MAINTENANCE and estate workers striking at four south London mental health hospitals were joined on the picket line yesterday by bus workers, who arrived on their Fight Drivers’ Fatigue campaign bus to cheers from the strikers outside the Maudsley.
The strike covers four South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust sites, the Maudsley, the Bethlem Royal, Lambeth hospital, and the Ladywell Unit at University Hospital Lewisham. The dispute is over pay banding, and has run since 2020.
Isaac Goss, a team leader at Lambeth hospital, told News Line: ‘We do all the maintenance and upkeep to keep these buildings functioning properly.
‘If we were not there to provide that essential service, there would be all kinds of problems. We feel undervalued and not respected. We are on Band 3 pay. You can’t have carpenters on that level of pay.
‘We don’t want to be on strike. We do the work gladly, but while we struggle to get a little extra, you’ve got these chief executives paying themselves huge salaries.
‘They’re cutting back at our expense. I’ve been in this country 40 years, and this is my first ever strike. That tells you how bad it is.’
Luke Sparkhall said: ‘Our strike is over pay disparity. We have exhausted all other forms of mediation, so we were forced to go on strike. We have people on band 2 to 4 pay grade, doing work that should be band 5.
‘We are partnered with Kings College Hospital across the road, and people there doing the same job are on band 5. This pay claim has been going on since 2020, so people definitely want to see a change.’
Jamie Cheesman, a carpenter at Lewisham hospital, has been there 17 years and sits at the top of band 4.
‘Management says if I want to go up a band, I would have to become a supervisor. But that’s not what I want. I prefer doing the work and meeting people.’
Glen Northfield, Unite equalities rep, said: ‘Everyone wants a result. We have directors on £200,000 a year, while some people are having to dip into their pension pot just to survive. We won’t come to the table till we get a serious offer. We want action, not just more meetings. We’re the ones who keep the lights on and the water running.
‘One of the cleaning companies cut the cleaners’ time by 2,000 hours, so people who were cleaning 2 wards then had to clean 3 or 4, so naturally the cleaning suffered.
‘Now there’s infestation where we didn’t have any before. Their last annual report said there’s a surplus of £136 million. They could use that to pay people properly.’
Nadine Edwards, regional officer on the Fight Drivers’ Fatigue campaign, said: ‘We’ve been to every part of London with our campaign bus. There are 9,000 buses in London. Only 482 have air conditioning of the right specification. Drivers work 7 days on and 2 off, which is tiring, but some do overtime on one of those days, so it’s 8 on and 1 off. No-one can keep this up.
‘Transport for London have now agreed to retro-fit air-con to all the buses, so we’re making some progress. We say it should be done straight away. No wonder people are suffering from fatigue.’
