Northside Home Care Workers Strike against Low-Pay and Outsourcing

Tomás Sheehan

On the 16th January, healthcare assistants working for Northside Home Care Services (NHCS) started an indefinite strike against their employer. The strike followed the refusal of NHCS to engage with their union, the Independent Workers’ Union (IWU), following their submission of a pay claim. The workers, who have not had a pay rise in many years, were excluded from the recent agreement in the Health, Social Care and Homeless sector between the Government and ICTU unions, which saw a 9.25% increase for Section 39 workers. Section 39 refers to private companies which are paid by the HSE to carry out services, in line with Section 39 of the Health Act 2004.

The workers in NHCS, many of whom are on rates of pay close to the minimum wage, were assured that they would fall under this agreement by both government representatives and union officials in SIPTU. However, when the agreement was passed, it became clear that a last minute reclassification had occurred, and that these workers were no longer considered “section 39”. Despite having been balloted on the agreement along with all other union workers in the Health, Social Care and Homeless sector, they were in fact voting on an agreement that would ultimately leave them hanging high and dry.

The exclusion of the healthcare assistants in NHCS from this pay agreement reflects the general onslaught by the capitalist class against the conditions of Irish workers, with the implicit complicity of the leadership of SIPTU and other ICTU unions. Having been shafted by the government not only with this exclusion, but also in their employment by a private company as opposed to directly by the HSE, the workers have taken a significant step in exposing the anti-worker orientation of the government by taking strike action. 

The services provided by the workers in NHCS, namely home care for elderly or disabled people, had previously been carried out through the HSE, by workers on public sector contracts. Now, however, like in so many other sectors, the work has been outsourced. Justified by the ruling class on the basis of efficiency and flexibility, outsourcing primarily serves the purpose of opening new avenues of capital reinvestment, while simultaneously eliminating many of the concessions won by the working class, which determine the terms and conditions of jobs in the public sector. Outsourcing shifts the balance of power between capital and labour firmly on to the side of capital, with outsourced workers mostly on low wages, longer hours, and precarious contracts.

Outsourcing also represents an offensive against the trade union movement itself, as the historically organised public sector is torn apart and replaced by firms which will do everything at their disposal to prevent the unionisation of their workers. NHCS itself, despite absolving themselves of responsibility for the dispute, threatened the striking workers with penalisation if they didn’t return to work, claiming there may be a “significant and permanent reduction in service hours” if the strike were to continue.

This has ultimately been facilitated by the social-democratic leadership of the ICTU, who have failed to mount any opposition to the outsourcing agenda of successive governments, and who have in this case, explicitly thrown a section of workers under the bus. It forms part of a wider picture, where the forces of social democracy have been the willing architects of the decline of the Irish trade union movement, from the enthusiastic adoption of social partnership, to the involvement of the Labour Party in an anti-people coalition with Fine Gael. The working class has been left dejected and disillusioned by those who have claimed to represent their interests, yet so consistently act against them.

However, the workers at NHSC have demonstrated immense bravery with their industrial action. They are not just striking against their employer, but against the policies of the government which attack the working class. These workers, through their union, the IWU, provide an example of the power of militant, class-orientated trade unionism, where the withdrawal of labour is used openly in defence of their interests. The initial strike action ran from the 16th to the 26th January, with pickets outside the offices of NHSC and Leinster House. While the industrial action has been temporarily suspended to allow for the consideration of next steps, the dispute is not over.