“I remember when there was a major incident at the hospital, when the oxygen and an ambulance blew up,” Leon Broughton recalls of the explosion at Sutton’s St Helier Hospital in 2009. Firefighters battled fire amid cylinders of flammable medical gases while parts of the hospital were evacuated. “At the time we were working, we would finish at 3pm, and we stayed to help until 11pm,” Broughton added.
Broughton has been a porter at the hospital since 2006; it is a job that often goes unnoticed though it is a highly skilled and crucial role. During the Covid pandemic, porters handled dead bodies. At St Helier, when the hospital ran out of body bags, they used bedsheets.
But in August this year, more than 300 porters, cleaners and catering staff at St George’s, Epsom and St Helier hospital group (GESH) backed strike action. Ninety-eight per cent voted in favour on an 81 per cent turnout. A report issued by their union, United Voices of the World (UVW), claimed that workers may have lost £30m in benefits and pension contributions over the past four years and has accused the hospital group of “institutional racism”.
UVW says its efforts to negotiate with the hospital group have been fruitless. “We implored them again to have a meeting to discuss the demands and to find a way forward. And they refused,” said Petros Elia, the UVW’s general secretary.
The dispute concerns when the employment of hospital porters, cleaning and catering staff moved from the Epsom and St Helier NHS Trust to the company Mitie. After Mitie’s contract ended, GESH reinstated the workers as NHS employees, though the workers say they have been systematically excluded from the NHS’s Agenda for Change (AfC) pay and conditions. Consequently, some workers at St Helier believe they are being paid less and getting fewer days of annual leave than people in the same jobs in hospitals that do implement AfC. Until recently, the workers were also mistakenly excluded from the NHS Pension scheme. (A spokesperson for GESH said their staff are “hugely valued and respected” and that “when colleagues were brought in-house, they received improved pay and conditions, including the London Living Wage, increased annual leave and access to the national workplace pension scheme (NEST)”.)
Peter, an A&E porter, is paid the London Living Wage of £13.85 and does not get enhanced pay for working overtime or weekends compared. While rates vary depending on which pay bracket the worker is in, an AfC contract pays between time plus 30-47 per cent on Saturdays and any week day between 8pm-6am, and time plus 60-98 per cent on Sundays and bank holidays.
St Helier is made mostly from 1930s red brick; it is imposing and gives a sense of durability. But get closer and it is clear that it is in a state of disrepair. Sutton Council has been acknowledged that St Helier is in need of renovation; it was one of the hospitals that would have supposedly been rebuilt as part of Boris Johnson’s broken promise to build 40 new hospitals.
It is 3pm and I am in the cafeteria. I grab a coffee and speak to a group of porters coming off their shift, which stared at 7am. “Everything starts from here, because if I don’t connect the gasses and the wards and all that, they’re not going to have gasses. If I don’t get the patient where they have to be at a certain time, that patient might not receive the care they need,” Peter says.
Sarah, a cleaner with 12 years’ service who comes over to chat, said she gets 19 days annual leave. Under an Agenda for Change contract, according to another colleague, that should have been increased with her service to 24 days a year. One of her colleagues, Wilma, has been working at St Helier since 1989 but lost her seniority during the outsourcing process and has now been told she only has 12 years’ of pension contributions and only four years of continuous service. “I was having to work six days a week to make enough. Can you imagine working from 6am-2pm, and then going back to work 4pm-8pm? And I’m still going,” she said.
A report by the UVW documents employees who went to work at the hospital despite being sick because, although their terms stipulate that they are entitled to receive sick pay from their third day off, many workers cannot afford the two unpaid days. (A GESH spokesperson said this provision isn’t currently being enforced, nor has it been since 2022.) In a survey conducted by the union, 83 per cent of the 167 respondents said they have been forced to come into work ill. “It’s a very bad policy. Previously I took two days sick leave, and then I wasn’t paid for it,” said Fouzia, a ward hostess. (GESH claims Fouzia’s recollection about her sick pay are not consistent with their records.)
Even some of the most basic needs have been eroded by the need to run services cheaply. “We’re meant to wear safety shoes, but I don’t, because obviously what they buy is cheap and nasty. I mean, I did wear them in the past for three days, and they ruined my feet,” said Ian Parker, a porter with 23 years’ experience. “We had a long battle to get some new X-ray trolleys,” he adds, explaining that they were dilapidated, hard to steer and the wheels were sharp.
Overwhelmingly, the workers I spoke to felt undervalued and ignored. They have been raising issues with their contracts since 2021, but it is only since the strike vote that they feel as though they are making progress. The hospital group are now carrying out a review of staff contracts, pay and conditions and the board are due to discuss the issue at their next meeting. UVW want staff brought back on to Agenda for Change and their pay backdated to 2021. After four years of delay, however, the workers are losing their patience, and their strike mandate means they could call industrial action at any point up to the end of February.
[Further reading: Bridget Phillipson: “I’ve had to fight tooth and nail”]
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