One of the interesting things to come out of personalisation is that suddenly trade unions have pricked up their ears and want a piece of the action after failing to recognise personal assistants for the past few decades.
Now the revolution is upon us, they are realising, like social workers and care providers, that their power base is also under threat from this new thing called a service user.
My opinion of trade unions is somewhat low as all I see is national strikes deliberately causing pain and suffering to the public for political point-scoring and overpaid union fatcats shouting the odds at how men should have the divine right to work down a mine, be paid in gold, have 60 weeks' holiday a year and have their feet licked by the evil Victorian mill owners who apparently run the country!
My attempts to quell my feelings about trade unions have not been successful. After realising that a system in which personal assistants are paid by disabled micro-employers is likely to be the way forward, they appear to have decided to abandon rational debate. Instead, they are beginning to spread "caveman-style" propaganda that disabled people are naturally bad employers who will disobey their legal duties and abuse their staff, who are naturally female and oppressed by the male elite!
This is an interesting opening standpoint in what clearly is going to be a long and bloody battle between the rights of service users and indeed their staff with the demands of an external self-appointed "god", making judgements on highly complex issues about which they have little understanding.
I strongly believe that if my staff were forced to join a trade union, I would be better off dead. The unions may dictate what the staff could and could not do in an inflexible and irrational way where I would no longer have the right to do anything without their permission. I also feel the trade unions could wrongly empower my staff to bully and abuse me to the point where I am forced to hand out blank cheques for fear of ending up being taken to an employment tribunal every five minutes. I am not sure this is an over-reaction!
Until trade unions are able and willing to engaged rationally with service users on the future of personal assistants, battlelines are being drawn and I am preparing myself for the worst.
Simon Stevens is an independent disability trainer and consultant
This article contains such content as spread "caveman-style" propaganda? 'Abandon rational debate'
and I strongly believe that if my staff were forced to join a trade union, I would be better off dead
after using such the article concludes:
Until trade unions are able and willing to engaged rationally with service users.
Come on, if your article contains such stereotypical guff and emotional blackmail you CANNOT request rational argument.
Thankfully there are unions to protect my interests.
Simon's used quite emotive language, that will get trade-unionists 'backs up' straight away, but he makes a lot of important points.
Trade Unions actually do a lot of good work, and are responsible, or at least partly responsible, for most of the rights that people now take for granted - including free speech, rights to assemble, decent pay and conditions, equal rights at work, a National Health Service etc.
They do act to empower people who are traditionally disempowered, and care workers are right at the bottom of the pile in terms of power - the disempowerment, low pay and low status of care workers impacts directly on the people they support too.
People who rely on personal assistants and care workers have an interest in ensuring that these workers gain in status, becoming better paid, better trained, more likely to stay in post and more satisfied with their job - which are all objectives a Trade Union would rightly pursue for it's members.
People with disabilities are increasingly using direct payments and individual budgets to become 'micro-employers'. It would seem reasonable that part of the support they are offered would include support around choosing the right staff in the first place, negotiating contracts, and in how to manage their relationships with their staff, and that part of the package should include some kind of insurance or contingency payment to cover against things like employment tribunal claims.
Disabled people who employ their staff do however need the right to hire and fire as an essential protection against abuse, and also because of the nature of the relationship - having to be supported, often in intimate areas of life for 12 or 24 hours, by someone that you do not like is intolerable in the 21st Century.
The growing number of people who employ their own staff do so because for them, traditional services have proven too inflexible to be able to support them in a way that gives them control, satisfaction and quality in their lives.
Working with someone in a role that enables a person to see that their support is helping the person achieve better quality of life, is likely to be far more rewarding than working in a service where life is one boring unproductive day after another - workers will usually have higher job satisfaction working with people they are well-matched with, and where they have clear guidelines about their role.
Therefore there is certainly a role for a union for direct support workers, but that does not mean preventing people working in flexible person centred ways, that actually enhance the quality of life of both the person being supported, and the person providing the support.
