Save our nursery

Louise Nousratpour
Monday July 18, 2011
The Morning Star

There is a little gem tucked away on a busy junction in central London.

Not many people know about it but this pioneering creche has helped hundreds of parents stay in work, safe in the knowledge that their children are being properly looked after just a few doors away.

Now their jobs are on the line.

Royal Mail has decided to shut the Childsplay nursery at its Mount Pleasant sorting office by November, without consulting staff or assessing how it will affect their jobs and families.

"Managers admitted bluntly that they have not carried out the equality impact assessment," says Roger Charles, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) branch secretary at Mount Pleasant. The CWU is leading the campaign to save the creche.

"It appears that all they have done is a simple cost-benefit analysis which didn't take into consideration the impact the closure would have on the people, many of whom are single parents from ethnic-minority communities, who currently benefit from the facility."

Silvia Benton, a single mother who works long and unsociable hours, is worried that she may have to quit her job to look after her five-year-old son if the nursery closes.

"I wrote to (Royal Mail chief executive) Moya Greene and explained to her that I was completely dependent on the nursery to keep my job," she said.

"I have tried to find alternative childcare arrangements and recently went through the entire list of registered childminders in my local area in Hackney. But as soon as they hear about my shifts, they're not interested."

Postal workers are among the lowest paid in London, making a subsidised childcare facility like this one a lifeline for working class families.

But it's not just about affordability.

Childsplay is also the only nursery in London that is open for shift workers from 6am to 10pm, catering to Royal Mail staff from all over the capital.

Benton, like many of her colleagues who use the creche, has even offered to pay more than the current £110 a week fees to keep it open.

"I would rather pay a little more in childcare costs than lose my job," she said. "I wouldn't want to rely on benefits, especially not now, when the government is cutting everything."

But the firm has ignored the offer and negotiations have stalled.

Royal Mail chiefs have also snubbed the CWU's idea to open the facility up to the general public to raise more money.

And they recently ruled out a £150,000 offer from Islington council to build an outdoor play area, claiming health and safety reasons.

"They don't seem to want to look into any alternatives," says Charles, a new father who would personally benefit from the creche.

"We actually asked whether they would keep it open if we found a way that would cost them nothing and they said 'probably not'."

Half tongue in cheek, he adds: "I think there are some people in Royal Mail management who really don't like children. They certainly don't want working-class families to have access to these sorts of facilities to keep themselves in work.

"They'd rather replace working parents with people who don't have children or family 'baggage' because parents are naturally more likely to ask for flexible hours or time off if their children fall ill."

Childsplay opened as a flagship facility in 1994 with a view to open similar nurseries in Royal Mail centres across Britain.

But that never happened.

Now management claims that keeping Childsplay open would be "unfair" to staff outside London - an argument Charles rejects as nonsense.

"Throughout the nursery's 16-year history there have been attempts at Royal Mail workplaces up and down the country to open similar facilities but they have come to nothing because of lack of support from management.

"People from all over the country could benefit from such facilities at a time when local authorities are cutting back on childcare, and Sure Start centres are very hard to come by.

"As a state-owned company, Royal Mail should be doing more for its employees."

In its heyday there was a three-year waiting list for the Mount Pleasant creche.

Today only a dozen children are enrolled as managers have banned staff and current contractor Kiddy Care from advertising nursery places.

Kiddy Care won its contract last year on the condition that it would not take on any more children.

"The facility has been left to wither on the vine," Charles says.

He is convinced that the closure is not about cost-cutting but rather an attempt to do away with what the company sees as a "burden" on a publicly owned business gearing up for privatisation under the coalition's Postal Services Bill.

"It's not the sort of facility that a private company would be interested in offering staff," he says.

"Royal Mail is currently spending in excess of £50 million on modernising Mount Pleasant. If they have such obscene amounts of money to spend on machinery to replace workers they can afford the £160,000 they say the nursery cost them each year."

The union is stepping up its campaign this summer with a fresh wave of demonstrations and ministerial lobbying, as well as urging the public to sign a petition calling for the nursery to stay open.

In May hundreds of parents and their children staged a protest outside the centre, waving home-made placards and chanting: "Save Our Nursery."

The campaign has won the support of local Lib Dem MP Emily Thornberry, who wrote to Greene last month, arguing that it would be "a great shame to lose this pioneering workplace provision.

"I was not convinced that this decision is either right or necessary."

Charles is confident that the union will not hesitate to take industrial action if management continues to ignore the growing clamour for a rethink.

"We won't rule out anything in this battle to save the creche.

"If it means that the wider union needs to take some sort of action to make Royal Mail chiefs change their decision, that is what the union will do."

To help the campaign, please write to your MP and sign the online petition at www.cwu.org/online-petition.html