Staff in MHT care and support arm are facing pay cuts of up to 40%, other cuts in terms and conditions and massive redundancies in parts of the Group such as in Derby.
These staff provide services to vulnerable clients up and down the country. Physical disability, mental health, homelessness, drug & alcohol abuse and the elderly.
Some now face earning the same headline wage that they started on - 15 years ago.
As you can imagine, like all of us, staff have mortgage and rent commitments based on their current salaries and face losing their homes if their pay is reduced in this way.
MHG want to reduce the pay of their staff to that below the living wage. They also want to employ part time staff so that these staff can top up their poverty wages with family credit and housing benefit. Which of course means that the taxpayer has to pay to top up these poverty wages, not only while these workers are at work but also when they become sick or retire.
Labour Leader, Ed Miliband has recently spoke about making all public sector employers pay a "Living Wage" to all their directly and indirectly paid staff. He has also asked the question why taxpayers spend huge amounts of public money subsidising bad employers who pay their worker poverty wages.
(The irony: The lobby took place outside Cambridge House which use to be a Victorian factory and is now the HQ of MHT. This building has the Latin motto "Labour et Probitas" picked out into the brickwork above the main entrance. This means "Work and Honour")
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