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Summer 2004

Round and Round we Go

Laundry services at Strathglen are a bit like the dryers. They just go round and round.

Traditionally, all laundry services at the Strathglen Nursing Home were done on site.

Then, some years ago, some of the laundry services at Strathglen were outsourced.

That was in the days of the new economic wisdom, when "contracting out was much cheaper". (Now funnily enough, it's cheaper to do it inhouse!)

Strathglen's sister site, Strathaven, maintained its in-house service.

Now Strathaven has built a new laundry and all of Strathglen's laundry is going there. Back in-house.

This has had quite an impact on workers in the past, and is having an impact on HACSU members working lives again as things get changed around.

HACSU has been involved in negotiating ways in which the new arrangements will mean no loss of hours for members. But there has been a lot of anxiety along the way.

Although redundancy initially looked on the cards, through union negotiation and good consultation between staff and management, no one has lost out.

A 30 day trial is now in place.

So, round and round we go. New wave economic theories such as contracting out prove to be just baloney. It's just a pity about the way workers' lives often get messed around in the process.