- Conference
- 2014 Health Care Service Group Conference
- Date
- 7 December 2013
- Decision
- Carried
Conference believes that all health staff, regardless of their job role, play an important role in caring for patients. All NHS staff are part of one team delivering quality healthcare that puts patients first.
Conference notes that our NHS operational services staff continue to bear the brunt of the cuts with figures showing that since 2013, approximately 77% of all compulsory redundancies in the NHS have been felt by operational service staff. Staff working in these so called ‘back office’ functions have already been subjected to intolerable zero hour contracts and down banding, as well as outsourcing and privatisation. This leaves staff, often on lower grades, more vulnerable to attacks on their terms and conditions. The arguments put forward by employers privatising services like catering are that these moves are attempts to ‘cut costs.’ These same employers often fail to address other cost saving measures such as food wastage due to poor quality, unhealthy meals.
Conference believes that the best resistance against attempts to cut and privatise NHS services within operational service staff is through recruiting and organising operational service members and ensuring that there is a high UNISON density in administrative and clerical and ancillary staffs.
Conference welcomes the ‘One Team’ – caring for patients’ campaign in the belief that this campaign will make sure that the public, managers and politicians cannot simply disregard the important jobs that all our members do in delivering high quality healthcare, and at the same time making sure that patients are at the heart of everything they do. Conference further believes that this campaign will rebut the political attacks that have been made on both administrative and clerical staff and ancillary staff by the implication that their contribution to health care is of less importance than that of clinical staff. Conference also believes that this campaign will support branches and regions in recruiting and organising operational service staff. Conference believes that the stronger we are in all health workplaces the stronger we can be in protecting pay, terms and conditions.
Conference acknowledges that the first ever seminar for Operational Services staff was held in December 2013 and it bought together old and new activists across operational services to share good practice, to learn how to defend operational service staff from the threats that they face and to empower activists to go out and recruit and organise operational service staff.
Conference calls on the Health Service Group Executive to:
1)work with the Operational Service Occupational Group to continue the ‘One Team’ campaign;
2)produce campaigning, recruiting and organising resources for branches and regions on the issues that are affecting operational services staff;
3)continue to actively campaign against proposals that will lead to further cuts, privatisation and fragmentation of operational service staff;
4)work with the Operational Service Occupational Group to organise another operational services seminar;
5)work with relevant bodies within UNISON to ensure that UNISON is seen as the union of choice for operational service staff;
6)work with branches and regions to organise and recruit in workplaces and campaign against politically motivated attacks on our operational service members, who are being used as a testing ground when it comes to imposing poor terms and conditions;
7)develop a targeted recruitment and organising strategy for operational service staff;
8)highlight the importance of the whole healthcare team and demonstrate that all staff have a valuable role and contribution to make to patient care.