- Conference
- 2015 Health Care Service Group Conference
- Date
- 19 November 2014
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
Conference notes that 93% of the Health Service Group membership is employed within the National Health Service, and that we must continue to campaign for employment on decent pay within the NHS as a publicly-accountable, and properly-funded public service.
This Conference further notes that the remaining 7% of the Health Service Group membership is employed by private companies, and is growing as the Government continues its attempts to dismantle our NHS through privatisation of its services.
Conference also notes that many of these members are often working in isolated conditions, and with very few, if any, other members at their workplace, and that the Service Group’s understandable focus on NHS employed members can add to that sense of isolation.
Anecdotal evidence also suggests that many of these members do not identify as being part of a broader public service, their primary relationship being with their employer as a private provider.
Conference believes that our members employed by private companies should be properly organised and serviced in order to win decent pay and job security, and welcomes the UNISON statement “Private Contractors and the Fragmented Workforce – Committing to the Future”, published in October 2014.
Conference calls on the Health Service Group Executive to:
1) seek to work with the Private Contractors Unit and the Strategic Organising Unit to develop a strategic organising plan to recruit and organise Health Service Group members outwith NHS employment;
2) consider how the profile and voice of those members employed by private employers can be raised within the service group’s work.
3) consider what other educational work can be undertaken to encourage these members’ sense of being part of the broader public service health provision.