Carillion

Polly also wrote about how dreadful it was working as a hospital porter when they were employed by the NHS though didn't she? She was pretty brutal about the medical staff too and the way they treated the porters.

All the Carillion workers are being offered jobs by the councils or other companies which are taking over their work.
Really, durhamjen, I'm sure the people I work with frantically trying to get their CVs out to ensure they can pay their bills will be pleased to hear this. Perhaps you could post a link to the proof of these jobs offers so I can set their minds at rest on Monday.
Some will be TUPEd across to new employers, but I've been TUPEd a couple of times and I know you only have a guarantee of employment for a few months, then the new company can make you redundant. It suited me when it happened to me, but it is not secure employment by any means. And most of us in my building have no clear idea of what's happening at all yet, so as I say, if you know more, we would be pleased to hear it.

"Carillion had taken over this large London teaching hospital’s portering, cleaning and other services. Its cuts meant there were too few porters to fetch and wheel soaring numbers of patients, leaving wards and operating theatres impatient at delays. Before outsourcing, there had been 16 porters, but they were cut to 11. This is how outsourcing works – cutting staff and holding down pay. Agency workers were paid less than the old staff Carillion had taken over.

By chance, I was working back on the same hospital site where I had worked as a ward orderly 30 years before on the same grade. Before, I had belonged to the NHS; now, at one remove, I belonged to Carillion. When I took my payslips to the Institute for Fiscal Studies to compare the value of my wages with 30 years earlier, they found Carillion was paying me, in real terms, nearly a third less. That was concrete proof of how wages at the bottom had been held down since the 1980s while wages at the top skyrocketed, causing an explosion in inequality."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/18/outsourced-carillion-hospital-state-treasury-work

Polly Toynbee worked for Carillion to research for a book.
She says exactly what I said about staffing.

I have no problem saying that I honestly don't know anything about the quality of the work done by Carillion or it's reputation for quality.

Jalima I think everyone hopes things will carry on as before and I'm sure it does happen. It can't all be doom and gloom. The contractor usually appoints a manager and the best managers realise keeping the transferred staff happy is the best way to make the contract successful. And it makes sense for them to make the most of the expertise, so that they can still feel valued.

I shared an office with one of the managers and he came in cold to the job, just out of the army. There were three of us in the office and he picked our brains all the time and really wanted to do a good job. We had some good laughs and he could sound off about his bosses to us because he was quite isolated really. He was very good, but even though he had been in the army, he found it hard to introduce the changes that would save the contractor money. He knew everyone was doing their best and he felt bad for them. Actually thinking about it, he struggled partly because he had a lot of women on his team and he wasn't used to that. Strong women too who would fight their corner because they wanted to do a good job. Sometimes he just wanted to tell them they had their orders and to get on with the bl@@dy job! . He was a good bloke.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/19/carillion-collapse-borrowing-public-investment

On the other hand, I'd rather agree with Jonathan Freedland.

However, lemon has spoken, and we needn't worry our silly little heads about Carillion any more.
We should leave it up to the experts.
Hang on, isn't that what we did?

Wilma, that's exactly what the report on Norwich prison said about work done - or not being done- by Carillion.

Most service companies when taken over by big companies lose staff straight away, because the staff is usually the greatest cost. Of course standards slip, with more work being done by fewer people.

s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/imb-prod-storage-1ocod6bqky0vo/uploads/2016/06/Norwich-2015-16.pdf

"If you search this report for Carillion, there is not one good thing said about the company."

That's what I said, lemon.
Stop making things up and putting your own interpretation on it.
It's obvious that you haven't done the first part of the sentence. So why comment on the second part.
Most people know that you have to consider context.
I'll give you some help.
1) Click on the link.
2) Press control and f on your computer.
3) Type Carillion in the box that appears.
4) Magic! You can read all the comments about Carillion and see what I said is true.

It happens to be a report from the prison inspectors, and I don't think they are anti-Carillion.

You describe it very well, Wilma; thank you

The other thing I think, Wilma is that workers who transfer to a private company may not feel so much part of 'the team' any longer.

Certainly, that is what the cleaners at my place of work said. They had always felt part of the same big team, (everyone was on first-name terms) but then they were transferred over from the public sector to what was then a very small private firm.
However, they still worked to the same standards and with the same cheerfulness as before.