Disabled people are, of course, not naturally bad employers. Nor are they naturally good. All workers need to have protection. Unions negotiate for reasonable pay and conditions. Simon's assumption that there cannot be constructive dialogue and negotiation is very depressing. I hope this view is not widespread.
It's disappointing to hear such ill-informed comments. Having been a former trade union convenor who has represented people whose needs came within the definitions of the dda (1995) I can only say there would be even less disabled people employed than currently if trade unions didn't intervene because of the poor understanding employers have towards people with disabilities, especially mental ill health. It is also disappointing that the rules and laws around employment that are meant to apply to all employers and all employees should be considered less relevant to people with disabilities. If we are considering real choice, and protection of vulnerable adults, Simon may wish to consider why the government requires care assistants employed by a local authority to be subject to CRB checks, but not personal assistants employed through direct payments. Unfortunately as there are good and bad employers, there will also be some disabled employers who fit into either category, and many in between.
I don't wish to sound harsh, but Simon's rant is so ill-formed, inaccurate and simply poorly written that displaying his blog almost brings a respected magaizine into disrepute.
Clearly it's legitimate to debate trade unionism and pretty much anything else, but with his bizarre remark about being "better off dead" is fairly grossly offensive. He doesn't refer to any particular circumstances, or current situations which had led to his concern.
If Simon is seriously interested in receiving assignments as a disability consultant, he should be much more careful about putting such ill-informed drivel about.
Bill Turner
Social Worker, Labour Councillor and active trade unionist.
Oh dear, free education, free health care, free speech, anti-discrimination, equality, such dirty life threatening concepts, all available to us because of the strength and sacrifice of trade unionists. Ask the Nelson Mandela what he valued most from Britain while incarcerated, and he will tell you of the contributions of our trade unions. Trouble with complacency is that it has a nasty habit of biting back hard when you least expect it Mr Stevens. Lets hope you never have to rely on solidarity when the going gets tough and the Welfare State is finally privatised and the true cost of care is demanded of us.
This is interesting, all I see is a personal attack on me. If I read this right, trade unions invented the wheel and everything else! And disabled people should be grateful to trade unions for their right to breath...
No one has challnge the worker's ability to abuse disabled people by wrongly demanding rights in the name of their union, why?
It is clearly to me for these comments, trade unions believe service users should be seen and not heard, I am interested out this pans out.
However, Simon’s list of resistance to look at new ways of working that have been led by what disabled people want, did get me wondering how much unions had achieved for disabled people, and people with learning disabilities in particular. I returned to Plymouth this weekend were I used to work for the health service and was chair of our local COHSE branch some 27 years ago. Whilst I was working for the rights of people with learning disabilities to live in the community and for the closure of some of the biggest and harshest hospitals around I found huge brick walls in the union against such moves, on the grounds of unnecessary change for staff. This has happened frequently ever since in any of the moves that have been progressive in terms of people who use services, but mean change for staff.
I am sure it is situations like this where interests seem to be diametrically opposed that can leave a bitter taste for disabled people. The needs of the people we serve have to be paramount, without that there is no point in doing the job anyway. If we can show that we have such needs in mind I'm sure Simon will come round!
I Totally agree with you Simon, the Unions really are the curse of society. It might be true that they did a few good things in the past, however their current role is as a middleman - and they should always be cut out!
I notice that 96% of all the days lost to strikes in the UK are in the public sector - thank good the unions lost their power in the private sector.
The problem as I see it is that unions use this warped idea that the lowest people on the ladder deserve they same as the people on the top of the ladder - but forget that those on the top were once also on the bottom - and worked their way up.
The only thing you need is a little work ethic, and the majority of union members I know don't do hard work - its not in their job description!
In relation to your position Simon, the worst aspect is the effect that unions could have on your service offering. Unions never care about the effect their tantrums on both the organisation and their customers. That is a management issue in their eyes and nothing to do with them!
Best of luck!
