HOMECARE workers in Bexley could see their pay and conditions slashed under proposals from their new employers.

The workers, many of them women who have provided care to the borough’s elderly and disabled for more than 20 years, could also lose their local government pensions.

Orginally the women worked for Bexley Council.

But their employment was transferred in 2000 to the charity Care Partners Trust (CPT), when the council outsourced the work, giving the charity a block contract for care.

With people who need care now being given individual budgets, the block contract with CPT ended, and in April this year, CPT merged with the Avante Partnership.

The GMB union, which represents many of the 300-plus workers says a month after the merger, Bexley reduced the amount it pays to Avante and this cut is now being passed onto the workers.

Avante proposes cutting their hourly rate and unsocial hours rate for working weekends and axing their mileage.

Instead workers will have to claim their mileage back from the taxman.

One home carer for 23 years, said they were being invited to sign new contracts on the lower rates and told if they had not signed after 12 weeks, they would be sacked.

The GMB and Unison are in talks with Avante but say the threat of the sack is still an issue.

Bexley Council says it negotiated a market rate for care with Avante and terms and conditions for homecare workers are a matter for Avante.

It says it is still in talks about whether the workers will continue to qualify for the local government pension scheme.

Avante says it is being squeezed between council budget cuts and striving to maintain high quality care.

Its chief executive Cedric Frederick said: “There is simply not the funding to do everything we would like.”