Jalima you made the same point as me, but I took ages to type mine.

I don't think M0nica's comments about the lack of investment under Thatcher's government are unreasonable, in fact I agree with a lot of what she's said.

And as for the quality of the service from private providers, remember that in many cases the staff transferred with the work under TUPE.

There can be a problem with quality though. In my experience when a contractor took over, two things were common. The first thing is that often tasks previously undertaken by the staff who transferred to the contractor were not covered by the contract. So you'd come across a task something that used to be done by so and so who now works for the contractor, but then it turns out that the contract does not cover the task in question. So either someone else gets given additional work or the task just no longer gets done - and standards slip.

The second thing is the work by the contractor is done to a lower standard. This might be after staff have raised problems numerous times. It might be a case of the job gets done, but in a slap dash or haphazard way, perhaps because nobody from the contractor gets the chance to build up the expertise. The member of staff might put the problem right a couple of times and then think that it's not their job and they don't have the time to keep sorting it out. Either way, eventually the expectations of how the job should be done get lower - and standards slip.

That's how quality drops. A lot of staff transferred under TUPE left within two years because they were not able to do the job properly and their conditions of service (including the salary and pension arrangements) were altered by the contractor as soon as possible (usually after 12 months). Quality also drops because of the loss of this expertise.

MaizieD, yes I realised, I was just responding to whitewave's post about firms not having any connection to the services they tender for, which point I can understand - but experts should then be employed or transferred over to the firm from the public sector.

I would imagine some staff would transfer over eg school catering staff, although I don't really know, and would continue to take pride in their work.

And on many of the contracts there is a huge amount of expertise, pride and dedication amongst the staff who now feel completely let down.

In short, what a waste of time this thread is

And you've wasted even more time by making a stupid comment on it.

Sorry, Jalima, it was me really, not ww who mentioned poor quality staff.

I was really thinking about staff 'at the coalface' who are really poorly paid. So it's either a job you take because there is absolutely no other choice,in which case you probably don't have a great deal of interest in doing it 'well', and leave as soon as possible, or, one you take because you love it and don't mind poor wages (who I probably am maligning...)

durhamjen says ‘not one good thing about the company’
(carillion)
Having read the last page of posts and laughing at a lot of them, have come to the conclusion that nobody sensible need bother commenting more.
All that a lot of posters here want is whole scale condemnation of Carillion from the managers, workers,down to the machinery ( the office cat?)
And when they have finished blaming everybody but themselves and Jeremy Corbyn, indulge in cosy little chats about local weather conditions!
In short, what a waste of time this thread is.

s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/imb-prod-storage-1ocod6bqky0vo/uploads/2016/06/Norwich-2015-16.pdf

If you search this report for Carillion, there is not one good thing said about the company.
Vermin, broken machinery, cleaning not done up to standard, etc.
This was 2015/6.

Why were they given more services contracts when they were obviously failing in the ones they had?

sorry - whitewave

Therefore any due diligence undertaken was just about the costs. That worked out well, didn't it?

I have just read that the other two parts of the HS2 contracts have done due diligence on each other and are satisfied that everything is okay. That's alright, then. Didn't they perform the same task on Carillion?

This is scary.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/health/2018/01/think-carillion-bad-wait-until-you-see-what-government-wants-do-nhs

I hope you see what I mean whiutewave - what I thought was wrong was for a whole work-force of a company to be labelled as 'poor quality' when it is the management who has failed.

Yes whitewave, as I said earlier, they have stretched too far and too thin; however, it's not always necessary for the senior management to be experts in a given field - they can employ people who are. What the senior management should be able to do is manage effectively and they have failed to do that.
Many of the people working in some of the services such as cleaning, catering etc were employed directly and moved over to be employed by the private sector. So the staff knew their jobs but whether or not they were managed properly is another matter.

jalima I think what you can say however is “horses for courses” and in-house essential services should remain with those who have the expertise and in-depth knowledge as to what is needed.
In reality what has been happening is that many services have been tendered for by companies who have not had the remotest connection to the services being tendered for.

Maizie, just had a Waitrose delivery. The A68 isn't as bad as my estate, apparently, but he didn't go to Tow Law.
He lives at Slaley, so he's used to it.