A group of NHS workers have voted to strike over a plan to move their jobs to an independent firm.<\/p>\n
The health union Unison said 1,700 cleaners, porters and other support staff in Dorset hospitals were under threat of being transferred to an NHS-owned subco (a subsidiary company).<\/p>\n
The union said nearly 94% of members backed a possible strike, on a turnout of more than 74%.<\/p>\n
The trusts involved – Dorset HealthCare, Dorset County Hospital and University Hospitals Dorset – said workers would retain NHS pay and conditions if the subco was created, although no final decision had been made.<\/p>\n
Several NHS trusts have made plans for subcos affecting thousands of workers, the union said.<\/p>\n
It warned there could be further walkouts by NHS staff in other parts of the country unless hospital trusts were stopped from “back door privatisation”.<\/p>\n
The union is bringing a motion on subcos for debate at the Labour Conference, which begins in Liverpool on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said: “Before the election, Labour promised to bring workers on private contracts back into public services.<\/p>\n
“They need to make good on that promise and quickly, or they risk seeing widespread disruption in the NHS in coming months.<\/p>\n
“The overwhelming vote by Dorset support staff demonstrates just how strongly health workers feel about any erosion of their pay and conditions.”<\/p>\n
In a statement, the three NHS trusts in Dorset said they were keen to avoid industrial action.<\/p>\n
They said: “[We] are working together to improve the care we provide to our patients and to make the best use of our resources.<\/p>\n
“We must stress that no final decision has been made on whether to go ahead with the proposed creation of this company.<\/p>\n
“However, if we do, we would again stress this would be 100% owned by the NHS and we are committed to retain NHS pay, terms, conditions and access to the NHS pension scheme for current and future staff.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of NHS workers have voted to strike over a plan to move their jobs to an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500],"class_list":{"0":"post-175363","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}