The abrupt end to free mass Covid-19 testing has left thousands of workers - including in the North East - without jobs after months spent working all hours to keep the country safe.
The testing sites closed for good last week, and with staff having been made redundant at short notice and without being entitled to any compensation, many have been left "with nothing" - just days after performing a vital service on the frontline of the battle to contain the coronavirus.
Staff, who were employed by Sodexo who held the contract to manage testing centres around the country, have gone from testing hundreds of people a day for Covid-19 to unemployment. And many are upset at the way the firm has managed this process.
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One Byker -based staffer - David Kirkbride who was a manager at the mass testing site in Wallsend - said he and colleagues who had worked long-hours and throughout Christmas as part of the effort to combat Covid-19 had been "thrown to the dogs".
"There's a canny few staff who've not got work since it shut", he said. "And it's not just the young lads. For the majority of staff it was their full time job. People were relying on it for their money - and now a lot of them have just got nothing. I don't know of anyone working with me who's been offered anything."
Sodexo have said they've worked to redeploy as many former test centre workers as possible - so far the firm said 1,000 had been found alternative jobs and it was working with 1,000 more who had asked for new jobs.
David is among those now considering taking Sodexo to an employment tribunal as he wants to ensure staff receive all they are entitled to.. Some workers feel that group consultation processes ought to have taken place with employees at testing sites. However, Sodexo maintains every employee has been "treated fairly and recompensed in accordance with their employment rights".
The firm says it began consultation with staff "as appropriate" at all of its sites. but some staff dispute this. The firm claimed that there were fewer than 20 employees on the Wallsend site with fixed-term or permanent contacts so it was not obliged to carry out group consultations. The employees believe that recent legal cases have shown there are some circumstances where casual staff ought to be considered to have worked under a so-called "umbrella contract" - but this is a largely untested area of law.
Guidance published by the Local Government Association on this topic states: "Where a casual worker wishes to establish that they are an employee with sufficient continuity of service to, for example, claim unfair dismissal, they may argue that they have been employed under an overriding ‘umbrella’ or ‘global’ contract that spanned the periods during which they were not working.
"Courts and tribunals have been fairly unwilling to-date to find that such a contract of employment exists between periods of casual employment. However, it may be possible for an individual to argue that an umbrella contract of employment exists if either there is evidence to suggest that the parties have expressly agreed that the individual’s work will be on a regular, defined pattern."
David - who had a fixed-term contract - told ChronicleLive he had serious concerns about the way consultation had been managed and claimed staff were owed better. He added: "Staff are really unhappy with the way the company has conducted itself - and the public should know. We've been running around testing 400, 500 people a day, working long hours over Christmas.
"Site leads up and down the country are furious with it. I think it's in the public interest that people know this company making millions are treating us like this. We have had some great staff here. We've been testing people day-in, day-out - and it feels like the company has thrown us to the dogs. I will be looking to take them to a tribunal."
He said that while he was in a comfortable situation, he was concerned some of the younger staff he has worked with were being left high-and-dry.
Another site manager who is involved in co-ordinating staff who are upset with Sodexo said: "We just don't believe they've been fair to the workers. Nobody came into these jobs thinking they would be a long-term career, but we have not been treated fairly through the redundancy process."
During the pandemic, more than 9,000 people have been employed by Sodexo helping to test people for Covid-19. Those this had fallen slightly. In England, it's understood around 2,400 people were on fixed-term contracts, and there were close to 4,400 casual workers. Of its testing staff, only 21 were legally entitled to a redundancy payout having been on fixed term contracts for more than two years.
As reported by the Independent, The firm's contract with the Government to run testing centres was said to be worth £404m fpr the year from June 2021 to June 2022. In its most recent accounts, Sodexo paid £29.28m in dividends in the year to August 2020. It's profits in the financial year 2019-2020 hit £13.272m. The firm made £81.727m a year earlier.
The Labour Party taken an interest in the situation of workers like David, and Newcastle Central MP Chi Onwurah said: "It is not acceptable for any employee to be let go without the proper consultation process, but it adds insult to injury when it’s those who have been on the front line against Covid."
She said if the contractor had not done the "bare minimum", despite making "significant profits" during the pandemic, then it was understandable that staff would "feel cheated and undervalued".
Neal Gisborne, Sodexo's divisional managing director for test centres, said: "When the government announced on 21 February that free testing would end in England by 1 April, we wrote to everyone within hours to inform them of this including all casual workers. As soon as we were officially notified test centres in England would close on 31 March, we followed up in writing to say consultation would commence where appropriate.
"Irrespective of these exceptional circumstances, we have made sure we have kept everyone fully informed and are committed to ensuring every single one of our employees and casual workers is treated fairly and recompensed in accordance with their employment rights.
"We are enormously proud of everything our teams have achieved to support the government’s national response to the pandemic and are continuing to do all we can to help them secure new work and prepare for their future. This includes offering redeployment, counselling, CV and interview training and connecting them with other businesses who have employment opportunities.
"We have so far redeployed 1,000 people within Sodexo and are working with a further 1,000 who have asked for redeployment. We are committed to continuing this over the coming weeks."
The firm maintains it has followed the law and said consultation did begin on "all sites where appropriate".
In a statement, Government body the UK Health Security Agency added: "We’ve provided testing colleagues with regular updates around the future of PCR testing in England, following the publication of the government’s Living with Covid strategy, with as much notice as was possible. We are extremely grateful for the efforts of all staff and have worked with their employers to make sure they are supported during this transition."
The UKHSA said it had worked closely with Sodexo to ensure staff were notified of the change in policy in response to the Living with Covid strategy, had thanked all testing site staff for their work, and would continue to work to ensure a "smooth demobilisation" of the Covid-19 testing network.
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