STRIKING workers at Barts Health Trust hospitals and those mounting protests outside Croydon University Hospital today are all victims of outsourcing.
The outsourcers are familiar villains. The porters, cleaners and catering staff at St Barts, Royal London and Whipps Cross are employed by Serco, those in Croydon by G4S.
These giant, generalised outsourcers have global reputations for brutality, dishonesty and incompetence, stretching from the bungled London Olympics contract, through the death of Jimmy Mubenga to clashes with Glasgow City Council over treatment of asylum-seekers. The two nearly indistinguishable firms were both fined millions by the Serious Fraud Office for fraudulently billing British taxpayers to tag the movements of people who turned out to be dead, in prison or to have left Britain altogether.
But no matter what they do, their size and undoubted expertise in one field — that of bidding for public-sector contracts — ensures they continue to pile on the profits at everyone’s expense.
It takes guts to stand up to companies of this size, and the poorly paid workers doing so are fighting battles whose outcomes could have serious implications for millions of others.
It is clearer than ever that the days of clapping for carers are over and for all the government’s talk of “levelling up,” it is determined to hold down pay even in the face of galloping inflation.
That is not just clear from the miserable below-inflation offers, effective pay cuts, that ministers are forcing across the public sector, including in the National Health Service.
It’s also evident in the new assault on universal credit masked as “Way to Work,” a means of tightening the screws on the low-paid and unemployed to force them to accept work on worse terms.
Health workers may have seen their pay shrink by thousands of pounds a year in real terms over the past decade; they may have battled for nearly two years to contain a virulent pandemic in the face of chronic understaffing, inadequate health and safety standards and disastrous national public health policy; but they will not be compensated for that.
One reason is that the NHS is Britain’s biggest employer. Pay levels in the NHS affect pay levels in the wider economy. Proper rises for NHS staff would put workers in a better bargaining position to win pay rises elsewhere.
Keeping pay in the NHS low is therefore a priority for the Tories — and outsourcing is key to keeping pay in the NHS low.
The significantly worse pay of the Serco-employed staff at Barts Health Trust compared to those directly employed by the NHS helps divide the workforce and weakens its ability to bargain collectively for a better deal.
Low pay in turn helps the government’s marketising strategy for the NHS, further incentivising outsourcing.
The health service provides rich pickings for private contractors keen to grow fat at the public’s expense, but higher paid workers mean smaller profit margins for these leeches. Winning pay rises for outsourced workers therefore helps the wider battle to defeat outsourcing itself.
The Covid crisis has exposed the true cost of outsourcing, as subcontracted workers spread the virus as they were shunted between care homes and as outsourced cleaners lacking proper sick pay could not afford to isolate when exposed to infection — an issue at the heart of the Croydon University Hospital battle.
A government prepared to learn the lessons would bring these workers back in house. An opposition worth its salt would be campaigning to drive private contractors out of the NHS altogether, not using a treatment backlog caused by underinvestment to justify increasing NHS dependence on the private sector.
We don’t have such a government or such an opposition. But that doesn’t stop workers who know they deserve better from taking a stand and fighting for it.
Solidarity with the health workers taking action today — their victory matters beyond the communities they serve.
