Barnsley workers strike over nursery privatisation by Reform council

Women say move will be ‘massively detrimental’ to services for vulnerable children, and hit their own pensions

The 33 women waving banners outside a nursery in the South Yorkshire village of Grimethorpe have never been on strike before.

Passing cars beep their horns in support of the workers, who have taken action at six nurseries run by Barnsley council after its Reform UK leadership agreed to transfer them to private companies. They say the move will have a hugely negative impact on the services they provide to vulnerable children, and to their own pensions.

Such is the strength of feeling among the women, who are members of the GMB union, that turnout at their strike ballot was 100%, with every single member backing the walkout.

“For low-paid working women to take a stand is significant,” said Victoria Austin, a GMB regional organiser, adding that the work done by the nursery staff was above and beyond and “the council should be singing that from the rooftops”.

Instead, the council made the “massively detrimental” decision to push ahead with privatising the nurseries, only telling the workers about the impact on their pensions 36 hours before the transfer was due to take place, Austin said.

While the plans began under the previous Labour administration, councillors at the time had reassured nursery workers that their pay and benefits, including pensions, would stay the same.

Austin said Reform, which took over the council at the local elections in May after half a century of Labour leadership, was “not interested” in the workers’ fight, and was “wanting to build a legacy around balancing the books”.

Some local people see the transfer of nursery ownership as an example of heavy-handed slashing by Reform councils, which has also included closing care homes and cutting social care.

“As an elected council, their priority should be not letting children get left behind and doing the right thing by communities,” Austin said.

The workers and the union feel the transfer has been handled badly. One nursery is shuttered after the council deregistered it with Ofsted to allow the private provider to register, but it then pulled out.

The council said there was no legal duty for councils to run nursery services and the change would “reduce the amount of council tax payers’ money needed to support the nurseries”.

The council said after receiving legal advice that the staff were no longer eligible for the local government pension scheme before the transfer, “that information was shared quickly with staff and trade unions”.

William Brown, the leader of Barnsley council, said: “We’re disappointed that GMB members have voted in favour of strike action. The decision to transfer these nurseries to another provider was taken to protect jobs and retain these services for families.”

He said additional provision had been made for families on the three strike days and the council was continuing to engage with the union.

For Kimberley Darlington, Emma Jones, Lucy Kolconko and Charlotte Hawe, who work at Darfield nursery, the strike was not just about the plans to move them to a lower-value pension but to protect the families they supported.

Hawe said: “We’re often the first point of contact. I’ve arranged lots of food parcels for families who need them.”

Kolconko has taken families to visit the doctor when they have needed to. Darlington added: “We went out to a house to show a parent how to play with her Send (special educational needs and disabilities) children, she just didn’t know.”

The nursery workers have taught a three-year-old child with special educational needs to walk, which the parent had not done, and helped another family who were living with a rat infestation and mouldy walls to get help from their landlord.

They believe these are things they would be unable to do in a private setting where staff may be responsible for more children. In Barnsley, the nursery workers each look after four children over the age of two, while in private settings this can be five children.

“We just won’t have time to do these things. We’ve done all this work and the council has turned on us,” said Kolconko, a senior nursery worker.