I FIRST encountered Mitie when I became an officer for the GMB union back in 2018. 

They held contracts in Epsom and St Helier NHS and in St George’s NHS. Things came to a head when workers in St Helier hospital found that they weren’t paid wages owed before Christmas and we decided to alert the press. 

The news took off locally and led to Mitie bosses offering staff cash out of the safe to calm the crisis. 

The following year I found myself invited into the Shard where Mitie occupies an entire floor of the building. 

The plush office with its panoramic views and the complimentary coffee bar was in stark contrast to the conditions our members were enduring daily in the hospitals.

My experience of the meeting with four Mitie managers was particularly unpleasant as they complained bitterly about negative press. 

I stood my ground and told them straight that their complaints were in bad faith and listened as the head of HR polished her working-class credentials and told me that they wanted to work with the GMB union. 

A few weeks later Mitie launched a vicious attack on the workforce in St George’s Hospital as it rolled out a consultation to remove one hour’s paid work per day from the cleaners and hostesses. 

We had already spent a long time listening to the workers in the hospital so we knew this proposal would be unpopular and it wasn’t long afterwards that branch G50 resolved to go into a trade dispute with the company.

Brave reps Francis Dwum, now G50 branch secretary, and John Inakoba were instrumental to building our forces to challenge Mitie. 

Many members helped drive the campaign on, particularly when Francis came under attack from Mitie management for daring to intervene in consultation meetings and ask searching questions that cut right through the pretence that cuts in hours would be of benefit to the workers. 

I spent every waking moment in St George’s Hospital as the reps and I attended scores of one-to-one meetings and group consultation meetings in order to support our members and build solidarity. 

We stood up in meeting after meeting in lecture theatres and on hospital corridors and addressed hundreds of Mitie workers to make sure they knew and understood the truth of what was going on. 

As the truth was exposed and the anger grew, so did the willingness to fight back. 

The region deployed additional personnel so that we could cope with the numbers of workers requesting to sign up to the union. 

The branch membership doubled and we quickly moved to a strike ballot because we knew it was game on.

The workers received solidarity across the hospital and from the community and the trades councils who generously donated to their strike fund and supported their strike committee and their protests.

We organised mass signings of letters to oppose contract changes and throughout the strike ballot we met managers weekly who appealed to us to stop the ballot but committed to nothing. 

Members were so keen to vote for a strike at that point that some were sending their postal votes back by special delivery. 

We didn’t stop the ballot at the request of management and when our members absolutely smashed the threshold with a 70 per cent turnout and a 99.6 per cent Yes vote, Mitie knew they couldn’t get away with their plans to cut hours. 

There are so many amazing memories from that dispute that will stay with me for the rest of my life. I remember the day Francis and I occupied a Mitie meeting and the workers were pushing us down into the chairs in outright defiance of management who threatened to call security to remove us. 

I also remember the day my colleague Gary Palmer and I were threatened with the police as we peacefully spoke to workers at the clock-in machine in the basement of St George’s Hospital. 

And I will never forget the kindness shown to me by the cleaner who sought me out to give me a coffee and a sandwich when the campaign to get the vote back in was at its height. 

Such was the solidarity that mushroomed in St George’s Hospital during that period. The Mitie workers grew in stature and every other group of staff looked on as these workers showed what trade unionism in the NHS should look like.

And three years later Mitie is again testing the resolve of our reps and members as they plan to realign pay cycles which will cause huge hardship to the workforce. The pay cycle realignment means that pay day will get delayed into May. 

As we have made our opposition to the plans clear, our members reported to us that Mitie managers were scurrying around the hospital offering low-paid workers loans of their own wages which will then be clawed back out of pay over a short period of time. 

Direct debit payments will bounce and members who are already living hand to mouth and saddled with payday loans and other forms of debt will run into financial difficulty.

Mitie claims the pay cycle realignment will enable it to stop shorting the pay, but our members are not stupid and they know that Mitie is imposing this pay cycle realignment for the benefit of the company and not for them.  

Mitie has made and broken too many promises to our members, so trust has plummeted to an all-time low.

Mitie is yet again trying to undermine terms and conditions in every way as it tries and fails to shut the GMB union out of St George’s Hospital. 

Before Christmas two Mitie managers behaved like complete thugs as they attempted to break up a GMB meeting and instil fear into the workers. 

These bullying tactics have proved unsuccessful as membership is growing and a new generation of young reps have now joined branch G50. The new reps will find themselves well supported by the branch leadership as they develop into trade union activists.

The Mitie workers kept St George’s Hospital running throughout the pandemic, and three of them died of Covid-19 as they served the most unwell people in the community. 

The Mitie workers in St George’s have a right to be respected and have that respect reflected in their wages, terms and conditions. 

This is why their union of choice, GMB, is organising a protest on Blackshaw Road on Friday February 18 from 10am-2pm. 

The community will support these workers just as they did before and everyone will be welcome to stand with us and fight for what is right. 

What must always be remembered is that when the staff in a hospital are treated properly they stay there and go over and above the call of duty to ensure that patients are safe and protected. 

This will be the second battle GMB is having with Mitie to try to stop them eroding standards in St George’s Hospital, so once again I am calling on absolutely everyone to stand with the Mitie workers so that they can win their fair and just demands.

Helen O’Connor is Southern Region organiser for GMB.