Around 1,300 NHS workers across Dorset will stage protests this week in opposition to controversial plans to outsource hospital jobs to a new company, says UNISON today (Tuesday).
They will take part in three lunchtime rallies outside hospitals in Bournemouth, Poole and Dorchester in opposition to proposals that would move their jobs to a different employer.
The plans affect estates and facilities workers at Dorset HealthCare, Dorset County Hospital, and University Hospitals Dorset NHS Trusts. If the moves gets the go-ahead, vital staff including porters, cleaners, catering teams and maintenance crews would be transferred out of the NHS to a newly created subsidiary company.
UNISON says the proposals threaten staff with worse pay and conditions and risk creating a two-tier workforce within the health service.
UNISON South West regional secretary Kerry Baigent said: “These are the staff who keep our hospitals running. They clean wards, serve meals, transport patients and maintain hospital buildings. They deserve to be treated like any other NHS worker.
“Shifting them into a separate company puts their pay, pensions and job security on the line.
“Ministers promised the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation. But encouraging trusts to push staff out of the NHS through backdoor outsourcing flies in the face of that promise. It’s completely unacceptable.”
