The government should make good on its pledge to stop NHS privatisation and halt the sell-off of hundreds of jobs at East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, says UNISON today.
Cleaners, porters, housekeepers and other facilities staff have taken more than 40 strike days since August to try to stop the trust’s plans to sell their jobs out of the NHS to a private contractor. UNISON says outsourcing would hit patients as well as pose a threat to staff pay and conditions.
But the health workers were told last Monday (9 December) that the trust has now awarded a single contract covering the facilities staff currently employed directly by the NHS — as well as some already outsourced workers — to private company Sodexo, says the union.
UNISON believes the outsourcing flies in the face of the Labour’s Make Work Pay document, which promised to “bring about the biggest wave of insourcing of public services in a generation”.
Health secretary Wes Streeting has spoken out repeatedly against the outsourcing of NHS services, most recently saying on last week’s (12 December) Question Time on BBC1: “We’ll privatise the NHS over my dead body.”
Any NHS contract worth more than £20m has to be signed off by the Cabinet Office under government procurement rules, says UNISON. The union is urging ministers to block the deal.
UNISON Eastern regional secretary Tim Roberts said: “The East Suffolk and North Essex trust has yet to make any positive case to sell these workers out of the NHS despite months of trying. It’s a false economy that would damage patient care.
“The government has made welcome pledges on bringing essential services back under public control. Now is the time for ministers to make good on their words and halt these ill-thought-out plans.”
