In a different dispute this week, dozens of cleaners joined a protest outside of Lewisham Hospital, south London, on Monday. They are fighting against outsourcing and low pay (Picture: Guy Smallman)
Dozens of NHS facilities workers in Newham, east London, are entering their second week of a two week strike—and they plan to walk out again in December.
The long-running dispute between the Unite union members and Grosvenor Facilities Management (GFM) is now one of the most crucial disputes in the NHS.
If the strikers win, it will send a strong message to thousands of other NHS workers who are contracted out to profiteering private firms.
Jane, a leading striker, told Socialist Worker that the fight was for “equal pay and equal rights, and against unfair wages and night working conditions”.
“We believe outsourced workers deserve the same equal rights as the workers directly employed by the NHS,” she said.
“A lot of our strikers struggle with English. So I’m speaking up on their behalf and I’m speaking up for all those who are too scared to strike because they believe they’ll lose their jobs.
“And we believe in spreading our message by speaking to other workers, as we did recently with strikers at Transport for London.
“Our strike is not just about us, but the whole movement of the working class that actually makes this country function.
“Black, brown and white, it’s working class people who make this country function.”
GFM makes millions in profit from NHS outsourcing and PFI contracts. But it refuses to lift this small group of workers out of poverty pay and bring them in line with their NHS-employed colleagues.
Instead, the firm has spent thousands of pounds bussing in staff from other sites and contracting expensive agency and catering companies to run a skeleton service.
This has caused massive disruption for patients, workers and the public, with the canteen closing early during strike days. There are also reports of improper disposal of clinical waste.
Strikers will be back on picket lines at Newham Centre for Mental Health this week and from 8 December to 5 January.
Humbled Bosses at a major south London NHS Trust are consulting support workers on a proposed new contract.
The move comes after workers’ strike threats forced them into a climbdown.
Workers have won big pay rises—and will eventually move to full NHS Agenda For Change contracts.
UVW union members at Epsom and St Helier hospitals were on a variety of local contracts that made them worse off than colleagues on standard NHS ones.
Many found themselves on pay and pension rates far lower than other workers doing exactly the same job at the same hospital.
Speaking to Socialist Worker in October, leading union activist Farrokh said many workers believed racism was to blame for the situation.
“People ask, how is it that in the hospital, the majority of workers are not ‘white English,’ but the trust board is almost exclusively white?,” he asked.
“And they notice that the majority of the lowest paid workers are part of an ethnic minority or are migrants.” They were backed by a UVW report which accused the trust of “institutional racism”
The hospital trust for years refused to negotiate with unions over the issue.
But after a 98 percent strike vote earlier this autumn, bosses have finally caved-in. The lowest paid cleaners, caterers, porters and transport workers will see their pay rise by £40 a week from April.
The proposed new arrangement will also improve annual leave, sickness pay and unsocial hours enhancements—but not until 2028.
Thousands of healthcare assistants (HCAs) in Wales have finally won regrading to NHS band 3. It means many are now in line for big back pay settlements.
More than 6,000 workers, currently employed on the lowest band of the NHS Agenda for Change salary scale, will be moved up a level and receive payments for the extra duties they’ve been performing.
The Unison union encouraged the predominantly women and low-paid workers to collectively submit formal grievances to their health boards.
These highlighted the work they had undertaken that would normally have been on a higher grade.
After a successful wave of strikes across England, bosses didn’t fancy their chances and finally paid up.
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