Privatisation

Hospital strike postponed

A strike by outsourced security guards at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in central London, due to begin on 19 January, was postponed. The workers are fighting for parity with NHS terms and conditions on issues like sick pay, holiday entitlement, and pensions. Their union, United Voices of the World, tweeted: “The guards have made the good faith decision [to postpone their strike] following last minute news that the GOSH board of Trustees are preparing a package of improvements to their terms and conditions. The guards are clear that if these improvements are not presented within the next...

Barts Trust workers plan two-week strike

Outsourced workers, including cleaners, porters, security guards, caterers, and others, working in Barts Health NHS Trust in London will strike from 31 January to 13 February. The strikes will involve workers at St. Barts’, Royal London, and Whipps Cross hospitals. The workers, who are employed by outsourcing giant Serco, are demanding a decent pay rise, after their employer offered 3%, well below current rates of inflation. Serco Group PLC has an annual turnover of nearly £4 billion. A Unite statement said: “These workers face the same risks as NHS-employed staff but they are paid...

Look again at Section 44 (John Moloney's column)

With the withdrawal of Covid restrictions in England, there is increasing rhetoric about an employers’ drive to get workers back into offices. It’s not entirely clear as yet how that will play out across the civil service and whether departments will be setting quotas for the number of workers they want back. We’re meeting the Cabinet Office on Tuesday 25 January to discuss this. The Daily Mail is already promoting a narrative that union opposition to workers being forced back into offices is somehow sabotaging the country’s recovery. It’s clear that the Prime Minister is looking, using those...

Ballot starts mid-February (John Moloney's column)

In mid-February, the union will begin a consultative ballot of our entire public sector membership as to whether they are willing to take industrial action. This will be wider than the UK civil service and will include members in non-civil-service public sector employers where PCS also organises. The campaign we’re launching is about the cost of living crisis now facing us. In a sense, there is a defensive or reactive element of the potential dispute, in that we’re responding to rising living costs. But there are several offensive elements too. Firstly, we’re demanding that the pay system is...

Hospital security guards plan six-week strike

Security guards at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital will strike for six weeks from 18 January, demanding equality of pay and conditions with directly-employed workmates on NHS contracts. The strike is set to be one of the longest in NHS history. Erica Rasheed, a security guard and activist in the United Voices of the World (UVW) union, said: “In seven months, I will give birth to my second child at an NHS hospital, and like many women across the country, I will marvel at this wonderful service which I’m proud to be part of delivering. “But it will be a bittersweet moment, because I won’t...

Demands for levelling-up (John Moloney's column)

Our union’s (PCS) National Executive Committee met on 9 December, and agreed to conduct a consultative ballot of our entire civil service membership for industrial action over pay and pensions. This is wrapped up into our Cost of Living campaign. The ballot will cover the UK Civil Service and those of Scotland and Wales. The same NEC agreed our pay claim for next year. Those demands will include such things as the levelling-up of pay rates for all our members. As part of the campaign we are also demanding a decrease in employer contributions to the pension schemes. We know from the government...

Workers’ battles can beat bosses

A number of countries, including the US and France, are seeing waves or flurries of strikes as workers try to gain or make up ground as economies revive after lockdowns. Here, pay in the private sector is rising but inflation is rising faster, with the left-Blairite Resolution Foundation noting that "real wages are already falling and are likely to continue to do so for the next six months”. In the public sector the government is seeking to impose even more real-terms cuts after more than a decade of huge cumulative losses. There is a wave of attacks on pay, terms and conditions as bosses try...

Hundreds protest against immigration detention in North East

On Tuesday 23 November, the day before 27 people drowned in the English Channel trying to reach the UK, Priti Patel announced the official opening of Derwentside Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) in County Durham, a new women-only facility intended to replace the notorious Yarl's Wood detention centre near Bedford. The new facility in Medomsley, near the town of Consett, was formerly Medomsley Detention Centre (for boys) and was the site of historic abuse carried out over decades before closing in 1988. Five former officers have already been jailed for their part in the abuse with many more...

PCS plans to move on pay and cost of living (John Moloney's column)

The National Executive Committee (NEC) of our union, PCS, on 9 December will discuss a proposal for a consultative ballot of the entire civil service membership for industrial action as part of a national campaign around the cost of living. Whilst the union has been running a campaign on this for some time, we now have to move things up and test the mood of members. There’s undoubtedly a huge amount of work to do but the ballot will give us a focus to our work. In addition to this, I will be arguing for parallel campaigns for our culture sector, Metropolitan Police, and privatised members. In...

Requisition resources for the NHS

Discussions about the state of the National Health Service are remarkably muted given the desperate reality. NHS campaigners, the left and the labour movement need to introduce a real sense of alarm — and clear, appropriately radical solutions. In the Guardian earlier this month, one doctor wrote about her difficulty even getting an emergency ambulance for a baby with falling oxygen levels. She commented that “this incident was only one of many examples I could quote which illustrate how close basic medical care is to collapsing in the UK”. The Financial Times has found that 2,047 more people...

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