Why do you perceive a different opinion from you as a personal attack? Can it not be that your prejudices are personal not universal? Without trade unions we would still employ children to work in factories, women and minority ethnic workers with second class rights and dare I say employers seeing disability as a hindrance to employment. By all means advocate the purest form of the free market where you as the employer can chose what to pay and the working conditions of those you employ. But if this is your preference, then be prepared when other employers see disability and laws pertaining to discrimination as a burden on their right to employ who they want and pay them what they think they should be paid. Without Trade Unions there would have been no minimum wage but perhaps you think this also restricts your choice?
That's a really good point about free markets Nihat. You can't have it both ways.
Andrew Holman misses the point once more. Let’s hope you never need to go to hospital because those lazy time wasters called doctors, nurses and surgeons all belong to unions, what they could do with a bit of a work ethic eh? Your kids are taught by people in a union, your police are in a union and if there is no unionization in the private sector what is the CBI and the IoD then? Or maybe it’s ok for the privileged and the rich to safeguard their interest but not those "at the bottom".
An interesting, but contradictory column from an avowed anti trade unionist. Fortunately not all disabled employers have Simon's prejudices. Here in Scotland organisations representing Personal Assistant employers (SPAEN) and advocates for independent living (CGIL and others) have joined with UNISON to produce a joint position statement for both those who employ (URL above) and those who are employed. Plus we are carrying out a piece of joint research into the issues identified. it is due to report soon.
Unions are always prepared to engage with rational employers, but forgive us if we don't consider those who simply reiterate untrue and bigotted propaganda as 'rational'. Not able to 'quell your feelings' about us, Simon? Try harder.
Try harder? So once again I must accept workers right to abuse me to keep some unionist fat cats in a job? This was an article to provoke debate and what I seen is an irrational believe that trade unions are the savour of the human race. What about winter of discontent? The corruption of the 1970s? Arthur Scargill hatred of Maragret Theatre? When NUS sold out students on grants because they on a promise from labour? When my generation were denied an education because of NUT? and fact in coventry service users care were cut because you can't sack social workers without a strike? and now the end of the universial post system because unions hate words like modernisation, reality and accountability? If trade unions are the guardians of social justice, who need Torys?
Someone please explain what benefits of a trade union to me.
Who is arguing for workers to have the right to abuse? What you and Andrew appear not to want to debate is the right of employees to have basic protection from being exploited. My memory of corruption in the 1970's is of corporations and businesses so out of hand that a Tory Prime Minister was forced to condemn the "Unacceptable face of Capitalism" It does you no service to be selective in your memory of these events. Everything Arthur Scargill said about the political and ideological basis for the decimation of the mining industry has been shown to be true. Go to the North East villages and witness the drug addiction and benefits reliance to see where true ideological hatred leads. I was a binman in the so called winter of discontent, and my experience of being demonised, abused and once or twice beaten up on our picket lines radicalised me to become a social worker so I could try to combat prejudice and discrimination. I might have even done a little bit to fight disability discrimination too. What’s irrational is the blind adherence to a notion of personal rights as if these are divorced from the rights of others to a bit of dignity and security. I know where the fat cats are, I see them every day I pay a bus fare, a utility bill and worry about whether I am 3 months away from being homeless. None of them are bus drivers, engineers or building society cashiers. Try the boardrooms and equity funds for your evidence Simon, dare I say you may be a little surprised at what you find.
Who is arguing for workers to have the right to abuse? What you and Andrew appear not to want to debate is the right of employees to have basic protection from being exploited. My memory of corruption in the 1970's is of corporations and businesses so out of hand that a Tory Prime Minister was forced to condemn the "Unacceptable face of Capitalism" It does you no service to be selective in your memory of these events. Everything Arthur Scargill said about the political and ideological basis for the decimation of the mining industry has been shown to be true. Go to the North East villages and witness the drug addiction and benefits reliance to see where true ideological hatred leads. I was a binman in the so called winter of discontent, and my experience of being demonised, abused and once or twice beaten up on our picket lines radicalised me to become a social worker so I could try to combat prejudice and discrimination. I might have even done a little bit to fight disability discrimination too. What’s irrational is the blind adherence to a notion of personal rights as if these are divorced from the rights of others to a bit of dignity and security. I know where the fat cats are, I see them every day I pay a bus fare, a utility bill and worry about whether I am 3 months away from being homeless. None of them are bus drivers, engineers or building society cashiers. Try the boardrooms and equity funds for your evidence Simon, dare I say you may be a little surprised at what you find.
