Hospital staff strike over ‘missing’ Covid payment

Hospital porters, cleaners and catering staff have launched a two-week strike in a dispute over bonuses for health workers which recognised the pressure they faced during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The GMB union said its members at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital missed out on the payment because they were not employed directly by the NHS on 31 March 2023.

Kerry Nash, a senior GMB organiser, said workers who had missed out on the payment were part of “vital services” and “should be recognised”.

NHS University Hospitals of Liverpool Group said it was working with trade unions to resolve the dispute.

It reassured patients it had “robust plans” in place to ensure hospital appointments were not affected.

Ms Nash spoke to the BBC on the picket line outside Royal Liverpool Hospital on Monday morning, as part of the second strike to take place following a 48-hour strike in June this year.

She said: “They’re not asking for anything different than what's been paid to other staff in the NHS, and even some of their colleagues."

The GMB union told the BBC hospital porters, cleaners and caterers at the hospital were outsourced to ISS, a private company, during the pandemic, but were taken back in house on April 1, 2023.

The union claimed that as a result, 60% of outsourced staff missed out on the lump sum payment given to directly-employed NHS staff and colleagues on the NHS’s Agenda for Change contract.

The contract, introduced in December 2004, sets the pay scale for more than one million people employed by the health service through permanent and fixed term contracts.

Jackie Whittaker, who works as a case supervisor at Royal Liverpool Hospital, emphasised that the strike was fundamentally about “fairness”.

“There are people standing alongside each other doing the same job. How can you pay one and not the other?"

Jackie Johnson, another staff member on the picket line, told the BBC she felt porters, cleaners and catering staff who work at hospitals were often “taken for granted”.

“We do a good job, a hard job. It makes you feel demoralised. We think, ‘is there a difference between us?’”

A spokesperson for NHS University Hospitals of Liverpool Group said: “We value and recognise the contributions our colleagues have made. We are continuing to work with trade unions and remain committed to resolving this dispute.

“We’d like to reassure patients and our communities that we have robust plans in place to ensure we continue to provide patients with safe care and that they should attend their hospital appointments as planned.”

They added that the ISS contract for porters, cleaners and caterers was established before the pandemic and continued up until the service was brought in house in April 2023.

A spokesperson for ISS said: “While employees at ISS are typically outside the scope of the Government’s NHS benefit provisions, including the lump sum payment, we are committed to seeking to secure the best conditions for all our valued team members. The employees concerned are no longer contracted with ISS.”

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