‘BRING us back in-house – people before profit!’ demanded striking NHS support staff on their picket line outside the Maudsley Hospital in Denmark Hill, Camberwell, yesterday morning.
It was the second day of a 48-hour strike by 170 GMB union members employed by the privateer ISS at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust – known as SLaM – which specialises in mental health.
SLaM comprises four psychiatric hospitals – Maudsley, Ladywell, Bedlam and Lambeth, more than 100 community sites and 300 clinical teams in south east London.
The strike was solid and the GMB members were out in force, furious at a miserly pay offer which amounts to a 30p increase.
Cars, vans, buses and passers-by honked their horns or cheered them on loudly in a show of mass solidarity.
Above the chants of ‘ISS Shame on You!’ Jaqueline Wright, Supervisor and GMB Rep, told News Line: ‘Basically this company don’t support us. ISS have owed us money for two years from the last pay rise.
‘The money was supposed to come in April, but they haven’t paid it. They keep promising our back pay, but it’s just promise, promise and promise.
‘We are saying today that promises don’t pay our bills.
‘This strike is a fight for our new pay rise, our Covid bonus and our sickness pay.
‘We have different kinds of contracts, everybody is really unhappy and morale is low.
‘If they brought the service back in-house that would be perfect’, Jaqueline concluded.
Danielle Seychell, GMB Rep at Maudsley said: ‘ISS made £9bn in profits last year. The offer they made to us is worth 30p – and 30p won’t even buy a bottle of water.
‘We should renationalise all these companies, because when a private company runs the NHS services, they have just one motivation, money. Money for themselves.
‘They have thousands of workers working in hospitals and the only thing they think about is money, whereas we … we look after people.
‘They look after profit while we look after the well-being of our mentally ill. It is always profits before people with these private companies,’ Danielle concluded.
Everyone who spoke to News Line agreed that an all-out general strike is the way forward.
The GMB union members, who work as cleaning and catering staff downed tools in a fight for £14.34 an hour and full Agenda for Change NHS terms and conditions.
Ahead of the strike, Helen O’Connor GMB organiser said: ‘Our members who do vital work for SLaM have had enough of eking out a miserable existence on poverty pay whilst juggling impossible workloads.
‘They are struggling to feed themselves and their families. The anger is palpable amongst the workers who just want to be treated fairly. GMB members are also concerned that ISS is cutting hours and replacing permanent staff with agency workers.
‘This means that the cleaning and catering in the trust is being compromised and this is having an adverse effect on standards for patients and visitors to the sites.’