I find it difficult to believe the level of ignorance shown by Simon Stevens. I certainly wouldn't employ someone with such views as a disability consultant nor will I be very keen to read what he has to say in future.
The more vulnerable service users with complex needs, and their carers wish to employ personal assistants the more there will be concern over safeguarding, rights and consent. Not all employers will be able to direct their own care, organise their finances themselves. It will be these service users and their families that will expect PAs to be experienced and well trained. In order to retain such good calibre workers they will need to gain more status, become better paid, better trained. These will be the objectives of a Trade Union who would rightly pursue for it's members these aims which in turn would make better skilled and satisfied workers for their customers - a win-win situation.
There are many PAs presently employed on very minimal rates of hourly pay - which may suite friends, family & neighbours in order to give a few hours a day to someone they know and are fond of but as a career choice - I don't think so. I can understand why many skilled staff presently employed in day services are quite rightly worried about the changes ahead despite believing strongly in the philosophy and ethics of personalisation.
I have just read Simons article and the blogs it incurred and find the debate fascinating. Onbviously I do not know whether the contributors employ Personal Assistants themselves but I do and have done for 17 years.
I am fortunate enough to pay well above the minimum wage rate but certainly not enoough for the job my PAs do for me. I am very much in favour of raising the status of PAs and also the status of PA employers this is why I represent them on Skills for Care Board. However unless you have the lived experience of needing a great deal of support many people have very little understanding of how difficult it is living in a small environment (house) with a person who starts off working for you with enthusiasm then gets bored or his/her life changes which directly affects the working relationship. Trying to get rid of an emmployee these days is a nightmare in business but in this setup basically impossible. Firstly how do you ever prove the reason for dismissal when no-one is present to see/hear what goes on? Yes I know ALL about disciplinary procedures - try using them then having to ask an employee to perform some very personal task for you and stay with that person for the next 24 hrs! Please do not alert me to the fact that many PAs are abused in their workplace I am sure there are some but until the law changes to allow us to employ people on short term contracts many of us are stuck with people we would rather not be. I have been taken to tribunal once (given wrong info by my support orgs) I had no legal rep nor union rep nor money to fund a solicitor. The panel openly told me that I was the first Direct Payment employer they had met and two others said the first disabled person. They told me that surely the relationship between a PA and the employer must be a bit like marriage! As a person unemployed I cannot join a union but because I employ people I am not eligible for legal aid. When I can get support from unions I may feel differently.
The vehemence of Simon's original article has been matched by the vehemence of the responses, meaning that much has been said, and little has been heard in this discussion, on either side.
I hope people with disabilities, and their staff think as much about the many areas where their interests coincide, as Simon and those who have taken up the gauntlet he threw down have devoted to where their interests differ.
If this happens, then a coalition for positive change can be built. If it doesn't then inevitably more deadlock will exist for everyone.
There are many sad features about Simon's original piece, and the subsequent reactions to it.
The first is the sheer ignorance of social history shown by many in relation to the role of organised labour in achieving basic conditions for most workers in this country. Others have said this already so I won't dwell on it - suffice it to say that we would all be immeasurably worse off without the rights and opportunities they gained. It is interesting to see how many of our current social difficulties are caused by the fact that the social and cultural glues created by national and local organisations of workers have gradually been dismantled over the last 30 years.....to the point that government is now scratching it's collective head and asking what went wrong.
The second is Simon's use of language about trade unionists. It's unnecessary and childish - the penultimate paragraph reminded me of the sort of thing I used to write in my first year at grammar school when trying to put a gloss on a debate question. A lethal cocktail of apocalyptic doom-mongering and personal hysteria....but ultimately empty.
