St Mungo’s Broadway strikers protest outside Mare Street hostel
Unite members outside the hostel on Mare Street. Photograph: Bryan Kennedy
Workers from charity St Mungo’s Broadway protested outside a Mare Street hostel today over pay and changes to contracts.
This is the first of seven days of strike action, which is taking place nationwide.
Over 600 members of staff from the charity St Mungo’s Broadway are taking part because of changes which increase a £5,000 pay difference for new workers.
The strikers are unhappy with the new executive team in charge of the charity, who introduced the changes without consulting workers.
Howard Sinclair, Chief Executive of St Mungo’s Broadway, has been criticised for calling his announcement of the changes a “retrospective consultation”.
Nicky Marcus, a Unite representative said: “They have slashed the pay of new starters by £5,000-a-year for a project worker, and for existing staff being restructured; taken pay out of collective bargaining; imposed new, draconian policies and procedures; and breached the recognition agreement with Unite repeatedly.
“Staff are furious. They are simply not prepared to stand by and watch the heart and soul being ripped out of their organisation.”
Bryan Kennedy, a union representative in Hackney, was part of the picket line on Mare Street. He said: “Inside the hostel they actually have a couple of spare rooms that they give to the council for emergency accommodation over the weekend when they can’t place someone and they do that for free.”
“These hostels are essential for Hackney.”
Mr Kennedy explained that the charity is able to win large contracts over other providers because of the number of additional services they provide as well as the quality of staff, and he questioned the need for cost-cutting.
Mr Kennedy also stressed how the changes to new contracts would create a two-tier system that could threaten existing staff. He said: “What St Mungo’s has that other providers do not have is they do believe in their ethos, they do not have a high staff turnover or anything like other employers and they actually see what the risk is if you have somebody come in and try to create a two tiered workforce because they know it is only a progression until those people get replaced.”
Mr Sinclair said: “I am obviously disappointed that industrial action is going ahead, given that we are not cutting jobs or the pay or terms and conditions of existing staff. I am willing, as I always have been, to meet with Union representatives at any time to discuss alternative suggestions to managing the challenges we face.
“Our priority remains providing services of the highest quality for the increasing numbers of clients we are seeing, within the ever tighter economic environment. We are working very hard to ensure that all our services for homeless people continue to run as normal for the duration of the strike.”
St Mungo’s Broadway runs hostels for homeless people and helps to prevent homelessness. In Hackney, they operate two hostels, two support services and over a dozen housing projects.
A picket line will be held outside the Mare Street hostel on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning and a demonstration will be held outside Hackney Town Hall at 12pm on Wednesday.
For more information about the reasons for the strike, click here.
What is particular hard to understand, is that while pay for new employees is being cut, the new chief executive (Howard Sinclair) has received a pay rise of £30,000 a year! Talk about double standards.
It is a disgrace that Howard Sinclair and his executive team have had huge pay rises and only 8 months in to the merger of these 2 organisations have project workers employed in Hackney on 20.5 k! A huge reduction in pay and resulting in a two tier workforce. These workers work a 7 day rota starting At 8am and covering up to 10:30 pm at night. These workers will join the rest of the over 3 million people in this country who go to work but are in poverty, having to claim welfare benefits to make ends meet.
20500?
thats 1400 a month take home
a room in a shared house in hackney is between 130 – 150 per week almost half ones pay to work a 7 day a week late/early rota with some of London’s most damaged and challenging people dealing with complex legal and emotional issues as well as sadly at times threatening behaviour and violence, overdose, self harm and suicide attempts
of course what happens is employers cut pay and so that workers can survive they have to claim working tax credit and housing benefits- so the saving to the public purse is virtually nil whilst the impact on motivation and quality of care and support is massive
It’s breathtaking that Mr Sinclair can be “…disappointed that industrial action is going ahead, given that we are not cutting jobs or the pay or terms and conditions of existing staff.”, and yet fail to acknowledge how “disappointing” it is for those existing staff that they are not consulted on such a decision, which has massive implications on the work they do. That the service they work so hard to provide is at risk as a result of cuts to new frontline staff – and I imagine it is hard enough to recruit the right staff anyway!
