I just came across this story that is worthy of a post, a real David & Goliath situation that has arisen in West Yorkshire over the last month or so.
When West Yorkshire council awarded a blanket recycling contract to French based firm Sita, it was assumed that the company would employ the twenty employees from Kerbside a non profit making organisation that was already collecting and recycling in the Calderdale area of the county.
But Sita and the Kerbside employees could not reach an agreement on employment terms and the two rivals are now working in direct competition.
Kerbside which employs disadvantaged adults refuses to stop it’s collections from the 25,000 households in the area and is hoping that Sita will re open negotiations for it’s employees.
It seems that support on the streets is for Kerbside who say on their website that thanks to the donations that have been made they are able to continue providing it’s community recycling business until at least the end of January 2009.
I take my hat off to Kerbside and to the residents that have supported them during this time, if only they offered a service in my part of the country.
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2 comments so far
1 Paul // Sep 24, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Can we get the facts seperated from the retoric in this ‘battle’?
I’m a local person whose brother (with special needs) used to work for the previous version of Kerbside before it was closed down after a similar battle with Foxca a few years ago. When you talk about disadvantaged people, my brother was attending there were about 50 clients with special needs working there, when the new Kerbside started that number was dramatically cut with the adults with educational needs being replaced with long-term unemployed - the same people that the government offers grants to employers to take on. The number of people with special needs now with the scheme are in single figures.
Thankfully there are several community schemes across the borough providing employment training for such disadvantaged people, though Kerbside claims otherwise - Pennine Magpie, 3R-iT and the ATC’s organic gardening group all work with adults with special needs.
As for the contract, Kerbside were offered the total recycling operation ACROSS the WHOLE OF THE BOROUGH, 87,000 households. Recycling staff from the FOCSA recycling operation transferring across to Kerbside under TUPE regulations, a fleet of vehicles capable of carrying out the task, plus a not inconsiderable finance package; they turned this down. As things currently stand they unable to fulfil the terms of the new contract, even to only 25,000 households, i.e. KITCHEN WASTE & PLASTICS; when it starts rolling out early 2009. This information came from an elected member present at the meeting. Kerbside does a good job, though perhaps not as good as they claim since both the numbers of houses they claim to collect from and the weight of material collected has never been independently verified, but they seem to want more than any contractor would be willing to make, in this case being allowed to only collect where they wanted, from the number of houses they wanted, still being paid by the Council and keeping the recycling income as well as receiving additional support…
2 smebusinessnews // Sep 29, 2008 at 9:33 pm
In reply to Paul
Thank you so much for presenting the other side of the argument, it is good to get first hand feed back. I take on board your comments. But I was impressed most with the fact that the public do appear to have supported Kerbside by providing funds. Is that not so?
John Williams