{"id":11554,"date":"2017-02-23T11:27:18","date_gmt":"2017-02-23T11:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=11554"},"modified":"2017-02-23T15:40:45","modified_gmt":"2017-02-23T15:40:45","slug":"line-in-the-sand-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=11554","title":{"rendered":"‘Line in the sand’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A line in the sand over further privatisation of the NHS in London needs to be drawn, Unite has said.<\/p>\n

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The latest cause for controversy is at King’s College Hospital (KCH) NHS Foundation Trust where, it is claimed, current privatisation plans seek to reduce the trust\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tax costs by transferring specialist equipment (including neonatal care incubators) and staff to a private company wholly-owned by the trust board.<\/p>\n

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The impact on staff is the threat of a serious erosion of employment terms and conditions which has already started.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIf you cut through the complexity what we have here is an attack on staff conditions and a further fragmentation of the NHS in London,” said Unite national officer for health Colenzo Jarrett-Thorpe.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bUnite strongly believes that fragmentation has an adverse effect in the long-term on patient services \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why we are raising the alarm at this trust,” he added. “A line in the sand needs to be firmly drawn over accelerating NHS privatisation in London.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Unite and Unison has written to the trust\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chair, former top mandarin, Lord Kerslake calling for an immediate halt to more services being transferred to Kings Interventional Facilities Management (KIFM) until a review has been held.<\/p>\n

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In the letter, the unions said that there has been \u00e2\u20ac\u0098an atrocious erosion of KCH staff’s terms and conditions under KIFM\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s regime\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and that decisions are being made \u00e2\u20ac\u0098without any meaningful consultation with the people who do the work\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

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Two major grievances \u00e2\u20ac\u201c signed, so far, by 55 KIFM staff \u00e2\u20ac\u201c have been lodged in relation to KIFM working practices. Staff are concerned about threats to NHS pensions, sickness entitlement, loss of paid maternity leave and a diminution of redundancy terms.<\/p>\n

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The unions warn that the trust could be left as \u00e2\u20ac\u0098a shell of an organisation staffed solely by a highly paid team of managers. The foot soldiers, the most valuable asset of any organisation, will have left them to their fate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

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It takes \u00e2\u20ac\u0098bravery and wisdom to acknowledge mistakes and poor decision-making\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, following the establishment of KIFM in June last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A line in the sand over further privatisation of the NHS in London needs to be drawn, Unite has said.   The latest cause for controversy is at King’s College Hospital (KCH) NHS Foundation Trust where, it is claimed, current privatisation plans seek to reduce the trust\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tax costs by transferring specialist equipment (including neonatal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11555,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[29,81],"wps_subtitle":"King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s College Hospital privatisation must end","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11554"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11554"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11556,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11554\/revisions\/11556"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}