Mr Sinclair’s Twitter account bio reads “CEO of St Mungo’s Broadway, the charity for homeless people. 30 years in health, housing and social care. Still learning. All views my own.”
He’s clearly proud of his senior position in an organisation that does such good work. Isn’t it “disappointing” then, that his pride in the organisation doesn’t help him to understand how damaging these actions are?
“Still learning” – yeah, you seem to have a fair bit to go Howard…
Its very sad to see these neo-liberal changes being imposed on such an ethical and socially important organisation as St Mungo’s, and undermine all the good work of its dedicated and quality staff.
St Mungo’s does so much good work in Hackney and London. How did this new CEO, with his view that it is ok to reduce terms and conditions of the workforce but award himself a huge payrise, get his hands on the organisation? Sounds like a very bad merger – the smaller, less successful organisation takes over the larger and more successful one – and then starts to destroy it.
Solidarity to the St Mungo’s strikers
How the CEO of a previously failing organisation can take over after the merger and embark on a course of action which will lead to irrefutable damage to St Mungos is beyond me.
Why did he choose not to consult? Introducing such a low starting salary will lead to massive inequality. Workers doing the same job as the person sat next to them but doing it for thousands of pounds less a year.
Behind you all the way- pay cuts for the front line workers and pay rises for the CEO – and Howard Sinclair wants to “learn from SERCO”!? Says it all, charity commission should look into this. See you at Hackney Town Hall Wednesday at 1200
It’s a masterclass in bad leadership. If you take over somewhere and increase your salary and that if your colleagues who come with you then set about reducing everybody else’s people will be upset. It’s clearly untenable for him and the others to carry on if a charity walks out for 7 days you are finished. I suspect they are out if their depth and trying to control rather than lead. St Mungos was always regarded as pioneers, innovators and specialists Broadway were always rarely thought of so I suspect the answer lies there. What are th board doing? They sanctioned this merger? They over see this? Was this the vision they had when merging? all the best bits of an outstanding organisation replaced by the worst of a failing one? Time to save the drowning executive and let them go.
To be fair, a CEO is (as well as many other things) a mouth piece for the Board and their wishes. Mr Sinclair may or may not agree with the proposals, but he will be expected by the Board to stay resolute and handle the flack.
Each of the Board should also be called out on these decisions – let them support their CEO is they believe in them and him so fervently but they won’t because they know the argument against their actions is a convincing one.
It shows the regard that this executive (and board) have for their service users, their frontline workers, the public that makes charitable donations. Cutting pay of frontline staff to fund for their own and back office pay rises. How deceitful and immoral is that?
Hackney labour councillors should question why they are contracting employees with such questionable approaches to labour relations
Correction: Hackney labour councillors should question why they are contracting employers with such questionable approaches to labour relations
The Board and the executive might also want to ask themselves why in the past since months since the “merger” the majority of St Mungo’s Executive Directors, Regional Directors and Area Managers have left the organisation, these are people who built the organisation into one of the most effective, innovative and successful homeless charities in the UK. and more will no doubt follow them. The Managers of most of the charities hostels are also out on strike. this is about far more than pay and conditions. The St Mungo’s Broadway board and Commissioners should be very worried as the organisation will suffer massively at the loss of these human resources as well as the loss of goodwill amongst the frontline workforce.
HSBC – Howard Sinclair, Bloody Catastrophe!
Amazing solidarity at hackney Town Hall picket today. Hundreds of people turned out to support the St Mungo’s Broadway strikers including local teachers and partners from other Hackney services. It was heartening to see the support of Councillor Jonathan McShane who took the time to speak to Unite representatives. Hackney Council you must know Howard Sinclair ( and Paul Doe) have to go!