redundancies at Southern Cross care homes have been withdrawn, the GMB union has revealed.
The union said yesterday that a written agreement was being prepared to facilitate the sale of each of the company’s 752 homes across the UK, almost 100 of which are in Scotland, to make sure that the transition was “smooth and orderly”.
As a result the redundancies and changes to staff’s pay and conditions had been abandoned.
The union said the first 250 homes could complete a transfer to new owners by the end of September with the rest following by the end of October, when Southern Cross is wound down.
National officer Justin Bowden said: “The current plan that only two parties, the landlords and the outgoing management as signatories to the proposed business purchase agreement, will have a say in what should happen next at each home is completely unacceptable.
“Residents and their families and local councils and the NHS who pay the bills, the workforce who manage and run the homes and their union GMB, Governments from across the UK and the Care Quality Commission have to be part of the decision-making process.”
A Scottish Government spokeswoman assured residents of Southern Cross’s 98 Scotland homes, saying “contingency arrangements are in place to make sure that continuity of care for Southern Cross residents continues to be the top priority as the operation of homes changes hands”.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article