- Conference
- 2024 National Health Care Service Group Conference
- Date
- 6 December 2023
- Decision
- Carried
Conference believes that health workers have better pay and terms and conditions of employment when they are directly employed by NHS organisations.
Fourteen years of relentless outsourcing of NHS contracts have seen thousands of NHS staff transfer their employment from the NHS to private companies. We know that as soon as staff transfer out of the NHS (even though TUPE protects some aspects of terms and conditions) the general conditions of their employment start to deteriorate. Many members leave their jobs, because they are constantly underpaid by their new employers, jobs don’t get filled when staff leave so workload goes through the roof, investment in staff and equipment falls off a cliff and when staff move roles, they lose their TUPE protections and are moved onto new contracts that have poor pay, terms and conditions. UNISON members who stay have told us that instead of money going on the service they care for; money is paid to shareholders and the service gets increasingly worse due to the lack of staff.
Conference celebrates the launch of UNISON’s Organising to Win strategy in 2023, which uses the 5-phase plan to win to organise members around issues that are important to them like the Pay Fair for Patient Care rebanding of Health Care Assistants. UNISON members have won thousands of pounds worth of back pay and higher wages due to the success of this campaign.
There are numerous NHS contracts coming up for renewal this year and we all know the advantages of keeping staff within the NHS family or bringing them back into NHS and we now have an organising strategy that works and should be applied to insourcing campaigns across the union.
Conference calls on the Health Service Group Executive to:
1. work with the private contractors unit on a plan which using the union’s organising to win strategy 5-phase plan to win to target all strategic NHS contracts coming up for renewal in 24/25 and campaign for these members to be brought back in-house;
2. promote UNISON’s new insourcing guidance and support this guide by producing resources including a leaflets and posters.