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A YORKSHIRE hospital trust has been accused of attacking the wages of ancillary staff after transferring their jobs from the NHS to an arm’s-length subsidiary.
Airedale General Hospital in West Yorkshire serves an area around the towns of Keighley and Skipton, both near Bradford.
In 2017 the Airedale NHS Foundation Trust established a subsidiary company to take over one-third of the trust’s non-medical workforce.
Unions opposed the move, warning that workers’ wages and conditions would be vulnerable once they were no longer part of the NHS.
Now, three years later, general union GMB says that the wages of workers in the subsidiary company have been eroded by up to £1 an hour and that unsocial-hours pay has been cut.
The union has written to trust directors in protest and is campaigning for equal pay and conditions for workers employed by the subsidiary.
GMB campaign co-ordinator Joe Wheatley said: “Our members deserve equal pay for equal work.”
Sara Gorton, head of health for public-service union Unison, said: “The NHS is one team and it should stay that way.
“Hiving off support staff to arm’s-length companies complicates the delivery of services key to the smooth and safe running of hospitals. It’s never good news for transferred staff either.
“Health workers in subsidiaries work just as hard as their NHS colleagues and should be paid the same, and that goes for sick pay, pension and annual-leave entitlement too.”
She said that all workers in the NHS should get “the early and significant pay rise we all know they, and the NHS, deserve.”
The trust was asked to comment.
