HEALTH Secretary Wes Streeting has been urged to honour the New Deal for Working People after failing to back a Unison NHS strike over a £100 million-plus privatisation plan.
More than 350 facilities workers are on a three-week walkout over East Suffolk and North Essex Foundation Trust (ESNEFT’s) plans to outsource their jobs.
Large NHS contracts such as this need Cabinet Office approval but Mr Streeting has said he will not intervene in the trust’s outsourcing bid despite Labour’s promise for the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation, a union source said.
His stance has attracted criticism from Labour MPs, Unison and NHS campaigners, with ESNEFT’s board of directors expected to rubber-stamp the outsourcing of their soft facilities management contract tomorrow.
Eastern Unison head of health Caroline Hennessy said: “Moving these essential teams out of the NHS is a false economy and goes against government pledges on insourcing.
“The trust has spent months trying to justify its ill-thought-out plans to privatise the jobs of these key staff and has failed to win any of the arguments.”
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