The government’s plans to cut the cost of outsourcing public services to the private and voluntary sectors has met with resistance from unions who have said the idea is a thinly disguised attempt to reduce the living standards of low-paid workers.
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said the government is looking to remove guarantees that people who are newly recruited by outsourcing firms receive “no less favourable” remuneration as public servants who transfer to the private sector (though this will have no effect on the current Transfer of Undertakings [Protection of Employment] Regulations or TUPE).
Claiming that he wants to make it easier for small-to-medium-sized firms to go after public sector outsourcing contracts, Maude said the current system “distorts the market when we are trying to encourage new entrants into the outsourced market”.
However, a Unison statement said: “Having people doing the same job on different rates of pay is not a recipe for a motivated and happy workforce.”
And the TUC said: “We would be opposed [to these proposals]. This is no more than an attempt to drive down the living standards for low-paid workers.”
Source:http://www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=13661
