HOW can Liverpool Council labourers take home £30,000 or more when Wigan Council Care Homes staff find their jobs taken over by lower pay and poorer conditions? Jobs need regulating for sure.

Cleaners, security personnel and catering staff have all seen their services devalued by firms that used to pay decent wages and by firms fiercely fighting against contract seeking competitors.

Proper sickness payments for the genuinely sick disappeared and work loads were sometimes raised in order to cut costs by leading firms. Only the weakest workers were targeted!

Kenneth Lucas

Park Road, Hindley, Wigan

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.