Staff at therapists’ union seek counselling over ‘fire and rehire’ plan

RCOT is an independent trade union with 35,000 members who work in occupational therapy, a discipline that focuses on supporting individuals struggling physically or mentally with day-to-day tasks. Photograph: PeopleImages.com/Getty Images

Staff at a therapists’ trade union are threatening to strike over plans to make one in 10 of them redundant which have driven many to seek therapy themselves.

Workers at the Royal College of Occupational Therapists (RCOT) said they were given just three days to decide whether to accept redundancy or reapply for other jobs on worse terms in a process criticised as “fire and rehire”.