Social workers escalate dispute with nine-week walkout

Mental health social workers have escalated their dispute with their local authority by announcing they will take nine consecutive weeks of strike action.

The practitioners are currently in the first week of a three-week strike (13 May-1 June) in their dispute with Barnet Council over staffing issues in their teams, which they say need to be addressed through a 10% market supplement on their pay.

They were then due to strike again for four weeks, from 17 June to 12 July.

But their union, UNISON, today gave the council notification that the practitioners would walk out over the intervening weeks (3-14 June) as well, meaning they will be striking for nine weeks in a row.

This is in addition to 37 previous days of strike action since September 2023 that have left the dispute unresolved.

Barnet UNISON is representing about 20 social workers across the council’s north and south mental health teams and its approved mental health professional (AMHP) in the dispute. It said that, including planned departures, 25 mental health social workers will have left the service over 22 months.

Though staff have been replaced on the teams, the union said there had been an overall reduction in mental health practice experience.

The union’s call for a 10% recruitment and retention payment for the mental health practitioners is a reduction from its original 20% claim.

The council has, in the meantime, improved its original position from offering about 200 adult social care practitioners annual payments of £1,000 over two years – equivalent to an average of 2.5% of salary, according to UNISON – to 5% a year for this wider group.

However, the union has countered that it is negotiating on behalf of the mental health social workers specifically and there is not a wider recruitment and retention problem in adult social care – a position the authority rejects.

Explaining the decision to extend the strike, the union said: “Barnet Council is not taking the dispute seriously and more worryingly they are underestimating the risks of the dispute continuing in respect of the wellbeing of service users.”

It added: “The clock is ticking. Someone in Barnet Council needs to act now and meet UNISON halfway and resolve this dispute or risk further damage to the service and its reputation.”

In a comment provided before the latest development, a council spokesperson said: “The three striking teams have higher levels of permanent staffing than other social work teams.”

“In addition, our benchmarking continues to show that we pay well compared to other outer London boroughs,” they added. “We believe this is a fair offer. We also remain open to discussing other support, such as additional social work posts. We are more than willing to continue to sit at the negotiating table.”