THE pillaging of NHS funds and the demoralisation of hospital workers by the private sector is commonplace throughout the NHS.

Increasingly the private sector is becoming more embedded in our NHS as services are separated off and tendered out to the lowest bidder.

The special relationship with the NHS facilities contract manager who is as hostile to the presence of active unions, as the private company is the entrance ticket to the NHS goldmine.

Allegations of cronyism and corruption between NHS contract managers and private contract managers are rife across the NHS.

In one large south London NHS trust, the estates team, who were GMB members, complained that they were running the entire service while being paid band 5-6.

External consultants were being hired at huge expense by the NHS trust on the pretext that this “extraordinary” and very expensive “talent” was unavailable within the hospital staffing pool.

We were told by our members that these consultants were very difficult to get hold of and that they never actually came into work in the department.

The members found out that most of these private consultants were in fact running other businesses.

The quiet scandal that ensued following a GMB report sent to the CEO of the NHS trust on behalf of members led to the resignation of the trust director responsible for that area.

Hospital cleaners and porters are super-exploited by private contractors and they end up being subjected to multiple injustices as these companies squeeze their labour, their pay, their terms and conditions for profit.

During the lifetime of the contract, various methods are used to drive down the cost of the wage bill, including putting new joiners on a lower rate of pay with no occupational sick pay scheme and moving workers over to the company contract if they gain promotion.

It is not uncommon for staff on the more costly contracts to find themselves being harassed and targete for disciplinary action.

As staff get replaced, the new starters are only given a small number of permanent hours, sometimes as little as 15-20 a week, which makes them reliant on getting overtime at the discretion of the manager to make ends meet.

Flat rates of pay for evening and weekend working are starting to creep into the NHS because of privatisation.

While there is a pressing need to raise awareness of the damage privatisation is doing to NHS staffing, it is important for the public to realise that privatisation drives down the quality of services too.

Anyone who has experienced the sticky, dirty tables and the tasteless, greasy food served up in your average hospital canteen by these companies would be horrified at the tasteless slop that is dished up to hospital patients on a regular basis.

Deaths of hospital patients from sandwiches laced with listeria made national news headlines in 2019.

Corners are cut by private companies as cuts in cleaning hours mean cleaners are asked to take on extra areas to clean and then told that they don’t need to mop floors and dust certain areas “every day.”

In St George’s Hospital there was even a proposal that cleaners should serve food on wards as well which was fiercely opposed by GMB members and the local community in 2019.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that if the cleaning in a hospital is compromised by cuts in equipment or staffing, the risk of cross-infection will rise on the site.

When people go into hospital we are at our most vulnerable — and because of privatisation, hospitals are failing to provide the levels of sanitation and nutrition that are vital for patient safety and recovery.

Outsourced workers have learnt the hard way to raise the demand to go “back in-house” or “to be treated the same as the NHS staff” — and communities need to recognise the key importance of this demand to the services in their own hospitals.

Unions and communities can unite and raise big demands around pay, terms and conditions, the type of demands that make these contacts untenable.

As a movement it could only be helpful to have a joined-up, clear and consistent strategy in relation to these private companies in order to ensure we are in step with our members who are not happy with the way they are being treated.

While these workers are telling us they want to be with the NHS, we are losing ground in the struggle to hold back the rising tide of privatisation.

If these contracts were back in the NHS as they should be, it would be far easier to get official multi-union recognition and pay, terms and conditions would be consistent and pegged to national NHS negotiations and not fragmented in this way.

Divide-and-rule tactics are deployed by the private companies with the clear intention of splitting the trade union movement. For example, it is entirely possible to have widely differing agreements on pay, terms and conditions with the same employer.

Disputes on the same issue with one employer are settled differently contract by contract and this undermines the trade unions and pits us against each other.

These companies are brazen in their methods as they attempt to dangle the carrot of union recognition as a trade-off to reduce the pay, terms and conditions of the workers. Union rep release is also used as a bargaining chip in this way.

However, having official recognition and unfettered access to a workplace for union recruitment is pointless if workers don’t join because we have failed to inspire and organise them to improve their lot.

It is entirely possible to leverage bargaining power without having recognition, as long as large numbers of workers have joined the union and the work has been done to unite them around a demand that has come from the workers themselves.

In the present period too many individual branches, unions and NHS community campaigners are left alone fighting bushfires contract by contract and hospital by hospital instead of having the joined-up and consistent trade union and community campaigns that are so desperately needed to improve the lives of our members and protect the NHS for future generations.

Uniting across the movement with the aim of getting these contacts back in-house and the workers on NHS pay, terms and conditions, is not only what the workers themselves want; it is what is necessary to stop the ongoing decline of NHS services for once and for all.

Helen O’Connor is GMB Southern Region organiser.