Third point. Andrew Holman is right to identify the barriers that were put in the way of service users many years ago. But it's fair to say that this reflected wider attitudes in society, and was not a particular feature of Trade Unions. We have all moved on...except perhaps the groups and interests who opposed Equal Pay / the Minimum Wage / DDA / Carers rights etc. Not Unions but employers - both private and public.
Fourth point. For me the saddest point of all is that Simon (and others who have commented) appears not to have a sense of the (inter-)connectedness of things. We can be workers / employers / trade unionists / disabled people and carers all at the same time. Labels only divide the indivisible, and weaken all of us. We got to where we are via mostly collective action. Simon's individualist approach would inevitably lead us back to the Dark Ages.
Fifth point. I thought this was the 'Expert's' blog? I must have missed the expertise in this article......
Martin Fletcher
Independent Social Work Trainer and Consultant
It frustrates me that many of the comments here are nothing to do with what I have written but merely hatred and childish attacks on me as a disabled person who should shut up and be grateful Unison allows him to exist! Since writing this issue, my fears have been realised as UNISON presents ill formed reseach in their war of hatred against PA users.
I would challenge anyone here to properly demonstrate I am a bad employer! UNISON uses the language of hatred as they abuse their own members to bankrupt the country to play politics with Labour. And guess where the money from come to pay for the pay rises after UNISON carried out their evil actions, services users ofcourse which local government sees as expendable. So disabled adults or older people who need care will slowly suffer and die due to care cuts so members can pay for thier wine with their evening meal while users are denied a bath or shower to pay for it!
Let PA users and others sort out good employment terms and the ret as the experts and keep the amateurs out of it!
UNISON has declared war on disabled people and trying to swipe away 30 years of independent living politics so they are continue dicatating the rules with no regard for social justice.. so don't have a go when service users defend themselves.
I think I have some feelings of agreement for the original post although the language is obviously going to offend.
I myself would like to organise a moderate Trade Union at work (A Charity dealing with Learning Disabilities) to represent myself and the staff, as I think we do get sometimes badly treated.
I do not like the Labour Party for a variety of reasons and usually vote Green or Liberal Democrat.
I do not want to belong to a Trade Union that has tied itself to one political party, neither am I ever prepared to go on strike. If it got that bad I would just leave.
Can anyone suggest a 'caring' Trade Union that would suit my criterea.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Mr. Stevens has obviously been reading far too many Daily Mail editorials.
This ignorant and oafish rant from a self-proclaimed "expert" can only inflame the fears of social care workers who feel they are about to be thrown into in a casualised wilderness.
I wouldn't go so far as to say I would rather be dead than be employed by Mr Stevens, but I would certainly be looking for every other exit. The status and quality of social care is sure to plummet.
It is interesting that elsewhere in Community Care, Simon has made an argument for a professional non-emotive relationships between service users and PAs. As such, why shouldn't PAs have the protection offered by a union? The right to be treated fairly and legally should be afforded to people in all fields of work.
Aside from this, the obviously inflammatory nature of the writing does nothing to encourage sensible debate, so it is not surprising to see the comments that have been posted.
Many public sector workers are scraping by on pay that languishes behind the rate of inflation and, in fact, Gordon Brown prefers to use the demonisation of civil servants to score political points from the general public (who hold similar views to Simon).
The reality is that by demotivating the people who provide much needed public services, he is jeopardising those services far more than staff who seek a better deal by holding a 1 day strike....
I cannot believe that someone with such an 'expert' knowledge of inequality and disability could have such little respect for the people who work for him. He would be 'better off dead' than have people working for him who have their rights properly represented. He seems to view social care workers as untrustworthy back-stabbing gold-diggers who are ready to turn on him at any opportunity. There is an incredible lack of empathy and understanding of anyone elses experience out-side the writers own in this article, and I'm surprised he gall to be so ignorant in a public forum. I feel personally offended, and am thankful I am not employed by Simon Stevens.