- Conference
- 2008 Health Care Service Group Conference
- Date
- 14 December 2007
- Decision
- Carried
Conference recognises that many of the attacks on the NHS over the last few years have centred on Administrative and Clerical staff. These include: –
1)Outsourcing and offshoring medical secretarial work;
2)Centralisation of payroll functions;
3)Privatisation of payroll functions;
4)The wholescale privatisation of logistics in England.
As the pressure for “efficiency savings” grows, workforce plans show overall reductions in the numbers of administrative and clerical staff.
Conference believes that there is no such thing as “backroom staff” and we all play an integral part in the running of the NHS and are a full part of the healthcare team.
However, in order to be able to fight privatisation and cuts is by ensuring that areas which are targeted for outsourcing are highly organised staff groups with high union density.
Despite the fact that there are no other specialist unions for administrative staffs, on the whole, UNISON density remains below 50%. Therefore there should be no barriers to considerable recruitment of these groups of staff.
Conference calls on the Health Service Group Executive to prioritise the recruitment, retention and organisation of administrative and clerical staff as part of their work programme for the year and to report back to 2009 healthcare conference on progress.